NES #37 - Tiny Toon Adventures

Okay so I'm getting myself all confused. Right now I'm about seven games behind, and I can't exactly explain why. It's not like I'm too busy or disillusioned with my blog. My posts are still fairly popular. I somehow just got behind and ended up with a half dozen or so games to write about. What's worse is that I remembered that I beat Tiny Toon Adventures and didn't have it on my list. Sadly, this is about all I remember. I guess I should go back and play some of it again, but I'll see how well I can do without actually remembering the game.

This is a standard platform game as you might expect. It has a world map, but that is purely for show. There are no branching paths or secret spaces. You can't even move your character on it. So you play as Buster in this one, but if you get a special item you can switch between Dizzy, Furball, or Plucky. The difference between them is that Buster has no special skills. He was always the vanilla of the Tiny Toons world, and it's no different here. Plucky can fly, Dizzy can spin, and Furball can climb. All of these things are better than being able to simply walk around. Well, Dizzy's probably worse, but not by much.

This is one of those games with unlimited continues and a few difficult levels. This means that while this game is short, you will probably have to play it a while to actually beat it. This is always a little difficult for me. I know that I spend about 90 percent of my personal time playing video games, but it's hard for me to play a game longer than an hour without getting frustrated. I have never have been able to focus on one thing for more than a half hour or so. Maybe that's why I'm getting so far behind. Anyway, after about 90 minutes I started to get real angry at this game. Every time I died I wanted to stop playing and hide this game in the bottom of my closet where it could no longer hurt me. However, if I stopped than all that time would be wasted. Luckily I didn't let this game defeat me, and I was still able to have a nice weekend after I was finished. I remember fighting Montana Max, but I don't remember what happens after that. I'm sure it was disappointing.

I will say to this game's credit it's about 100 times better than its sequel. This game is actually set up like a real game. It even has a Wackyland level that actually kind of looks like Wackyland. Why was it so hard to get it right in the second game? Of course I can't play through a game series in reverse and say they fixed all the problems. However if you are going to play through both of them I highly recommend playing through this one second. At least it won't make you hate yourself. Is that a compliment? I guess it's close enough.

Nintendo DS #1 - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

After writing this blog for over six months I finally got around to beating a modern game. Although this will only be modern for the next few months as the 3DS is going to come out in March and displace the regular DS. It doesn't seem to take very long for video games to become retro, so I give the DS about another year before it starts getting talked about on classic gaming forums.

I don't know if you've played many Castlevania games in the last 13 years, but ever since Symphony of the Night came out there have been about a dozen games that are exactly like it. I can't really complain that much because they are all good, but you usually know what you're getting before you turn the game on. The two most noticeable are that they are side scrolling and they all have a really dumb subtitle.

I want to talk about the subtitles for a second because they drive me absolutely crazy. I don't know why they had to make it so hard to tell what order the games came out in. When I started playing Dawn of Sorrow I found out that it's actually the sequel to Aria of Sorrow. I guess I was supposed to know that because they are in alphabetical order. They both end with the word Sorrow, but it's still easy to get them mixed up. Actually my eyes start to glaze over just looking at their names. I think I picked out Dawn of Sorrow because it's the easiest to spell. Would it have been so bad to call them something like Castlevania Advance or Castlevania DS? You need to either give them more specific titles or quit making the storylines connected. Anyway, I'll try not to talk about this so much when I'm playing the other Castlevanias. I think it's out of my system now.

So now that I've gotten my mini rant out of the way I can get on to the game's true bread and butter, the side scrolling gameplay. I don't know if you can remember, but back when Symphony of the Night came out side scrolling games were pretty much dead. Castlevania resurrected the genre just like how they keep doing with Dracula. Ever since then side scrolling has been the standard in the series. There have been some 3D attempts but nobody cares about them at all. I'm honestly not sure why they keep trying.

Dawn of Sorrow is one of the traditional kinds. In fact it's so traditional that it's a little bit boring to talk about. It's got all the gameplay elements you love. The big Super Metriod style map, the items that let you open up more areas, the weapons and armor to buy, and of course the big bosses. You do get to capture souls in this one so that changes things up a bit. As far as I know every regular monster gives you some special ability. You can also augment your weapons with monster souls which can be fun, but can also be very tedious. I probably spent an entire hour fighting the same monster over and over again because I needed his soul to augment my axe. At least with the DS I can watch tv at the same time so I don't get bored.

Honestly there's so much sameness in the series that it's hard to think of much to say. I think they could've made your character move a little bit faster, and I hate that all the strong weapons are also extremely slow. Of course the whole thing only takes about 10 hours so perhaps it's for the best. A faster moving game would have been over much too quickly. Other than that it was another fun Castlevania experience. Hopefully the next game I play in the series will be more interesting to talk about, but I'll try to spread them out some so you don't have to read about them all at once.

