To the uninitiated, this sounds like something to be discarded. Something to be disregarded. Maybe even something gross. A wad of what? Snot? Toilet paper?

To those of us with some culture, WAD stands for “Where is All the Data?” It’s the file extension and format used by DOOM (1993) and all games using that engine when it comes to the raw game data. It is also the format used for add-ons, with the exception of modern source ports which often use the pk3 extension. Many Doom fanatics still usually call any add-on or swap a “wad,” though. It’s force of habit. At this writing, roughly 27 years of habit. We’re not breaking it now.

Ever since 1994 or so, when rabid Doom players began making their own levels for the game, there has been a more or less endless flow of WADs. While DOOM.WAD is called an IWAD or “internal wad,” These user-created files are “patch wads,” or PWADs.

I’m talking about those little PWADs today. Well, not all of them. I’d need several lifetimes, and I’d want to spend those several lifetimes doing something more productive, like learning to turn lead into gold or slowly forming a worldwide shadow empire with me on its hidden throne. I’ll stick to three PWADs today. None of them are just maps/levels, although one or more of them do add or change the layout of levels. These are WADs that alter gameplay in some way.

Note: I am playing/testing these wads and mods using GZDoom, and unless otherwise noted, a similar source port is best for optimal results.

Lasting Light (2013)

Author/Creator: Ral22

Link: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=37786

This is a fantastic example of a .pk3 file that turns Doom into a new game with minimal tampering. The maps are dark except for your lantern, which requires oil to keep lit. This oil can be found in little cans that seem to be the only pickups available, not to mention how sparse they are. And trust me, it’s better to keep that lantern lit… except when it isn’t.

You see, three different entities are skulking about in the dark, waiting to terrorize the living shit out of you. All of them react and behave differently. The Screecher can’t hurt you if you don’t look at it, but it makes itself pretty fucking hard not to look at by placing itself directly in your line of site suddenly and scaring the pants off you. The Creeper actually gets pissed off when you roll up with your lantern lit, but will leave you alone if it’s dark (which leaves you vulnerable to the asshole Screecher). The Stalker doesn’t give a shit if your light is lit. She just wants to murder you and you need to run and break line of sight as long as you can.

What? Yes, you are utterly defenseless. I know, that’s hard to accept when you’re playing Doom. Once I got over it, I actually found this mod really entertaining. It’s a creative little set of changes that totally turns Doom on its head and it made episode 1 of Doom into a challenge again. The music and atmosphere are really effective, and you’ll be jumping despite yourself when you get taken unawares.

Extreme Weapons Pack (2013)

Author/Creator: Doggo120

Link: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=37611

This one seems to only work with DOOM2.WAD and is barely a mod. It seems more like high-effort trolling. I’m not even in doubt. That’s exactly what it is. But it gave me a laugh when I first found it. Then I looked at the Zdoom forum topic (link above) and it’s not only a joke, but a fairly popular one. I’m a fan.

This mod makes the game considerably more challenging, and it does this by giving you the goofiest weapons possible. Your starting pistol will fire, at best, 3-4 shots (usually 1 shot) before requiring a good cleaning. Your normal shotgun pretty much doesn’t fire, and the double barrel one spins you around (the barrels are uneven) and takes forever to reload. The Chaingun takes a while to wind up (like an old school WW1 rotary gun) and fires at a pretty clumsy rate. It also has significant kickback. The rocket launcher fires slow-motion rockets that are usually duds. The plasma rifle is a vacuum cleaner. The BFG is… well, it’s faulty. Comically faulty.

The chainsaw is replaced by an electric toothbrush, which is probably the least ineffective of all the mod’s weapons, interestingly enough. As someone who appreciates (and sometimes engages in) alpha-level trolling/griefing, I find myself oddly in love with this hilarious piece of shit. It’s funny. I’d recommend sparing yourself the tedium of trying to beat Doom II with this mod, though. I’m sure it’s possible, but the joke wears thin well before that point unless you’re the right kind of insane (I’m not).

Diaz: Last Hours of Purity (2008)

Author/Creator: wildweasel

Link: https://www.doomworld.com/files/file/15465-diaz-last-hours-of-purity-ww-hits-collection/

I really enjoy this one. It’s a non-shitty attempt to create an entirely separate narrative, connected to the base Doom lore, but with a different storyline and character. From the lore text file (and I love that there is one):

The Research Crimes Prevention Agency (RCPA) is targeting the UAC over their controversially unethical research. Agent Diaz is sent as a peacekeeper to oversee their latest experiment, and to see if the evidence is correct. But of course, everything’s gone to Hell before she even gets there…

The mod itself features some excellent weapons with good implementation of more contemporary reloading and recoil mechanics. I especially enjoy the Mauser rifle and the big clunky revolver. The enemies are a handful and a half too. D:LHP replaces the standard, clumsy humanoid zombiemen with living, lethal soldiers (including a berserk experimental soldier with cyber-psychic enhancements that you can also use if they drop the module when they die). This mod makes Doom a bit more dangerous to play without being ridiculous about it, and it’s another mod that makes episode 1 of the original Doom a challenge again for this old jackal who knows the maps by muscle memory. It smooths the curve by making what used to be minor threats into things that can (and will) kill you. And don’t fucking forget to reload or you’re dead. Many of your weapons can be alt-fired as bludgeons, but they’re slow and don’t do much. Keep your weapons loaded and conserve ammo.

I’m reluctant to rate them, since many Doom WADs are a matter of taste. However, I like my own opinions about everything and you should too because my opinions are the best. So here goes.

LASTING LIGHT: 8/10 (Good concept, totally different gameplay that flips Doom’s axis completely in a refreshing way)

EWP: 6/10 (It’s a joke WAD, but it’s a pretty funny joke WAD)

DIAZ: 8/10 (Still Doom, but very different Doom, I feel like it’s a nice halfway point between Doom and modern FPS games)

Final note: some pedantic jerkwad on Discord tried to give me shit about my use of semicolons. I avoided using a single one in this article, just for you, jerkwad. I hope this gesture helps you heal and move forward.

In a couple of days you’ll be seeing another tabletop RPG article, but I felt like I owed you a video game article first. Stay Retro!

Here is the story, according to John himself:

“After killing the Spiderdemon at the end of E4M8 (Unto the Cruel), your next stop is Earth — you must save it from hellspawn that is causing unimaginable carnage. But Baphomet glitched the final teleporter with his hidden sigil whose eldritch power brings you to even darker shores of Hell. You fight through this stygian pocket of evil to confront the ultimate harbingers of Satan, then finally return to become Earth’s savior.”

Sigil’s opening screen. KVLT ANTI-HVMAN BLACK METAL

I am a pretty well-seasoned DOOM player, and can usually handle the original 3 episodes on Nightmare or at least UV. This shit is turning my guts inside out on Hurt Me Plenty. You will not see health much at all. You will need to be extremely careful. Yes, there are horrible monster traps everywhere. Inescapable pits too. You will die. You will know death again, Marine. You can never truly rest. But Space Marines are made for this shit. Let’s hit it.

E5M1 is a true gauntlet-run involving the elevation of platforms in order to find your way through a winding path of hitscanners and imps. The maps are very dimly lit, and instead of switches, Romero has us shooting the demonic eye symbols to activate/open things. I’ll save you the five or so seconds it’d take to puzzle it out. Sheol (E5M2) continues to incline the difficulty in a steady fashion. Breaking a sweat yet? You often find yourself with little room to move one way or another, measuring moments and shots, clinging to cover while whittling away at potentially deadly ambushes. I hope you like seeing barons and cacodemons up close, because you fucking will be. E5M3 is called Cages of the Damned, and it looks slightly more “conventional” as a map when you first start blasting through. Vaguely castle-like, with great run-and-gun action and a few open spaces (finally!) to use in combat. I’d even call E5M3 “classical” because of how true parts of it are to the original feel of the trilogy. You’re still, however, finding very little health. And yes, you’re still in horrible peril on a constant basis. Paths of Wretchedness (E5M4) is another hectic rim-grabber over pools of magma as you battle your way through a shooting gallery with you as the turkey. Movement is again limited, and you find yourself getting pummeled in bottlenecks – sometimes caught with your fucking pants down – and perishing if you’re not on your LeBron “Leatherface on Mars” James A-game. This level has a splash of that old alien-mechanical feel to it reminiscent of Knee-Deep in the Dead. Probably another of my overall favorites of the episode. While health is scarce throughout this episode, you will find enough ammunition if you are thorough, frugal, and keep your eyes open.

