NES #30: Zoda's Revenge: Star Tropics 2

So last time I was on here I was talking about the somewhat fun but ultimately lazy Rescue Rangers 2. In that post I was talking about how many of the late releases showed what the NES could do both in terms of graphics and gameplay. Well Zoda's revenge is the perfect example of this. Zoda's Revenge came out about a month after RR2, and it's one of the last three games Nintendo released for the NES. It's such a late release that they could've done a lousy job on it and nobody would have even noticed. Luckily they put a lot of time into it so that the NES could go out in style.

I feel slightly weird about the fact that this game came out right around my tenth birthday. The NES has always been such a part of my life that it's hard to believe that by the time I was 10 it was all over. They would start clearing out all the NES stock from stores, and rental places would get rid of them in favor of the 16 bits. This was something that I had a hard time dealing with way back in '94. Every kid has trouble dealing with change, and this is one that I just couldn't tolerate. I felt like my whole world was crumbling away. It caused me to be bitter at the SNES for years to come. That's probably why I have 260 NES games and about 30 SNES ones.

The commercials for this game did give me a little bit of hope however. It was advertised in the same commercial as the top loading NES. By then the price of the NES had dropped to 49.95 which just about any collector would be happy to pay today. If only we had known. The same commercial also advertised Mega Man 6, so I thought that the system was making a comeback. Little did I know that it was more of a last gasp.

Thankfully this was quite a last gasp. Zoda's Revenge is one of the best action RPGs that I've played on the NES. By this point most of the ambiguity and slow pacing that plagued earlier RPGs is gone. This game moves at a very quick, action packed pace. It has an entertaining story where Mikey is time traveling while looking for magic Tetris pieces, and it's able to unfold well while never slowing down the pace. This is something I wish modern games would be able to do. Also, unlike some games that will remain nameless, you get to go to Egypt and fight Sphinxes that shoot lasers out of their eyes.

They also tried to fix the problems from the first game. I appreciate them for trying, but some of the fixes are better than others. You get two weapons at a time in this one, and only one of them has strength based on your heart level. No matter how weak you are you will still have a good weapon to use. There also seem to be more opportunities to save your progress which is helpful in a game full of difficult dungeons. Most notably this game does away with all those green boxes. They are still there, but you can simply walk over them instead of jumping one space at a time. This is a welcome change, but it does make the jumping a little odd in this one. It was far too easy to jump to your death which was usually not a problem in the first game. You still move like you're walking on ice as well. At least they tried to fix the motion problem.

This game still has very difficult dungeons and bosses, but unlike the first game I never got overly frustrated. I'm not going to spend too much time talking about the bosses on this one, but some of them were difficult. A few of them felt like mini bosses, but I didn't really mind that so much because they came after difficult dungeon stages. The final stage is set up Mega Man style where you fight many of the old bosses over again. Zoda isn't as difficult as he was the first time around, but he's got about 8 bosses in front of him so it all balances out.

This game really feels like it was made by a group of people that were going to miss the NES as much as I did. As a result they put much more into this game than was probably required and I do appreciate that. The Nintendo suffered a long, painful death where it had to watch its younger brother rise to power. I'm happy that even in its last moments there were still people out there that cared about it.

NES #29: Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers 2

Most of you who are interested in games enough to read this blog have probably played the first Rescue Rangers game. However, I'm sure hardly any of you have played the sequel. There's a good reason for that. This is a very late, 3rd party release for the NES. By the time it came out everybody had already moved on to SNES and Genesis. If you want to play this one today you've got to hunt down a copy and pay good money for it. I never see it on ebay for less that 50 dollars anymore. Actually, it's one of the most expensive licensed games on the whole system. So good luck on finding that one anywhere. Too bad you missed it the first time around.

Of course you could always get lucky and find it at your local used video game store for 15 bucks. That's what I did anyway. You never know what you're going to find out there. That's why I love this hobby so much. Of course, that's also what makes me put off buying certain things for years and years. I should've bought Action 50 about 80 dollars ago, but I wanted to wait and find one that was ridiculously cheap. But enough about me, let's talk about the game.