NES #24: Super C

I thought it would be fun to go back through Super C after playing the original so recently. Super C is, of course, the sequel to the classic Contra. It was innovative in its use of the word "Super" in the title. In a year or two the Super Nintendo would come out, and every game would start to have "super" in its title. It also has an abbreviation in its title. This was right before the big abbreviation boom of the 90s. I think it was still pre-KFC. I don't think I've ever spent so much time talking about the title of a game, but I haven't written about Street Fighter 2010 or Super Castlevania IV yet. Don't think that this is the last time.

So Super C is one of the ultimate sequels on the NES. It is also one of the sequels that is the most like its predecessor. If you play the two games far apart from each other its hard to even tell the difference. About the only thing that I noticed the first time through was that the base levels from the first games are gone and replaced by fun vertical scrolling levels. This time I waited about a month between the two games, so I was much better able to notice the subtle differences.

What I noticed right away was that on Super C you walk much slower. This is very strange for a game series. In almost every case the next game in a series is faster. This annoyed me at first, but I got used to it. Another difference is that the weapons are better. The fire and laser were both pretty much useless in the first game, but in this one I don't always try to avoid them. There were even sections of the game where I wanted to get the fire gun. This is highly unusual. Also I noticed that the levels didn't have titles on this one. I don't know why, but I really missed that.

It also seems to me that Super C is easier than the original, although it is almost impossible to to be unbiased about it. If you've played through one of the games than you will already know the game play, and that should give you an advantage in the second game no matter which one it is. I sure had an easier time getting through it this time around though. I would say it took about a half dozen tries. I didn't even mean to beat it when I was playing it. I was just practicing because I had a little extra time and knew that it was going to be the next game I was going to play. My girlfriend left the room and actually didn't believe me ten minutes later when I told her I had beaten it. It was all so sudden.

Of course this is where it goes back to being unbiased. I just played through the original Contra a couple weeks before this one and was able to get back into the game play. As you already know Contra took me about a million tries and almost made me want to retire from gaming. So I breezed through Super C but does that make it an easier game? It's hard to say.

One thing I will say though is that they are both excellent games. If you look at the whole Contra series you've got one excellent Super Nintendo installment (which oddly leaves the word "Super" out of it's title) and then a baffling number of games that people don't care about much on just about every system. At best these games usually play like poor Gunstar Heroes clones. It was in the old days that this once proud franchise truly shines, and we should all feel lucky that there were two games that played so well released so close together which can still be found for around ten bucks. Of course there is another NES installment that just about ruins the whole narrative, but I'm not ready to talk about that one yet.

NES #22: Contra

For as good as I was at Life Force recently I completely embarrassed myself playing Contra. I used to be so good at this game! I remember beating this game without getting killed back in the day. I didn't think it was a big accomplishment or anything at the time. I just didn't want to lose my good gun and felt that the best way to keep it would be by not getting killed. Of course that was quite a few years ago. Recently I picked the game back up because I thought it would be an easy completion for my blog. I am the king of Contra after all.

I played through this game like someone who had never even played NES before. It probably took me a dozen or so tries before I could even get past the first level. The weakest guys shooting at me from the ground gave me endless trouble. I thought I would still have this game memorized, but I didn't even remember anything after the snow level which I thought was in Super C. I persevered though and eventually got through it. Thankfully the last boss is pretty easy. The victory was actually quite satisfying after all the sweat and toil it took me to get through it again. It's nice when I get that feeling again.

I always hear that this game is one of the hardest out there. I don't really know if I would call it that, but it is a game that you have to play a lot. It's not exactly a trial and error game like Prince of Persia, but you do need to play through it enough to learn what's coming next. After you do that the game becomes much easier. I guess you could use the Konami code to get a bunch of lives, but as we all know the Konami code is for sissies. You really won't need it. This game is really fun and no problem to play levels multiple times.

Hmm, I actually can't think of that much to say about this one. It's always more difficult when it's a good game without many flaws. I really can't think of anything negative to say about this one. Well, the fire gun sucks but it's also pretty easy to avoid. This is just a fun and challenging game that all of you should beat at least once. You might think it's too hard or that you need a code to cheat your way through, but trust me you can do it.

NES #21: Life Force

It doesn't seem like there are that many good flying shooters on the NES. You can tell because people often put Legendary Wings on their list of favorites from the system. The only reason you would put that on the top of your list is because you didn't have any other games to choose from. However, when you dig a little deeper into the NES catalog you start to discover that there are some good ones to be played like Zanac and Dragon Spirit. Although they are fun games very few of them are well known.

Life Force is the exception. It is probably the most famous of the flying shooters on the whole system. It also has quite a reputation. People usually put this game on their best of lists to represent the whole genre. I guess it does have a lot going for it. It's made by Konami, who could do almost no wrong at the time. It has some of the coolest graphics of the era, especially those swooping flames in level three. It also has an interesting weapon systems that requires you to think a little bit. I guess it's easy to see why it represents a whole genre. It does everything so well. Okay, so there is one thing it doesn't do well, but I will get to that in a minute.