Pictured: One scrub (yours truly), pre-tenderized.

Abbadon’s Void (E5M5) hits us with the sound of a cyberdemon right out of the starting gate, and we don’t clearly see it, but we know it’s aware of us and it’s pissed off. Great. More indoorsy, wood-paneled infernal décor, peppered with monster closet ambushes and tense high-wire acts. I particularly enjoy the MIDI OST track for this map (more on the music below); it’s atmospheric and rich and it reminds me a little of Blood’s great theatrical-style music. E5M6, Unspeakable Persecution, has the exit to the secret level E5M9 (Realm of Iblis). I’m not going to spoil where the door is or what the secret level is like; if you want that shit you can find it easily online. (I admit that I had to look it up. My skills have gotten mad rusty.) I will say that E5M9 is as hot and nasty as you’d expect Sigil’s secret map to be. Buckle up, buttercup. E5M7 is the Nightmare Underworld, and it was originally meant to be the fifth map, but it belongs here in spot #7. It is an expansive and adventurous map, and it pounds me into hamburger at an embarrassing rate. John’s work in Sigil is the work of a man who intimately understands the tools he is using to engage the player. It is the work of a methodical, gifted, calculating psychopath. E5M8, Halls of Perdition, presents the final obstacle in Sigil. Like E4M8, it is not just a straight boss fight; you must find your way through one last intense firefight against the full host of DOOM’s baddies intent on beating you down. The finale has a marathon-like feel and is almost joyful (I only beat it once using equipment cheats on Hurt Me Plenty).

decino’s entertaining and thorough playthrough of Sigil. He is a much better player than me. Props.

Hi. <3

Let’s talk about the absolute fucking banger soundtrack. If you don’t know who Buckethead is, you should, and he wrote the CD soundtrack for Sigil. Apparently, he’s a long-time DOOM fan. Who’d have thought a dude like the immortal Buckethead would have good taste. It is busy, atmospheric, haunting, and it fits Sigil’s gloomy theme of desperation perfectly. The episode also features a fantastic MIDI soundtrack written by James Paddock. It’s a little more action-themed but fits the game every bit as well as the Buckethead score. E5M1 and E5M7 stand out to me as highlights, and you should have a listen.

Ol’ Johnny R. goes hard in the paint with Sigil, reminding us longtime Space Marines that while our blood may smear every hallway and elevator from Phobos to Mt. Erebus, we can never die. Besides, who the hell else is going to keep the demons down? You know they’ll just be back . They always come back.

Sigil gets a 9 out of 10 from me. It’s difficult, but that’s not a complaint at all. It’s a brutally refreshing shot in the arm for a game that’s been loved for over twenty-six years. Devastatingly crisp, well-executed, and effective. John Romero has given us more to love about DOOM… and a new way to get our asses kicked and GET GOOD.

See you later for more articles in October. Stay spooky as hell… and Stay Retro.

BONUS: Of course there’s a Zero Master speed run of 9:32 for it already. Hallelujah.

Hey, look, we found it!

I put this off until I was ready to be mad about video games on our website again. I suppose now’s a good enough time; I have a minor but very painful sinus infection, it’s making it hard to get good sleep, and the HV/AC ducts in my part of the house are completely out to lunch, leaving me congested, sleep-deprived, in pain, and boiling alive in what equates to a sauna full of antique electronics and D&D books.

Fuck it, let’s slap around Double Dragon 3. While we’re at it, let’s call up its cousin, Battletoads & Double Dragon: the Ultimate Team.

The first two Double Dragon installments, aside from the fact that the arcade versions are virtually alike minus window dressing, kick righteous ass. One of the true milestones in beat-em-up history, the original DD set the pace for a blossoming game-type that became one of video gaming’s staple arrangements – walk, beat the dribbling shit out of anyone who stops you walking, keep walking ,rinse, repeat. On a very much related note, I also have a soft spot in my heart for the ‘Toads, having poured hours and tears into the NES, Genesis, and arcade offerings bearing their name. It’s hard to imagine the Double Dragon franchise shitting the bed, and no one really wants to hate Battletoads. Right?

Double Dragon shit the bed the second it pulled the comforter up towards its neck, and while I don’t hate Battletoads, I do plan on trying, just for their part in this.

Double Dragon III/3: the Rosetta Stone (the Sacred Stones)

East Technology, 1990 (every version but the NES one) Technos Japan, 1991 (The NES one)

“Omae wa mou shindeiru.”
                                                                                       I couldn’t help my self. Look at him.

There are two distinct, separate third installments of Double Dragon III. The arcade game got released first, and it’s actually not dogshit-terrible, which is hilarious to me, considering how Technos didn’t actually make it.They contracted a smaller crew called East Technology to develop the third installment of one of their flagship franchises; the end result is weird as hell and fairly difficult but only slightly inferior to the first two games overall. This version of the game got ported to all the usual suspects in the early home computer lineup, as well as the Sega Genesis. This is how I encountered it. If you’re like me and the first thing you do after turning on the power is screw around in the options menu, you’ll notice something interesting about the Genesis port: You can swap around “starting men” and be some other characters from the “Extra Guys” aspect of the game. I particularly like to be the karate dudes with the 1950s duck-ass hairdos.

Always a lot going on. A lot to take in, and a lot                 to dish out, if you can manage it.

The story begins in the USA, after a quick audiovisual/text intro that tells you Billy and Jimmy are just home from training. They meet a really gross-looking but altruistic soothsayer named Hiruko. She feels like she just found the lock for a key she’s been carrying arpund, and tells them some sketchy shit about finding three Rosetta Stones and then heading to Egypt to fight “the strongest possible foe.” She keeps the same impassive grin on her face as she drops one last nugget – no one’s tried this and lived.

“Just run of the mill stuff, you know. Nothing worth I don’t know, opening you eyes the whole way or not smiling or something.”

So I guess we could call the Lee brothers either adrenaline junkies or oblivion-seeking masochists, because they don’t even wanna settle in and maybe nap off the jetlag before marching out into the streets to resume The Perpetual Fistfight With Destiny and find those fuckin’ stones.

The big positive for me was that I could play as more than one type of dude. I could be a fat Mandarin dude or a big human wall in a tank top. The big con is (and I can’t speak for the arcade one, only the Genesis one) how merciless and goddamned unforgiving the enemy hitboxes and AI are. Right out of the game, you get dogpiled and they run a train on you.

In that regard, and also for having a slightly lazier version of the same plot, the NES version is faithful to its forebear. This one was actually made by Technos, and it comes off as a much more difficult and annoying take on the prior NES installments. I have revisited it more than once, just to see if I was wrong about it being an exercise in futility for those who don’t obsessively play hard games out of a desire to “defeat” them. I’m not bad at video games overall, and there have been times in the NES DD3 that I’ve been unable to even leave the dojo (the first screen of the game) alive.

An iconic scene from the NES version. It’s the Joke Dojo, where you can straight up                                             die seconds into the game. I know it well.

What disappoints me about both is the prohibitive difficulty presented by heaps of enemies who operate with an aggressive swarm mentality. Not to mention, the further you go in the arcade game, the goofier it gets. Ah hell, I’ll spill it: you fight a mummy at the end.

Way to phone it in, East Technology.

Battletoads & Double Dragon: the Ultimate Team

Rare, 1993

Looks promising, right?

The NES version of Battletoads is a pretty stiff tincture to swallow, right? It can be done, but it’s an undertaking, and you’d better have your shit together. You’d better have your shit so well together that it looks like Ikea shit. The Genesis version is just a smoother, sharper take on the original (yes, the console games existed first, in a rare reversal of process) and I appreciate them leaving the meat of it unchanged. The arcade game is a visual masterpiece and, at least for me, way more approachable for a casual hour or two of play.

B&DD may seem on the surface to be a noble, even sublime endeavor; it combines two very hot franchises from that snapshot of gaming history, and on paper they go together like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and crying softly about the abundance of human cruelty in the world (or is that only me).

Well guess what:

Yeop.

I will say the strong points out loud, in a kind tone. First off, the music is solid, right on the level with what Rare had done with other Battletoads shit. Some of it (including the first level theme) is pretty easy-listening for a beat em up. It’s also clear that developing the arcade game gave Rare’s team a taste for visual finery; there’s a ton of detail and some of it (example: character and enemy bios) is intricate. It’s just a shit-show in terms of difficulty and the curve thereof, and it’s just these things mashed together. These two martial artists and these three TMNT pastiches. I won’t even say this one’s as hard as the NES Battletoads, but the enemy cheap-shot and box-in count is always tremendously high. The introductory little space suit people have a move set just about as good as yours, plus they don’t need to constantly guess a safe distance to punch you in the head from.