Rescue Rangers is a lot like the first game in the series except shorter and possibly even easier. The world map that I loved so much from the first game is gone and replaced by cutscenes that make the game feel like an episode of the show. The gameplay from the first one is still in tact. There's lots of running and throwing boxes. It's actually pretty fun. Also, you collect tokens all throughout the game which add to your health bar. It's sort of a level gaining system that almost makes the game seem deeper.

The bosses are extremely cute in this one. You sorta feel bad killing them, but I guess they attack first. I haven't seen the cartoon show in about 15 years so I have no idea if they are characters from the tv show or not. Was there a bunny that squirted water at you in the show? Maybe they were all made up for the game. Anyway, I have no idea why they turned over to the dark side. I'm sure all those kitties could've found nice homes, so that they wouldn't have to fly around on bat wings or dress up like magicians and throw playing cards at hat wearing chipmunks. That may be the best sentence I've ever typed.

I guess the thing that was really supposed to set this game apart was the dialogue between levels. As I stated earlier, the game plays like an episode of the tv show. It's actually a pretty good idea. The only problem is that the story is quite flimsy. The story goes that Fat Cat escaped from prison and wanted to steal something important from Egypt. You'd think that since I played this game three days ago that I'd remember what it was. I guess that tells you something right there. I figured that this would be a trek across the world leading to a big show down in a pyramid. I was dead wrong though. It's just the same ol' generic levels like in the first game. There's always some excuse why you're in a factory or pier instead of Egypt, but I don't buy it for a minute. Would it really have been so hard to put some sand and pyramids in the background? I wanted to fight some sphinxes with lasers shooting out of their eyes, not just the same old robot dogs!

The worst part is probably the ending. I was expecting something a little more involved since the whole game was set up like a tv show, but you never even get to fight Fat Cat. You just find his factory or evil headquarters on the end of town and fight the robot Fat Cat. No problem with that battle. Then the building collapses and Monterey Jack compliments you on making Fat Cat's life slightly more difficult. That's it? Mild irritation!? That's how the heroes save the day? What about that thing that he was going to take over the world with? What about getting him back into prison? It left me feeling pretty empty inside.

The ending implies that they wanted to make more games in the series, which is odd to me on a few different levels. This game came out in 1993 which was three years after the first game and the original run of the series. It was also at the very end of the system's life when nobody was playing the system anymore except for me, and I wasn't that interested in another Rescue Rangers game. I know that there were still little kids playing the NES, but if you really wanted to continue the series on why put it on a dead system? SNES and Genesis both made excellent side scrollers that plenty of little kids played. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

So in my collecting I've always been interested in the last games for consoles. What goes into making a game for a system on its last legs? Every year after 1991 saw less and less NES games up until its final year in 1994. What surprises me most about the 93s and 94s out there is that they really seem like the people involved were trying to make good games. You can see a lot of time and effort in them. This game is pretty good, but I just don't see the love in it. There isn't one from the era that seems more phoned in that I have played. It was just a game made for kids who were all playing Kirby's Adventure instead. At least its rarity makes it a conversation piece. After all I did spend more time writing this blog entry than I did playing through it.

TurboGrafx-CD #1: Y's Book I and II

I'm sure that it would be a safe bet to say that if not for the Wii Virtual Console than this would be the most obscure game I have ever written about on here. Not only is it for the extremely unpopular TurboGrafx system, but it's for the even harder to find CD add-on. It seems like everybody was trying to make one of those in the early 90s, and at least in America they were all dismal failures. Remember how unsuccessful the Sega Cd was? Well that was the most successful of any of the CD add-ons. Nintendo still gets criticized for splitting Sony in the early 90s, but given the history of CD-Rom gaming up to that point who could blame them? The Turbo CD came out in 1990 at a price of 399.99 which was pretty steep back then. That's one of the many reasons that the system never caught on and is only really sought after by obsessive collectors like me. I'm not sure if the retail price was ever truly justified, but there are some impressive games.