I remember playing this game all the time in college. It was one of those games that my nerdy friends thought was too hard, so I wanted to beat it. I remember playing that game over and over again and finally beating it after months of off and on play. It's a tricky game because it has so many things popping up. You scroll both vertically and horizontally, and it is not uncommon for things to be coming at you from three or even four directions. You also never know what to expect as the screen scrolls. Trust me, those curving flames will kill you the first time, and probably up through the 20th time as well. The best strategy in this game is to play through it enough times that you know what's going to happen next. Thankfully it's fun enough that you won't really mind.

Remembering the difficulty level I was surprised by how easy of a time I had beating this one again. It really only took me a few tries. By the time I was good enough to make it to the level I had about eight lives and hadn't even used a continue. And it's not like I had it very well memorized either. I only had a good memory of levels 1 and 3 which are the ones that I died in the most. I really don't have an explanation for it. I think I just got lucky or maybe all this Nintendo playing has got me into some kind of zone. Whatever the reason it was nice finding a game that I was still good at.

So what was the one flaw I was talking about earlier? The end of the game is too easy. It really doesn't have much of a final boss It just has this snake thing flying around in a big circle. All you gotta do is shoot him a few times and he's down. It's really odd for a game that has such big, tough bosses. After that you gotta fly through some really skinny spots which isn't a problem if you have some lives saved up. Then there's not even much of an ending. It's kind of a shame for a game that is otherwise great.

Well I guess that's about it for Life Force. It's another example of a sequel that I'm better at than the first installment. I've never been able to beat Gradius, the first game in the series. I've also never been able to beat the original Mega Man or Castlevania despite getting through all the other ones. There are different reasons for this, but in the case of Life Force it's because it is designed much better. In Gradius you pretty much can never get hit. Once you've lost your power ups you're done for. In Life Force it seems like you can always get by until new power ups arrive. Not enough shooters are like this. I never once felt hopeless. Okay I guess I can end this entry now. I guess this is a pretty good game to represent a genre with. I sure can't think of a better one.

NES #19: Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland

I'm not wasting any time. This game is bad! I've only had it for a week or so, and it's already one of my least favorite games. Everybody knows that Gogo Dodo was the best character on Tiny Toon Adventures. He was the wild and absurd one. We had to sit through cartoon after cartoon of Buster acting smug and self righteous just for a few seconds of Gogo, and it was well worth it. So much time was wasted at that school when we could see the entrance of Wackyland on the map. I knew something awesome was happening in there, but Stephen Spielberg and the gang didn't want the world to see it. Finally in 1993 Konami of all people released this game for the NES. We were finally gonna get a glimpse inside. There was only one problem. THIS GAME HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WACKYLAND!!!!!

This game is nothing more than a cheap ripoff of Adventures in the Magic Kingdom. Yeah that's right, it's an amusement park game. We've got a roller coaster, bumper cars, a log ride, a train ride, and finally a fun house. WHY DID THE DEVELOPERS THINK THAT WACKYLAND WAS AN AMUSEMENT PARK?? Is it because it had the word land in it? Wackyland was its own self contained world with all kind of strange creatures in it. Porky flew there in the classic Bob Clampett cartoon, and I don't think there were any bumper cars in it. The amusement park in Tiny Toons was Happy World Land, not Wackyland. What's worse is that Gogo's no a playable character. Actually he's not even really in it. You only see him walk by during the credits. He doesn't even have a supporting role like he does in better games like Buster's Hidden Treasure. What the hell happened here!?

I could probably give this game more of a pass if it was fun, but it is far from it. The object is to get into the fun house and beat Montana Max. You get there by getting 4 golden tickets or 50 regular tickets. Each other attraction costs a certain amount of tickets, but when you can trade in your points for regular tickets at the ticket booth. Here's where the game gets really bad. The bumper cars and train levels are pretty easy and only take 1 or 2 tickets. The roller coaster and log ride are much more difficult and take 3 or 4 tickets. When all you need are 50 tickets there's no point to playing through the harder levels. Honestly the train stage was about the only one I could stomach, so I just played it over and over. I think I played through the level seven times before I saved up enough tickets. Then I went to the final stage.

Yeah that's right, you can get through this game by only playing two levels, one of the regular levels and the fun house. I bed you'd love to spend 50 dollars to buy a game where you only have to play 2 levels. At least the fun house plays more like a regular game. Of course keeping with the theme there's nothing funny inside of it, and you play as Buster. All you get is a confusing maze with some doors on the ceiling and some upside down walking. Then you get to Montana Max and easily beat him. Then you turn off the game and never play it again, but I doubt you'll be able to forget about it so easily.

Well that's about all I want to talk about this one. I know that I only got it a week ago and it's made for little kids, but I'm sure I would've been just as furious then as I am now. Kids aren't dumb, especially when it comes to their favorite shows. Everyone who was a fan of the show would know that it wasn't Wackyland. I doubt there's a kid alive who would fool themselves into thinking that this was anything but a lazy money grab. I guess I can't really blame Gogo for not showing up. I wouldn't want my face in this game either. I'm just thankful that I've got 20 or so better Konami games to play through on my NES. This game isn't exactly Contra.