Okay RetroFiends, I’m done bitching. I’m going to go irrigate my poor sinuses, drink something hot, and settle in with some pseudoephedrine and a good book. I’m not going to drop number ratings on either of these games, both because I hate them like I do and because I know many others love them. I guess I’m not as salty about either one as I suggested up at the top of the article talking shit. I’m just tired, sick, and tired of being sick.

Stay Retro, and stay out of trouble. We’ll meet up again soon.

“And I am over a quarter of a century old. I’m getting freaking old.”
-SamHaiNe

Originally released on June 5, 1993 in Japan – Ninja Scroll didn’t reach stateside for another two years with an English dub by Manga Entertainment. But when it did it became an instant classic with scenes being used as Bumps during MTV’s Liquid Television and some Manhattan Public Access video collage programs; often spliced together with either Drum & Bass or (actual) 90’s Hip Hop.

The action movie based in Feudal Japan featured some incredible sequences of sword and memorable moments of “bad-assery”. Yes I made up a phrase, deal with it.

Animated by MADhouse and co-produced by Toho (Godzilla). If you really wanted to summarize this film, you can say it’s like Metal Gear Solid without the hours of expository dialogue and melodrama. In fact it’s a better Metal Gear Solid than the last Metal Gear Solid. A lone wolf is pulled into the murky world of espionage against a team of mercenaries with supernatural powers; terrorists, whose main goal is stealing the country’s gold supply and destabilizing the ruling government. Sound familiar?

“Ninja Scroll won the Citizen’s Award at the 1993 Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 93%, based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10.
During the 1990s, Ninja Scroll was among the most popular anime movies outside Japan, along with such movies as Akira and Ghost in the Shell. The North American video release of Ninja Scroll had sold more than 70,000 copies by May 1996, becoming Manga Entertainment’s best-selling title at the time. In February 2004, Cinefantastique  listed the anime as one of the “10 Essential Animations”.
Theron from Anime News Network exclaims that the “action scenes sizzle with energy and powerful maneuvers unencumbered by tiresome dramatics” and describe the plot as “mostly exists just to set up conflicts between the protagonists and the Devils of Kimon and allow various characters to show off their colorful ninja techniques”. He concluded that “Ninja Scroll‘s story is too thin for it to ever legitimately be considered one of the all-time great anime movies” but considers it to be a classic.”
– Wikipedia

A decade and a half after its release, Ninja Scroll is still one of the mainstays on everyone’s favorite Anime lists’.  Although not a domestic success in Japan, internationally it is celebrated. Since 1993, there has been a short animated mini-series that may or may not be a standalone story or a sequel. There have even been plans to produce a sequel with the main director returning to helm and script write. However, that sequel has been in limbo since it’s pitch went public. If you’re lucky you might even find the teaser trailer online.

Supposedly Hollywood had ideas about a U.S. live action film produced by Leo DiCaprio but that never saw the light of day and let’s hopes it doesn’t. American audiences are venomous pretentious rattlesnakes when it comes to film these days. Let’s wait to see how the Battle Angel Alita (2018) film does and then we can think about future U.S. anime adaptations like the rumored Gundam film that was just reported to be in development online earlier today.

Happy Anniversary NINJA SCROLL, you still look good in your old age.
Keep your fingers under the sword guard and on that Rewind button.

It wasn’t until 1997 that I discovered Bound by Honor one late night surfing through cable channels. I was immediately taken away by this coming of age story and family drama set in East Los Angeles. It’s like if John Hughes grew some cojones and made a crime film. I re-watched it upon repeated showings and recorded it twice onto VHS for after school viewings with my school friends. And here I am, a freaking adult still finding this film enjoyable each and every time I watch it.

This film is chock full of so many quotables – even more than VICE SQUAD , a film that I previously reviewed here on New Retro Wave.

“His blue eyes are turning brown”

“Get up, Chucky”

“Sorry no tortilla”

“Give me some, Chon Chon”

I can go on and on for hours like I already do when I’m on the clock cooking at Hooters. This was that movie, more than American Me, that gave us urban east coasters some low down on how the players get down out in the West.

One of the leads in this wonderful cast of character actors is a very young Benjamin Bratt as Paco, a former juvenile delinquent and gang leader who later in life becomes a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. Benjamin is one of those actors that you kind of remember when you see him in another movie but then his charisma and talent shine through and you immediately are taken into whatever character he is playing. My other favorite film of his is absolutely Leon Ichaso’s Pinero (2001).

The film goes from the back alleys of East Los Angeles all the way inside the very real San Quentin penitentiary where not only crew members but some former inmates and prison staff played small roles in the film. The in film gangs were all based on real ones with the Aryan Vanguard, BGA and La Onda taking direct inspiration from the Aryan Nation, Black Guerilla Family and the Mexican Mafia.

I find this film to be a touching, funny, exciting and sometimes a heroic urban tale of innocence lost and family. Miklo suffering like some angel cast out from society and plunged into a living hell where he learns to survive the hard way and achieves the life lesson of “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven”. It takes a little bit to warm up around the first fifteen minutes but the experience is worth it. This being the director’s cut of the film so the runtime is a little bit over three hours but I assure you its three hours well spent.

Now you may have noticed I haven’t for once disclosed any plot details. That’s because, I’m not spoiling a damn thing for you. I’m very sure that many of you have seen this film already and if you haven’t well then here is your well timed chance to see this.

Starring: Damien Chapa, Benjamin Bratt, Jesse Borrego, Delroy Lindo, Ving Rhames, Victor Rivers, Tom Towles, Danny Trejo, Bill Bob Thornton, Carlos Carrasco, Lanny Flaherty and  Richard Masur.

The film was made on a budget of thirty six million and earned only four million at the box office. Upon release Bound by Honor received mixed to negative reviews by critics. It’s another example of Roger Ebert shitting the bed and not liking a very enjoyable film. It currently holds a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

If you like films like American Me, Penitentiary, Lock Up, A Bronx Tale and Menace 2 Society, you should have no complaints about this one.

So go get a can of “Chinga tu madre” and relax to some coffee. It’s a good night to have a good night, so tune in and keep your fingers on that rewind button.

Disney owns everything now. They own Darth Vader and Spider-Man. Disney is a monolith… an empire. We kneel at its majestic feet and howl that we are unworthy to bask in its glow. We fork over heaps and heaps of dough to soak generation after generation of our children in Disney’s particular flavor of saccharine, and that company has more money than some countries do. Disney has us on a leash.

And because we crave abuse, sweet sweet abuse, we love it.

It definitely spills over into the video game market. Of course it does! They have a whole department of people who examine and analyze all the other shit that kids and preteens are into, and they make sure they’ve got a finger in the pie. What started with the Nintendo Entertainment System continues with series like Kingdom Hearts. You’ve got Squaresoft writing games involving twiggy little blond anime kids saving the Magic Kingdom alongside Goofy. Sure, it sounds absurd… but the things is, most of the games are good.

Capcom yielded a bumper crop of NES titles for Disney during the middle and latter periods of the system’s lifespan. They developed many of the titles, and published a few as well, keeping their hand in the till as the house that Walt built wrote check after check. This resulted in a pretty high standard of quality; while LJN was pulling licensing deals out of a Powerball machine and releasing uninspired digital gruel, Capcom was taking the stairs instead of the elevator and making sure they looked you in the eye when they shook your hand. I’ve plucked a couple of games from this family for review in the past, but I figured it was time to immerse myself (and as a result, you) a little deeper.

The Little Mermaid

1991

The Little Mermaid was a pretty big fucking deal in the early 90s. Did you know that the early VHS release had a dick on the cover? It was hidden as one of the towers on the castle! As a grown man, that is the first thing I think of when the film is mentioned.

Let’s put it this way: if that’s NOT supposed to be a schlong, then Freud would have a field day with this artist.

Anyway… you know how Capcom do. They turned this bitch out. I mean, at least for a game based on Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The intro is long, covering a paraphrased and liberally switchboarded version of the movie’s plot. These narrative scenes are the game’s only real flaw; the characters all seem like doll-eyed mannequins in some calm but churning hell. The music, which is decent everywhere else in the game, is meandering and bland.