I can't even imagine how awesome Ys must've seemed way back in 1990. I mean, this was a time when there were still a few stray Atari and Intellivision games coming out. Here was a game with large anime type characters during cutscenes, CD quality sound, and real voice acting. Who wouldn't want to hear some of Debi Derryberry's early work? Of course there are a couple of problems with the new technology. There are times where the music will cut out which I suspect is due to the music track ending and not being able to loop. You have to leave the room to get it to start back up again. There are also some load times, especially when someone is about to talk. It's not as bad as Playstation or some of the other more advanced systems, but it can get a little annoying sometimes. It also has a picture frame around it making the action screen smaller. It didn't bother me much, but I have a big TV.


Thankfully behind all this flash there is a very good RPG with one of the most unique fighting systems of all time. When you see a monster in you sight you just run right into him. Then you keep doing that until he is dead. You don't even have to swing your sword. This takes a little getting used to, but I enjoy it because it takes up much less time than standard action RPG fighting. Another unique thing about this game is just how much of it is spent in dungeons. There's an opening grassland and mountain in the first half of the game, and that's really about it. The rest of the game will be spent in long, confusing dungeons. Luckily you are able to save anywhere, and in the second half of the game you have a magic spell that that teleport you back to the nearest town.

Another important feature about this game is its boss fights. I've honestly never really been that in to boss fights in RPGs. They always take too long. These, however, are some of the funnest and most difficult bosses I can remember fighting in a long time. Having to make contact to hurt them makes for some interesting strategies, and no two bosses are fought the same way. This was my second time playing through this game, and I had the same reaction as I did when playing back through Star Tropics. I couldn't believe that I had killed all those bosses twice.



I guess my one major complaint with this game is the ending. I was expecting some really spectacular visuals, but it was mostly text moving slowly across the screen with about 30 seconds of voices. The final cutscene was actually quite short. I guess they spent all the money on the cool intro which is very easy to miss. You have to let the game load up without pushing any of the buttons. I only knew about because I read it in EGM. They sould've put something like that at the end of the game so everybody would see it. Oh well, I guess nobody's perfect.

This is one of those games that falls into the lost classic category. I hope some of you have gotten to play it now that it is on the virtual console. I wish I could've taken my time and really enjoyed playing through it again, but I didn't have any other games going so I wanted to get it finished for the blog. I actually got pretty mad at it sometimes. I guess I should apologize. Sorry Ys. It's not you, it's me.

NES #28: Star Tropics

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. I've been all distracted with the holidays. You would think that I would've finished some games with the extended time off, but I've been too scattered lately and have been playing every game I own for 10 minutes. I haven't gotten very much done like that. Thankfully I finished Star Tropics before this happened and saved it just in case something like this happened. Just keep in mind that I did not beat this game yesterday. It's been a few weeks.

So what can I say about Star Tropics? It's sort of a lost classic. It's a whole lot of fun, but also insanely difficult. The difficulty of this game is both intentional and accidental. This is another game released by Nintendo in the early 90s when they realized there wasn't going to be another NES Zelda game, but they still wanted to draw in the RPG/adventure crowd. Thankfully they didn't rip themselves off too much with this one. Aside from the similar looking hearts and that familiar overworld perspective it is a vastly different game. It was also made exclusively for North America, so for once the Japanese missed out on the cool new game. That didn't happen very often after about 1983.

This game has a lot of memorable moments in it. It certainly oozes personality. I can't think of that many NES games that have dialogue in them that is actually meant to be funny. Most funny NES lines are due to poor translations. The island hopping aspect is enjoyable, and it really makes the game feel like it takes place in our world. Even though you're fighting giant monsters and aliens the game feels like it takes place on Earth. I always thought that was unique in RPGs. However, with all the memorable scenes in this game, the thing that it will always be remembered for is its difficulty.