“Listen, I don’t know, I’m just a fucking crab, okay? I emcee for your dad, I pay my bills, and occasionally bet too much on the seahorses and end up in hock with the mob. How the hell am I supposed to know how to get you a pair of feet? Ursula’s as good a bet as any, honey. It’s that or stay down here as the sexiest little chicken of the sea. Carpe diem.”

The game itself is worth aggressively skipping the cut scenes for. Ariel swims through the familiar locales of the film, dealing with threats by trapping fish in bubbles to throw as weapons or picking up loose items. It’s similar to the Chip n’ Dale NES cart Capcom released the year previous, but Ariel is a good deal more versatile and also doesn’t run around bashing herself on the head like those little assholes do in their game. There’s an additional aspect where you collect pearls to up the power and range of your attacks, as well as some light puzzle solving. I hadn’t messed with this one much as a kid, but revisiting it was a fun experience.

I would describe the graphics as “slightly shittier than Mega Man.” There’s not a ton of definition in a lot of the sprites, but hey, they’re fish. The backgrounds look pretty good (especially on the ice level and the sunken ship) and things have a colorful but controlled tone to them. As I said before, the music during game play is pretty good, an upbeat and lighthearted soundtrack that I found very appropriate for imprisoning little fish inside bubbles and hurling them brutally at their kin. This isn’t a bad game, but it doesn’t quite reach “classic” status for me. I’d say that if you collect, and you see this for $15 or less, go for it. Don’t get nuts over it, though.

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom

1990

The first tidbit I have to offer you about this one is that Capcom did not release it domestically in Japan; Adventures in the Magic Kingdom was released only in Oceania, North America and Europe (France, UK and Scandinavia). Another one that flew under my radar as a kid, this game seemed powerfully stupid at first when I revisited it, but it grew on me as I ignored the premise and focused on the gameplay itself.

The game opens on a beautiful day in Disney’s fully fabricated reality: the Magic Kingdom. Mickey’s got a parade all planned, but his day’s about to hit a serious speed bump in the form of his dipshit friend Goofy the dog. Mickey had the bright idea to trust Goofy with the keys to the gate. Goofy left the golden key inside the castle… and also locked himself out of the castle in the process. I swear to God, Goofy, you’d lose your ass if it wasn’t attached to you.

That really narrows it down. Look at his face. He’s got that oblivious serenity that only a total nimrod can manage. The kind that just makes you angrier at his sub-animal stupidity. Goofy is one of the luckiest morons in the world, because he has no idea that he is a fucking moron. There’s a lesson in that somewhere, but it’s probably not worth meditating on.

Mickey, with the air of a celebrity who’s used to being obeyed, casually fobs this problem off on you. You’re some kid dressed like Curious George’s dad, running around completely unsupervised, acting as an unpaid intern for Mickey Mouse. The object of the game is to find all six of the silver keys in the different parts of the Kingdom where that hillbilly schmuck Goofy lost them. Maybe it’s time to find someone else to carry the key ring. Forgive me if I seem judgmental, but if someone’s actual fucking name is Goofy, maybe they should be limited to low-impact responsibilities.

The levels are based on Disney’s popular rides/attractions at their amusement parks, and a lot of the “characters” you have to deal with to find the keys are just Mickey and Goofy in costumes. This is some kind of spiritual torture, some means of annihilating the ego of a gamer to achieve anti-enlightenment. Space Mountain is pretty sick, involving some fast-paced piloting and shooting. The Old West one is absolute bullshit as you careen downhill in a runaway train while boulders ricochet across your path at random, but the Haunted Mansion one is probably my favorite.

Look at his face. He seriously looks like he’s worried about getting murdered.  Don’t worry, little gaucho boy… it isn’t the ghouls and Draculas you need to worry about at Disney World… it’s the alligators and the room-temperature food.

One thing Adventures in the Magic Kingdom deserves a lot of credit for is how it mixes up the gameplay style. You’re racing in cars and spaceships, walking around in overhead view to gather clues and info, then plowing through some formulaic platform action. As much as I jokingly make this game sound like a secondhand bag of farts, it’s really fun. The challenge level is certainly a tad more “Capcom Difficult” than The Little Mermaid, but things are still manageable if you have basic chops and quick thumbs. Things progress in a far more linear fashion than one may think, so the game’s only a time commitment if you go in totally blind. Don’t do that, though. Damn.

Click an Image to Enlarge.

The music’s a bit of a throwaway in places, but as with Little Mermaid above, the level themes are great. It turns out that the composer for Adventures in the Magic Kingdom was Yoko Shimomura, who would later go on to write the music for Kingdom Hearts. The graphics are… well, they’re fine. Another vividly colorful palette, a variety of lively sprites and some well-drawn (if uninspired) backgrounds. Most of what’s fun about Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is knowing you’re playing a couple games at once.

Darkwing Duck

1992

I always thought it was cool that Launchpad McQuack was able to find a client after DuckTales. He’s a good guy, he works hard, and even though he’s kind of a goof, he’s always there when you need him. You can’t ask for more than that in a private helicopter pilot.

The hero behind the hero.

I’ll come right out with it: I never gave two shits about Darkwing Duck as a kid. By 1992 I think I was more interested in the campy horror films I could get away with watching on rented VHS and making my first forays into the world of RPGs. This game got added to the stack because it’s one I hear mixed things about. I took Darkwing Duck for a spin, and I can sum up my impression of it pretty quickly: It’s Mega Man except you’re Darkwing Duck and you can hang on hooks and lanterns.

I’m not saying it’s bad. Relax. It’s actually better than the Mega Man games in terms of mechanics, as someone who loathes Mega Man‘s extremely limited control scheme. Darkwing Duck can actually crouch, and has a neat little trick where he can grab things hanging against the background to get across tricky areas. Seriously though… play this shit for about ten minutes and tell me it isn’t just Mega Man‘s format with a few extra dashes of flavor. You still only shoot straight in front of you, though. The dopes in Contra can aim in eight directions, and they die in one hit. Get it together, Rock. You have no excuse.

Click to Enlarge.

I don’t know who any of the characters are except Darkwing Duck and Launchpad McQuack, but the graphics they’re drawn in are really well-done. One thing I’ll say for the Mega Man series is that it is visually appealing, and the same quality and style is present here. The music is addictively cool, a jazz-themed score with a ton of variety and finesse. The sound effects are worth mentioning; there is a slight but noticeable jump in quality, and if you need a ready example, just listen to Launchpad’s helicopter. That’s pretty damn slick for the NES.

Mickey Mousecapade

1987

Even the title screen is sparse and drab, like a tenement at the turn of the century. Mickey and Minnie wear forced smiles, choking back the leaden contempt they have come to feel for one another, themselves, and every living thing. There is no turning back now, no starting over, no exit from the whirlwind. This will end in tragedy, but it’s better than the shame of being alone.

Hudson Soft actually developed this one, but Capcom published it. It was released in Japan a year before the Western world got it, as Mickey Mouse: Fushigi no kuni no Daibouken (Mickey Mouse: Adventures in Wonderland). Before getting into the game itself, there’s one more bit of trivia to share: if you were to take the cartridge apart, you may notice a hidden Mickey Mouse symbol on the game’s circuit board.

DO IT, GO PRY YOUR COPY OPEN TO SEE IT IT’S TOTALLY WORTH IT

Petey the Dog is a huge creep and has kidnapped Alice (yes, from Alice in Wonderland). Mickey busts through the door of the Fun House like a train wreck on a mission to rescue her, and drags poor Minnie along on his quest. It’s pretty clear based on context clues that Minnie would rather be doing something else. Those context clues are her reluctance during the first intro animation (wherein Mickey barks her name like an abusive boyfriend to get her to comply) and the total lack of interest she seems to display in 1 player mode while following Mickey. The real goose turd is that if she doesn’t keep up, you can’t finish a level and you’ll have to backtrack to find her. The misogyny is painted thickly with a wide brush in Mickey Mousecapade, or at least I’m willing to read into what I saw and make a mountain out of a molehill.

“Don’t you make me wait on you, Minnie… and God help you if I ever see you talking to another man. Now come on, we’ve got to go rescue a young blonde.”

I’m very sad to report that this is not one of Hudson’s usual home runs. Even QC and oversight from Capcom failed to render Mickey Mousecapade more than barely playable. Progress is tedious right from the get-go as you navigate an impossibly huge fucking house with no real clue what your specific goal is. Mickey throws stars, and they travel through the game’s space way fucking slower than you’d imagine a star would move. You have to worry about two characters getting hurt while having only nominal and indirect control over one of them, and this gets old quick. Minnie will drown, get bitten by animals, chopped with swords, etc. as you duck and weave trying to put 10 pounds of mouse shit in a five pound bag.

Minnie plummets to her watery grave as her loving boyfriend turns callously away; Judging by the snake’s face, he’s having a better day than you. Click to Enlarge.

Graphically, the game’s on par with late 80s NES fare. The backgrounds are rich once you reach the flowery part of the forest before the castle, and some of the bosses are nicely detailed. Otherwise, it is adequate. I don’t think they put much time into the audio side of things, but it’s not offensively bad or a distraction or anything. It’s just not impressive. I just end up more focused on Mickey and Minnie’s apparent codependency and the severe peril to which it exposes them both. Mickey Mousecapade makes me think about things… about the nature of how we love each other, and how that can become poison to us. Run, Minnie. Get out while you can.

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2

1993

A few more lines on Dale’s face… the job and the trucker pills will do that. Chip lives cleaner, sure, but he holds on to a lot more from the streets when he clocks out. Takes the demons home with him. Men of honor live thankless lives that rob them of their very humanity… but it’s in their blood now. Once a cop, always a cop. Fighting a war you can’t win. It still bothers me that neither of them wears pants.

Everyone’s a little older, a little wiser, and yet these two gumshoes are still throwing themselves at danger like suicidal moths to an infernal flame. Chip and Dale both want to die; they crave the taste of ashes and dream often about the cold of the grave. One day. But not yet. Not until every pint-sized criminal has been driven off the streets in a great welter of blood and smoke.

Hence the NES sequel.

I wrote about the 1990 original earlier on in my tenure here at NRW; it’s an exercise in insanity that requires either a hint of masochism or some very sharp reflexes… and overall, I like it. It’s both good and bad that this is essentially the same game with different levels. There’s a bit more of a story, something about Fat Cat releasing evil spirits from an urn to rules the world, but all that does for me is produce comedy gold like the screenshots below:

As the thumb-sized duo tangle with the supernatural to put a stop to Fat Cat’s plans, you can still nail each other in the head with boxes and generally get in each other’s way, either deliberately or on accident. It’s the only thing not to like. The same frantic sense of action is present, along with a mind-boggling variety of enemies and a new set of clever challenges.

The graphics are improved somewhat, and this comes through especially well during the otherwise laughable cut scenes. That little extra touch more shading, more detail by a few pixels, makes quite a difference in the presentation. The soundtrack rivals that of the first game with its madcap vitality and hyperactive pace, and there seems to be a good deal of musical competency at work. Looking in at this game from the outside, they didn’t just remake Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers for the NES… they made a second one and may have accidentally even improved it.

AND THE WHEAT IS SEPARATED FROM THE CHAFF

Little Mermaid: 7/10 (Novel and engaging, visually appealing. On the good side of average.)

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom: 7/10 (It wouldn’t be so good in my eyes if it didn’t have the variety in it that makes it stay interesting.)

Darkwing Duck: 5/10 (You phoned it in, Capcom. Whatever. You can get away with shit like that sometimes. You’re Capcom.)

Mickey Mousecapade: 4/10 (It strikes me that game design decisions were made on short notice, with little foresight or perhaps even testing o results. It also strikes me that those involved may have just hated the project and wanted it to be terrible. Good job.)

Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2: 8/10 (WELL SOME TIMES / SOME CRIMES / GO SLIPPIN THROUGH THE CRACKS / BUT THESE TWO / GUMSHOES / ARE PICKIN UP THE SLACK / THERE’S NO CASE TOO BIG / NO CASE TOO SMALL / WHEN YOU NEED HELP JUST CALL)

It’s time to round out September with some more unbelievably lush and unforgettable art from our favorite classic games. I chose a few more, and I’ve even got some videos this time, because I got all nerd-excited over some of the choices. I also made an earnest effort to find out as much as possible about the individual artists who created these visual masterpieces… that information is oddly difficult to find – or maybe I’m just dumb as hell and don’t know where to look. If you see one I credit incorrectly or that doesn’t have an artist credit, and you’ve got that information, PLEASE TELL ME! Without any further unnecessarily wordy prefacing bullshit, let’s get right to it! Feast your eyes!!!

Salamander/Lifeforce (Konami)

Year: 1986

Artist: Uncertain, my guess is either Kenji Shimoide or Naoke Satō

The cover of the official OST, perhaps the least intruded-upon version of the base image. Back in early days, at the rental store… this snake scared me so stupid I HAD to try Lifeforce. Just to see if I could teach that snake a lesson.

You are looking into the face of galactic evil. Are you even remotely ready for this shit? Do you even know what “ready for this shit” means?

I don’t think you do, ese. I think you’re gonna get schooled into little fragments.

This one always entranced me as a kid. I originally saw it on the US NES cover, and later on in life I was awed at the detail lost in shrinking it from the original arcade flyer. I know it’s just a space snake, but it’s a fucking scary space snake, man. That perfectly coiled length behind it, framed by the yawning star-speckled nothingness of outer space.

I hope you said your space prayers, kiddo.

Space Harrier (Sega)

Year: 1985

Artist: Sega doesn’t even denote who did what in their game credits, everyone just gets lumped in as “STAFF”

I managed to find this one without the retail trim, so you could soak in the moment of visceral chaos. There’s so much going on… there is a gigantic floating brain back there. It’s got a city on top of it. Yeah, everything’s normal here.

There is a lot going on here, and you’d benefit from a close look. Soaring through planetary atmospheres destroying shit with a gun as big as you are? AMAZING career path. Let him show you.

Our dude is so unspeakably cool that he is point-blank nuking the ouroboros dragon thing without even folding p his shades and putting them somewhere safe. He knows the space babes are watching, and Space Harrier never disappoints. The stone heads just sort of toodle by; it seems like they’re either used to this shit by now or just so sullen and insular that they dare Space Harrier to destroy them.

My favorite touch is the light panic on Space Cyclops Elephant’s face. He is not even sure how he’s getting by in this ecosystem, but he sure as hell didn’t sign up for this. He’s got kids.

OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK KEEP UP CARL OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK 

Meanwhile, a gleaming futuristic metropolis stands majestic against the sublime sunset in the background.

The space babes are definitely there.

DOOM (id Software)

Year: 1993

Artist: Gregor Punchatz

“I don’t need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.” -Emil Cioran

I had to come here. Had to tread the blood-red sands of Hell once more. A UAC space marine’s job is never done. It’s a good thing someone tossed med-kits and boxes of bullets all over the place.

This one image defines my late childhood/early adolescence, at least in part. I still have the 11×17 poster that I framed and hung in my room as a preteen. I just don’t keep it hung up anymore because wherever you put that thing, it sucks the eye away from everything else near it.

Here we see a man who’s pretty certain he’s about to die. He’s bleeding, the sneering legions of Hell are grasping at hims limbs, and you can see the stark animal fear building on his face beneath the visor of his helmet. He drops one, maybe two, but like a pissed-off Satanic swarm of fire ants, the demons simply pile on. His buddy’s running up, shouting that he’ll help cover a retreat. Our man doesn’t even have the breath to say what he’s thinking: you’d better turn right back around, private, or this is gonna be you about twelve seconds after I hit the ground.

That’s the thing that really nailed me to the genre and the aesthetic of games like DOOM when I was younger. I was nihilistic, full of existential terror, and coming to terms with my own mortality at an age when I should have been basking in the bucolic sunshine of oblivion. Doom grabbed me because it was not only action packed and no-holds-barred, but because it really did have this nuance of hopelessness to it. The imagery, the implied storyline, and even certain pieces of music from the game are enough to invoke images of humanity’s twilight. This cover art is no exception. We have stumbled upon a fictional future man about to die, just like billions have before him… except he’s fighting demons and it fucking rules.

Anything Yoshitaka Amano Has Done for the Final Fantasy Series (Squaresoft)

Year: So many, and it’s awesome

Artist: Yoshitaka “World-Crafting Visual Arts Deity” Amano

I’m not one of those people who gushes over shit just because it’s Japanese. Don’t get me wrong; I deeply appreciate what Japanese creators and innovators have contributed to video games throughout the history of the industry. I just tend to sift through my consumption of anything a bit more than it seems… some people do. I’m not judging them. Anyway, I WILL gush over this, because every piece of this man’s art is like Hellenic Greece and ancient Rome collided with the hyperbolic world of JRPGs and created an alternate reality where literally everyone was a god.