This game really is punishingly difficult. Most RPGs are just a matter of time an leveling up, but this one requires some real skills. I honestly can't believe that I've beat it twice. So what makes this game so hard? There are many reasons for this. Mikey, the main character, moves very stiffly, so just about every enemy is faster. It's especially bad if you're trying to change directions quickly. It makes it feel like every level is the ice level. The stiff motion is deliberate though, because this game is all about green blocks. Every dungeon has about 1000 green blocks in it, and you'll have to jump on each one if you want to find the treasure. And trust me, you really do want to find it. So you've got to jump on all these green blocks while all kinds of monster are flying around trying to kill you, and even when you're not on green blocks you still feel like you are. This is not a game that lets you relax.

There is also the fiendish level design. You never really know what you're going to find in the next room, and it is often something that can kill you. In the very first dungeon there is a room with two sets of green blocks that go in different directions. The one leads you to safety, but do you know where the other one leads you? Straight to your death! You'll automatically jump into the next room only to find that there is no ground beneath you. And this is the very first dungeon! There are also disappearing blocks that don't make themselves known until you are already on them. You'll have a split second to react before it's too late. It's insane.

I also still don't understand the heart system. It seems completely random how many hearts you start back with after you die. Some dungeons will only give you three, but there will be a hidden room off to the side where you can find some more. Why not just start you back with enough hearts to survive with in the first place? There are other times where you will inexplicably have more hearts as well. It still doesn't make any sense, and I've been playing this game for 15 years.

All this ranting makes it sound like I had a miserable time playing this game. In truth though, I kinda love it. It's probably the game that I've had the most fun going back through. The high difficulty makes every step forward feel like an accomplishment, and the dungeons never get so frustrating that they are no longer fun. It really does have good dialogue too. I wasn't kidding about that one. You even get to fight evil aliens which is always a plus.

The final boss is insane. So most older games have predictable bosses. There are the ones that are fixed at the top of the screen and shoot things at you, the ones that are on the ground and either stay at the edge or move back and fourth, or the ones that move around in a big rectangle that is either the ground or a fixed amount of sky. Well Zoda moves in a completely different way than any of these. He's in a large room that actually scrolls, and he moves wherever the hell he wants. It's impossible to get any kind of a pattern down because there isn't one. He just moves everywhere and shoots at you. You just gotta try to hit him in the side before he turns around. I've really never seen another one like it.

Star Tropics is a game that I have really fond memories of. I got it in a box of games my grandma got me out of the newspaper that had almost every great NES game in it. I would devour just about any RPG I could get my hands on back then, so of course I loved it. It took me a long time to beat because I would always get stuck. I've gone through it a couple of times now, and I"m happy to say that it has stood the test of time wonderfully. It's only a shame that this never really caught on as a franchise. There's only this game and a sequel that was one of the last NES game ever released. It's a shame cause I'm sure the SNES version would've been great. But we'll always have this one, and I guess that's not so bad.

NES #27: Monster Party

Okay so this is a weird one. I remember playing this one a lot as a kid which doesn't surprise me considering how much I was into weird things. It's also one of the better games published by Bandai, but that really isn't saying too much. Bandai is one of the more infamous licensed NES publishers. They're not quite down there with THQ or LJN, but they're pretty close. They did publish Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde after all. However, that's another entry for another day. I sure can't wait to go back through that one again.

So what's up with Monster Party? I will say that it's not much of a party, but it sure is full of monsters. The name might not be the most appropriate, but I can't think of a better name for it. The main character is a cute little kid with a baseball bat, so you can't really name it after him. Monster Bat Boy just doesn't have the same ring to it, although I wouldn't be too surprised if that's the game's name in Japan. Actually I think it's just called Monster Party over there, but that's not nearly as interesting.

As I was saying, you play as a little kid with a baseball bat taking on some of the weirdest monsters I've ever seen. The picture on the box has a vampire and gill man, but the only movie monster I remember seeing is the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Ok so if there aren't any famous movie monsters than what is there? Well how about a fried shrimp? Or a couple of zombies that dance themselves to death? Or an empty pair of pants with a life of its own? Or a giant spider that just tells you it's dead? I'm not kidding guys, there is some weird stuff in this game. In fact that's really the whole reason to play. The gameplay itself is fairly dull. Take out all the weird monsters and it's a perfectly dull side scroller.