Left: The crew from FFII, the Japanese II that was so hard they second-guessed releasing it Stateside but relented eventually; and on the right we have FFIV’s Twin Pimp Squad, Cecil and Kain.

I have a confession to make: the latest Final Fantasy game in the series that I’ve played is IX. I just couldn’t stay interested, plus I stopped doing the console thing around the time the Dreamcast went the way of the dodo. My two favorites, both of which mark me as a minority among FF fans, are I and IV. They are the two that I grew up chewing through, that helped shape my sensibilities about RPGs. I also enjoyed VI very much because it had an even richer story than IV had, and once I got to play them in an intelligible format I fell in love with II and III.

Left: the gang from III, all grown up and jobbed out. Right: Some fabulously crazy shit from VI.

Seeing Amano render those characters in such a graceful, hyper-human style takes me back every time. There’s something deeply Classical as well as something very Art Noveau about everything he illustrates, and it depicts these characters as both visually striking and starkly human.

Splatterhouse 2 (Namco)

Year: 1992

Artist: Probably one of the following – A. Chan, Gyoee~! Miyachan, or Taiji Nagayama (again, they just pile names together in these things)

I just realized while preparing to publish: the fucking octopus has eyebrows. Click for larger version.

I finished with this one because October’s right around the corner. Horror in classic video games is one of my favorite topics to swim around in. Usually the end result of such efforts ends up either painfully cool (but not scary) or laughably shitty. The Splatterhouse series (at least, the original three) are painfully cool. This cover is so 1990s cool I can’t even look at it without muttering “yeah dude” under my breath reflexively.

He is battling the SHIT out of a massive purple mutant and an absolutely FURIOUS land octopus with what appears to be an oversized slot machine lever. You can tell he’s been busy, because that knob is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, an army of the living dead shuffles forth under the guidance of the shittiest little Eddie Haskell ghost I’ve ever seen. One look at Rick’s face tells you all you need to know: he’s HAD IT, and every single thing he can physically reach tonight is going to die.

What’s even more amazing than this is the little intro movie from the game. We’re treated to parallaxing horizons, an almost legitimately moving vision of Jennifer begging to be rescued and then PLUMMETING back into the gullet-anus of some unthinkable creature, and some really driving music that consider the best track out all three OSTs. Look on.

All right, RetroFiends. Put on your hockey masks and go get your pillow cases. I will see you in October!

OOOH THAT BAG / CAN’T YOU SMELL THAT BAG

Further back, I looked at the incredibly sick Naxat pinball games, Devil Crash and Alien Crush. Since then, the phenomenon of video pinball has become one of my favorite sub-compartments of video gaming, and the hunt has been on. In the new era of little handheld devices capable of playing emulated classics, it is a great type of game to pick up and burn time with when you’re, say, waiting for an appointment or a passenger on a long car trip. Not to mention how gnarly some of these games are visually and soundwise.

In this Grab Bag, I’ve focused primarily on titles of this nature for the Mega Drive/Genesis console. I’ve been on a heavy Sega kick lately, between the Dreamcast’s 18th anniversary and a new influx of ROMs from various sources. I won’t beat around the bush: this is just another excuse to write yet another love letter to the system I grew up playing, but it’s also a good look at a sub-genre that oven gets passed over in the vast swathe of titles available for the Mega Drive.

Crue Ball (1992)

Developed by Electronic Arts/NuFX

European cover, front and back. Regional differences are minimal. Side note: Jesus Christ his face.

This is, in fact, a licensed and branded pinball game for the Mega Drive in representation of the hair metal band Motley Crue. It features three of their songs, rendered down into the typical YM2612 sound-style of the MD/Genesis, and also features an artistic interpretation of “Dr. Feelgood” himself. Apparently, Doc Feelgood looks like this, which isn’t really a comforting presentation for a man who works in medicine:

I’m absolutely sure this guy took his Hippocratic Oath completely seriously.

Now, This game gets sniped at a lot. I’m not going to say it doesn’t have its flaws. For one, the game is pretty basic, without a lot of bells or whistles; it’s really just a pinball game. I would not have paid retail price for this game in 1992, but as I said above, in the modern era of portability and data-vaults the size of fingernails, Crue Ball is a good game to whip out on your handheld and kill some time with. The gameplay, while simple and non-embellished, is decently fun. It’s… I mean, it’s a pinball game. The board is three-tiered, as we see in the Naxat games, and you’re given a handful of separate but connected goals to attack in order to rack up the points. The game is also generous with balls, giving you four per play, which I think is nice considering this isn’t something you’re sinking pocket change into like blood into a loose bandage.

The soundtrack, in my opinion, sits weirdly within the game; the licensed songs come off poorly, but the music written expressly for the game really isn’t bad. The intro’s rendition of “Dr. Feelgood” is an immediate example of the YM2612’s limits being exceeded; it cannot make hair metal sound awesome. Hair metal must do that on its own, as is written in the Ancient Scrolls. Aum Ha. Blessed Be. Every Rose Has its Thorn.

The visual presentation is cool but not over-the-top or absurdly wild. The exception, I would say, is Doctor Goddamn Feelgood, who looks like if you burned an art student’s mind on uncut coke and asked them to draw Callisto from the X-Men’s Morlocks. Otherwise, there are some classic Genesis-style sprites in here, stone heads and grungy little skull-dudes waiting for you to nail them with the silver ball. It contributes to the fun instead of being apart from it; the overall art-intrusion to the pinball itself is appropriately minimal.

Lastly, I will add an interesting bit from the game’s development: it was not initially intended to be a Motley Crue themed product. Its prototype title was “Twisted Flipper,” and since you just read that, let’s nod together: yeah, that sounds dumb as hell. MTV was approached for a license but decided they’d take a powder on the deal. Late in development, Motley Crue (perhaps in a bid to regain a little pop-culture traction, or more likely out of the same money-hungriness that compels Steven Tyler to plug in his microphone despite clearly being some kind of lesser undead creature at this point) latched on eagerly.

Sonic Spinball (1993)

Developed by Sega

Sonic’s expression says it all. “Yeah, son. Check this shit. At it again. Lava, flippers, pissin’ off that goofy-ass Robotnik… sittin’ still is for dead people.”

Let us first note that this title was also released for the Master System and the Game Gear; I am focusing solely on the Genesis/Mega Drive version. (For those of you who play games on your phones, I am told there is also an iOS version available.)

This is another one of the many Genesis titles I had regular and casual exposure to in my youth. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the blue hedgehog and his saga of ownage against that trick-ass fool Robotnik, despite not really being good at the regular series (in fact so bad at them that our videos for Sonic and Sonic 2 are played by a friend of mine who willingly volunteered to show off his expert chops). Sonic Spinball, however, is a different story; I enjoyed its refreshing change of tone/pace and the fact that I wasn’t complete ass at it since it was (mostly) a pinball game.

I say “mostly” because the cool thing about Sonic Spinball is how it mixes in a dash of platformer elements to the typical video pinball scenario. There are times when Sonic will land somewhere and you will have to control him like the good old Sonic we all know and love. In the first stage, if you’re lucky, you can do this as a save against “losing a ball” (dying a horrible death in monster-infested toxic waste), and it is also a crucial part of finishing stages by beating the shit out of your eternal foe, Robotnik, who really needs to fucking learn to give up.

Seriously, dude… what kind of machine are you gonna build that one blue hedgehog in weird-ass red shoes can’t just reduce into scrap metal and a bad joke within a few minutes? Take up crosswords or model trains or some shit. It’s time to cash it in.

The soundtrack is on par with other entries into the franchise from this era; good use of the Yamaha and all peripheral tools, a rich sound, and that distinctive jazzy-yet-mildly-badass theme to all of it. The aspects of platformer and pinball are melded well, tastefully unintrusive toward one another so as to form a really easy symmetry. Once you catch on to the way the game is played, it’s good fun.

I guess the only strike against Sonic Spinball to me would be its slight lack of initial approachability. It’s not just another video pinball game; it’s sort of an experimental hybrid. This can lend it a bit of clumsiness and difficulty, but it’s not unlike plenty of other well-liked games with a unique take… it just requires a bit of patience to get into it.

Dragon’s Revenge (1993)

Developed by Tengen

Just to mix it up a little, here’s the Japanese cover spread. You can click it to make it bigger.