Well I guess that's not entirely true. There are a few other interesting things about this game. You've only got one life in this game, but you do have a really huge life bar. It starts half full, and one of the main goals in the game is to keep this meter full so that you can take on the boss at the end. I think that's interesting. Also some of the levels scroll in different directions so at least you won't get bored just traveling from left to right.

However, even with this the game is a little dull. The whole game is spent going from door to door in the levels and looking for bosses. Some doors are hard to get too and contain nothing at all. I hate these doors. Once you kill all the bosses you get a key and then go on to the next level. A couple of doors are a little bit hidden, but it's still pretty basic. There's also a password given after ever level so the stakes are pretty low. You don't have to try especially hard when you know you can always just start back at he same level again.

I will say that I had a pretty good time playing it. As I said earlier in this post, I used to play this game all the time when I was a kid. Or at the very least I remember it well. I never did beat it though. I got very close once in college, but I got stuck at the boss and then lost my password. I played through it this time with the knowledge that the final boss was going to be very hard. I was very careful throughout the game. I spent large amounts of time fighting overworld monsters so I could build up my life bar. This epic battle was in the back of my head the whole time. So what happens when I finally get there? It turns out to be real easy. I have no idea what hung me up the first time. I bet I only had about half of my life left when I figured out what I was doing, but he was still no problem. Just jump over stuff and hit him in the mouth. What was my problem anyway?

It was all for the best though, because it gave me a brand new game to beat on my blog. It's nice not only playing through repeats. So how was my Monster Party experience? The gameplay is boring, but this game has character to spare. It's worth it just to see all the bosses and read the stupid things they say. There really is a monster in this game that curls up into a ball and says "My Name's Royce." If that doesn't prove that playing video games is the best way to waste your life than I don't know what will. Sorry stamp collectors, but this is the best hobby ever.

NES #26: Darkwing Duck

Well here's the one you've all been waiting for. After all these months of anticipation, I'm finally writing about your favorite game. You'd better sit tight because this game's got a lot of nuance and mystery attached. What's that you say? This is just a typical side scroller? It's not you're favorite game but in fact one you've never really thought about much? Actually I knew that going into this post, but since it's been almost a month since my last NES game, I thought you would cut me some slack. Well that's very kind of you.

Alright well enough talking to myself. It's time to talk about some Darkwing Duck. It's based on the cartoon series from twenty years ago. If you didn't see it you missed out, especially if you're now an adult. You can watch it if you want, but I doubt it would be the same. You can try, but can never truly recapture the joys of childhood. Am I sill not talking about the game? I'm really trying to avoid this one.

Okay so Darkwing Duck is a typical NES side scroller on the way easy side of things. It may actually be at the base of the Capcom difficulty scale. It's easier than Rescue Rangers and even shorter. If you are an adult who has been playing Nintendo for 20 years or so, and you're just picking it up for the first time than you shouldn't have too much trouble with it. I know this from experience. The only two parts that gave me trouble were Liquidator's level and the final battle with Steelbeak. Although even that turns out to be easy when you've learned the technique.

So what is there to set this game apart from other games? Well like Mega Man and Duck Tales you can select your level. Although unlike those games it make absolutely no difference in the game which order you beat the levels in. DW's got a pretty cool gas gun, but the only special gas weapon that you'll ever need to use is the arrow gas. Actually avoiding the other types of gas made the game a little bit more challenging. I sort of enjoyed it. Oh and I do like the way DW can hang off of ledges and get back on. That's probably the game's best feature. You can go up and down very easily, and I wish more games would've followed its example. So there's a negative, neutral, and positive thing about this game. I think that's pretty good.

I wish I had more to say about this one. I never got to play it as a kid and was actually a little excited when I found it recently at Savers of all places. I wish I had got to play it in 1992 when I was really into the cartoon. I would at least have some good memories about it. Of course if you read my Rescue Rangers article you know that I don't automatically love a game just because I played it as a kid. So perhaps it's just was well. You get a totally honest opinion not biased by nostalgia. I had an alright time playing this game. It's one you don't see in stores too often so if you see it cheap sometime you should probably pick it up. Just don't expect it to be Contra or anything. It's not a classic, but it gets the job done. I'm just glad there's not 400 games just like it on the NES. What's that you say? There actually are? What have I gotten myself into?