This game gets brief mention in my article about the Naxat pinball games (linked at the top of this article). It is a sequel by way of another developer to Devil Crash MD, which was released Stateside as Dragon’s Fury. Tengen (which was a subsidiary development house for Atari) handled the American distribution for Dragon’s Fury, and enjoyed the results so much that they followed up with a sequel that had no input from Naxat at all. Critics tend to see this sequel as a bland watering-down of the original concept (which had taken some watering-down anyway in the translation from a Japanese PC Engine title to an American Genesis one), but Dragon’s Revenge is a solid member of the Video Pinball Club if you can get past all the historical/political bullshit. I, as a solvenly hedonist who just likes to play semi-passive games while my life ticks by and I die one minute at a time, can easily get past it. Way past it.

The table is in no way conventional, unlike its predecessors; it is barely linear and requires appreciable skill to navigate as one wills instead of just ride the currents. In terms of theme and artistic presentation, Dragon’s Revenge is decidedly far less horrific and eldritch than its progenitor Devil Crash, featuring instead a gently grim fantasy theme and even a loose plot (which is largely unnecessary and not worth discussing at length here, but if you’re curious, check out the manual). The basics are close enough, with a main table, several accessible bonus games, and a secondary fun factor of squashing little monsters and demons along your silver sphere’s journey across the landscape.

Four screenshots that exemplify the stark differences between this title and its prequel. Gentle elf forests and a distinct focus on scantily-clad women. Click to enlarge, perv. 😉

The OST gets little mention in other reviews or discussions, but I think it’s pretty damn good considering that it’s small and seemingly an afterthought. My overall assessment of it, when trimmed to one adjective, would be “adequate.”

While the popular view of Dragon’s Revenge is as the worst of the Crush series, it’s still enjoyable on its own merit. I wholeheartedly agree that it cannot hold a candle to the original pair of games for the PC Engine, but that’s an understatement on par with “Nintendo has sold a few million units over the years.”

LET THEM STAND FOR JUDGMENT

Crue Ball: 5/10 (don’t pay more than like $10 for this used, and ideally just get a Rom, but it’s okay enough)

Sonic Spinball: 7/10 (it’s weird as fuck when you first jump in but it’s become memorable all on its own as a really cool combination of ideas)

Dragon’s Revenge 6/10 (it is a bastard child, there is no denying that… but it can’t really be discarded as bad because, well, it isn’t)

“YOU DRATTED KIDS!” See you at the end of the month! Stay retro and play retro!

This one is about computers. As much as console gaming forms the crux of what I discuss here at NRWG, it is occasionally my duty to draw attention to that parallel road, that meandering yet meaningful story of mankind’s attempt to entertain itself with computers before they were all plugged into phone lines. (Hell, many of them were before it was even a thing.)

So you remember back in the 80s when you thought your MS-DOS shit or your Amstrad CPC was cool? Do you remember the days before Japan started dropping unfathomable machines on the West one after another? Back before the Internet forcibly occluded every dark corner of electronics culture in stark detail, there was a time when Japan kept the best shit for themselves. And I can’t blame them when I look at some of it. We wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it. Like apes confronted by Arthur C Clarke’s monolith, we would have felt so many emotions that we were reduced to hooting until dusk at the x68000.

My favorite touch is the little pole accessory for the mouse cord. That is very Japanese to me. I don’t even know why.

Sharp released the first model in 1987, naming the machine after its 10MHz CPU. It boasted one whole megabyte of ram, which today is about enough juggling space for one small photograph. ( I realize RAM and disk space are two different things, I’m trying to be illustrative here.) Despite IBM-style PCs in the West having moved on to the concept of built-in hard drives, the x68000 had no such bulk; it had its own OS that bore astounding similarity to MS-DOS but pulled all extra data from floppy.

We’re not here to get soggy over this thing’s data capabilities. When it comes to graphics and sound, the only things the Western world has that came close were the Amiga and the Atari ST… and neither could hold a shaky, barely-lit candle to this heartbreaker. During a time when a lot of people were gradually making the stroll from boxy candy-colored shit to VGA graphics, the standard color palette on the Sharp x68000 was 65,535 colors in a maximum resolution of 1,024×1,024. By comparison, VGA’s 1987 vintage can output 256 colors at a resolution of 320×200. Better get your bifocals out. Needless to say, this graphical depth demanded audio of comparable richness.

I mean, think about it – this machine hit its peak in the early 90s. This shit was like staring God in the face. Except maybe not as awkward.

Regular readers (if I have any; I certainly hope so, or I’m still in that coma and this isn’t even happening) are already aware of my desire to basically fucking marry the Yamaha YM2612 – the exquisite little weaponized synth chip that makes all our favorite Genesis soundtracks go boom-boom. The Sharp x68000 uses a slightly more grown-up, sophisticated cousin of the YM2612. The YM2151 boasts eight channels to the 2612’s six, and to put it in plain terms, the end result sounds far “cleaner” and also offers more potential detail. In other words, the music output on even the off-the-shelf model is delicious. I am terrible for saying this, but aside from the minimal loss of “ass-end” I seem to hear on x68000 soundtracks, I may actually like this chip better. Two key examples of its power to deliver are the x68000 retooling of Akumajō Dracula and the port of Thunder Force II. It even makes River City Ransom sound gnarlier!

Japan’s decision to only market this marvel domestically kept the x68000 a near-secret in the 80s and 90s, but the sheer volume and variety of titles released for it makes the secret all the more unbelievable. You would think more buzz would have been generated – even now, in 2017, when everyone has seen everything and it’s been made into twelve shitty memes, I look at the screenshots and the videos with a certain awe. I humbly present some highlights of what I have found in my plodding research.

Akumajō Dracula

Konami, 1993

It’s a remake of the original, but it’s arcade-quality. (in fact, the x68000 was the test system for the Capcom CPS system for many years.) I digress – the difficulty level is increased just enough to re-engage, the music is remarkable, and I especially love that Stage Clear theme. “Epic” applies here.

Dead of the Brain

FairyTale, 1992

1) this owns 2) ew though

It’s all in Japanese, but I get the general idea. It seems to be a really cool spin on Re-Animator by way of Return of the Living Dead… definitely inspired by both. The music’s not as mind-blowing here, but the graphics are really turned-out. It’s hard to do effective horror stuff in a game medium, especially the earlier you go in the timeline, but Dead of the Brain really impresses me by melding cartoony with frightening.

Dracula Hakushaku

FairyTale, 1992

I’m sorry, these just fascinate me. I’m noticing a dual theme with these graphical-text adventures: prominent tits and horrible things happening or being found.Still, really detailed illustration, great color choice to make for a dark theme.

A Preponderance of NSFW shit

Big Surprise, 1987-1993

It looks almost like cross-stitch. It is an open and kitchen-ready mockery of itself.

Just in case you wanted to jack off to this, well hey, at least it’s better than the same image would be rendered on a VGA machine. Don’t think too hard about what you’re doing, bucko. I guess people made do back then. Some of it’s awfully MSPaint, though.

Heart of Saphilamun

Annandule Project, 1991

I found very little background info on this one, in either language. It was apparently a hit, but in a flash-in-the-pan sort of way. Something about the screenshots and video intro I’ve found really unsettles me. Maybe it’s the brief, silent sequence depicting a nude woman literally fucking falling apart against a black background. Maybe it’s the horrifying winged snake thing. Maybe it’s the fact that I even asked on forums and couldn’t get a synopsis… it’s apparently loosely based on Lovecraft. I’ll buy that.

All of this has enraptured me with this mysterious device. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing this glimpse into the grey shadows with me; I live for this kind of shit, and it’s part of why I love to write these articles. I get to pluck artifacts from the dusty ground of the wasteland, wipe them off, and decide they need talking about. Cheers.

See you in July, stay retro!

The arcade… dark, weird lighting. Gnarly carpeting. An omnipresent riot of sound and color as you walked in and wrapped yourself in the electronic arms of sweet, sweet diversion. For many of us RetroFans, it’s a golden, soft-glow set of memories we keep well-polished and stored within our minds’ more secure vaults. Some of us were around in the late 70s and early 80s, when titles like Space Invaders and Donkey Kong were waving the banner of arcade gaming’s golden age. More of us remember the era when arcades saw some shrinkage; my own formative exposure to the format was in the smaller realms tucked into the side areas of bowling alleys and the nooks of theme restaurants. The early 90s saw the Neo Geo and a host of other innovative releases, breathing some life into the old arcade room… but nonetheless, the sad truth is that the phenomenon has continued to deflate over time (except in Japan, where it’s kept vigorously alive).