Super Nintendo #1: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

I like to talk on here about how it's harder to write about a great game than an awful game. That's especially true if the game in question is one of the most famous ever made. Writing about A Link to the Past is a little bit like writing reviews for Beatles albums or Citizen Kane. So much has already been said that it's really difficult to say something that nobody's said before. It's also hard not to spend the whole article talking about how awesome it is. So let me try to get all the gushing out of the way here in the first paragraph. A Link to the Past is one of the greatest games of all time. I still think it's the best game in the series, even though it might not be my favorite. I'd say it's about 200 times better than Ocarina of time. It's also a game that represents the golden age of gaming possibly better than any other. This hobby that I love so much really hit its peak in the early 90s. I know that modern games have a lot more flash and do some amazing things, but nothing will ever top the 16-bit era for pure fun and innovation. Okay, I got that out of my system, now I can actually talk about the game.

There are many things about this game that would influence gaming for years to come. I want to start right at the beginning and talk about the title. Earlier, when I talked about Super C I mentioned the rise of games that had the word "Super" in the title. This game is the first (and only!) installment of the Zelda series on the SNES, and yet it is not called Super Zelda. No, it's has a cryptic title that includes a pun. It is not numbered and instead has a colon followed by a subtitle. Back before this game came out almost every game sequel was given a number. This was one of the first to forgo the number system completely and just have an odd subtitle. Thanks to this game our series have really got mixed up. You never know what game came before and what game came after. Seriously, what number are they up to in the Castlevania series? The world may never know. I would say that this it the only one of the game's innovations that I do not enjoy.

So in this game you're running around in a big ol' world full of surprises and fighting your way through a bunch of dungeons. It's called A Link to the Past, but you're not really traveling through time. It's more of a dimensional shift. It has a very well done overhead perspective. This is a good perspective for an action RPG, but it didn't always work that well. If you don't believe me just play Lagoon. Luckily Link's sword is just the right length so that he doesn't get a lot of cheap hits, but he can't wipe everything out at once either. Actually I want to talk about the perspective for a minute. People always talk about Ocarina of Time transforming the Zelda franchise into 3D. While I suppose this is technically true, it's not really much of an improvement. In LTTP you can move in all directions including up and down. It seems like OOt is about he same except ledges are harder to jump to and monsters just get rotated around. Of course you can't jump in the older Zelda games but that's beside the point.

Now there's a lot to love about this game. It's got cool graphics, a good storyline, engrossing dungeons with some good bosses in them, and lots of other things I could use adjectives in front of. My favorite things about this game, however, is exploring the overworld. In later Zelda games, and many action RPGs for that matter, the overworld is mostly just a means to get from place to place. Sure there will be a few secrets scattered about, but they mainly feel like they were put there to keep you from getting bored. In LTTP there's something exciting in almost every screen. You never know what you're going to find when you pull up that next rock or go into that cave. Will it be a heart piece or just some rupees to add to the 800 you already have? I almost hate going to dungeons because they cut into my item exploration time. Link to the Past is one of the only games I can think of that makes the journey just as much fun as the destination.

As you can tell, I really like this game, and I had a lot of fun playing through it again. Despite my tendency to play SNES games to death, I think I only beat this one once about 16 years ago. I've started up a game several times since then, but I never really had an excuse to go back through it all the way. That's why it's nice having a blog. As usual I was surprised both by how much I remembered about it and how much I had forgotten. I even had to use the internet to help me out a couple of times. I guess I shouldn't bee too ashamed about that. I remember when the game came out I read a few of the secrets on the back of a cereal box. So now that this game is approaching 20 years old it might be a good time to dust it off and play it again. When I played through it this time around it felt just as fresh as it did in 92. Of course if you read about games on the internet much you probably already know that.