I consider myself lucky to have been an awe-struck young man in my pre-pubescent years when the early 90s brought us a small revival of the arcade. My venues were still within the greater confines of bowling alleys and Chuck E Cheeses, but the games we were playing in those places made it feel like its own circus… its own arena. Everyone can think of a couple off the top of their heads, and while I’ve already had the honor of discussing the gems like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II, I hope a few of you will recall the games I’ll highlight in this article. Many are both bizarre and wonderful, like our first childhood crush or that recurring dream we had about MC Hammer growing to Godzilla size and destroying our hometown with his brutal dance moves (was that just me?), but it didn’t stop us from throwing quarters or tokens in to give them a shot.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Developer: Midway

Released: October 31, 1991

Everyone just about lost their shit when the Terminator sequel came out. At least that’s what I remember. It had a good-guy Terminator, an even worse bad guy Terminator, and more catastrophic violence than a train wreck giving birth to a nuclear detonation with no epidural. Even though it was way rated R, we all did what we had to do to see it, and whoa… it was nuts. It even sort of made Guns n Roses cool (who am I kidding, a lot of us misguidedly loved them anyway). On Halloween of ’91, we got to live the whole thing out in one of the better shooter-style arcade games of its time. The demo sequence claimed that the game was also rated R, for Righteous. No shit.

No need to label what specific type of weapons are in the crates. You’ll find out when you blast them open with all your gunpower. The enemy T-800 has gone so far as to ignore the hated humans behind it to focus on you, who are known as Machine Judas. SkyNet wept.

T2‘s difficulty was harsh, but it was still a blast to see how long you could last on the battlefields of 2029 against your loyalist robot kin and the massive death machines they served. Some of us even got really sharp and made it back to John Connor’s 1995… but I never did. Not even with 2 players. No matter what, the game’s graphics were super-crisp and it had a ton of really fun digitized voice clips in it. I for one couldn’t help but get into it.

Captain America and the Avengers

Developers: Data East, Realtime Associates

Released: 1991

This is one I dutifully played the absolute shit out of. I was huge into superheroes as a kid, both Marvel and DC (but a little more Marvel, and I’ve never been able to fully articulate why), and I was thrilled to see The Avengers when it first arrived at the smoky bowling alley my family frequented. They wanted to bowl? That’s fine, suckers are born every minute. I wanted to stop the fucking Red Skull.

Vision and Hawkeye stand fascinated as Mandarin shows them his special squat thrusts for keeping his glutes “mandariffic.” Captain America, always the histrionic one, shows off his vertical leap. Iron Man stares at nothing, thinking about his offshore accounts.

While the ports of the game got mixed reception, the arcade version itself is often praised as a classic beat ’em up. I liked it because four of us disinterested junior bowlers could play at a time, and I could play as Vision, whom I found fascinating as a superhero. The team plows through an army of generic robots and lesser villains to chase after the Red Skull, even making a foray into space and some other bizarre places in the Marvel Universe. Each character has melee and ranged options, and you can even hoist a motherfucker and throw him into another motherfucker. That was my go-to move. The graphics were great, fitting the comic book source material wonderfully; the sound and music was almost honest-to-god inspiring. “AMERICA STILL NEEDS YOUR HELP!” Well shit, I’d better pop some more tokens in.

WWF WrestleFest

Developer: Technos Japan

Released: 1991

“Jesus, dude, shut up about all these goddamned wrestling games!” No, though, because this one is incredible. You don’t even have to be a wrestling fan to get into it. Technos had released WWF Superstars in ’89, which did pretty well, and they took everything they learned from that in ’91 and produced an incredible mat-fighting arcade game.

Ultimate Warrior adds “slapped half-dead by a fat guy” to his resume, while Hogan and half of each featured tag team use Mr Perfect as a boat to cross an imaginary Potomac. Hogan, of course, is Washington!

The legendary Road Warriors/Legion of Doom are the “boss” characters in this one, replacing Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase in Superstars. You can team up with a friend or go it alone in various match types, but it was easily the most fun to try for the tag team titles against Hawk and Animal (who were fucking impossible to beat unless you had a grocery bag full of change). Team-up moves, berserk tag-ins, and digitized announcing from Mike McGuirk and Gene Okerlund make this a bona fide classical-era WWF product. The graphics are a little goofy, but they’re good for the format; the action doesn’t suffer. While the actual “Sport” may be choreographed or pre-determined, WWF WrestleFest isn’t short on real entertainment.

Lethal Enforcers

Developer: Konami

Released: October 8th, 1992

This time period was also all about controversy. Lethal Enforcers didn’t become quite as notorious as games like Doom or Mortal Kombat, but it did cause quite a stir upon its release. Konami’s action-cop shooter game had photo-realistic graphics (for its time) and was somewhat intense. It didn’t matter to the self-appointed moral crusaders of the era if you were the good guy or not; they were pissed that you were shooting at an animation of an actor dressed as a stereotypical goon.

Aside form all that, the game is immersive and pulse pounding. Split second decisions must be made as you confront thugs with hostages, fleeing civilians, and lightning fast criminals. You can easily lose the game, in fact, if you’re not precisely accurate in order to avoid harming the innocent. There’s chase scenes, power-ups that give you guns the police definitely shouldn’t have, and even “training stages” that lighten things up while still maintaining the theme. Aside from the great visuals, the music kicks ass and Lethal Enforcers is another game that heavily incorporates digitized samples. I liked this one enough to get the Genesis version a couple years later, and it was pretty faithful to the source.

Virtua Fighter

Developer: Sega (Sega AM2)

Released: October 1993

You were wondering why I was studiously avoiding fighting games in this particular article… I was saving this one for last. With the dawn of Virtua Fighter, the whole playing field of the genre was changed. Virtua Fighter wasn’t just showing us 3D polygon-based graphics, which we still considered pretty far-out and futuristic; the revolutionary fighter was making an earnest (and effective) attempt at fluid realism in its characters’ moves and techniques.

The “Model 1” hardware rig used for the game was jointly developed by Sega and Lockheed Martin. Yes, Lockheed fucking Martin the aerospace firm. The people who have a knee-deep resume of building cutting edge military technology. This hardware not only handles the revolutionary 3D rendering, but also allows for stunningly realistic movement and nearly true-to-life physics. The game’s plot was minimal and loosely resembled those of its ancestors, but literally no one cared. The game has spawned a thriving franchise that has continued to break ground in its genre. I remember seeing this shit and thinking to myself, “it’s pretty cool to live in the future.”

Towards the middle of the decade, the phenomenon of the arcade took a sullen plunge once more, though it’s remained alive through the 00’s and 10’s (or at least its heart beats). Our friends in the far East keep things going, and there’s of course been a small resurgence here as the retro gaming movement has gotten wind under its wings.

Between the years that the market drank Atari, and the years of the rise of the sons of Sony… there was an age undreamed of.

Thank you for reading! See you in June! Stay Retro!

In the years between 1989 and 1997, the earliest strong attempts at 3D “first person” games were being fired at the wall. As 1992-93 rolled on, this fire reached a machine-gun rate due to the success of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Even now, in the year 2017, I set out on the Internet to research this stuff and unearth titles I’ve never played (or even seen) from that era. Some were surprisingly good, but escaped notice for some reason or another. As can happen all too often, poor timing or not enough publicity may have nailed them to the floor; in other cases, they are simply eclipsed by other releases that blow all competition out of the water.

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold fell victim to all three of these blights, but is still a solid example of the early first-person shooter template put to creative use. The game uses the same engine as Wolfenstein 3D, notable for its orthogonal game-spaces and its ray-casting technique of point-of-view rendering. The game was conceived and developed by JAM productions, a short-lived enclave formed in 1993 by Jim Row and Mike Maynard. Apogee (developers of the engine used) published Blake Stone, and also lent JAM the services of their legendary music man, Bobby Prince.

The game even came with a little comic book! It wasn’t incredible but it was at least cool.

In Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold you play as the titular character, recruited by British Intelligence in the year 2140 after distinguishing himself in the Navy. Your assignment is to scuttle the operations of an insidious organization known as STAR, which is led by the nefarious Dr. Pyrus Goldfire. Goldfire plans to conquer the world using an army of expert soldiers combined with a heavy complement of his own genetically engineered monsters… and things are looking like that might not be a pipe dream.

Thanks, Dr. Goldfire. You asshole.

Just like Wolfenstein 3D, the game has separate episodes, played one at a time. Each has 10-11 levels in it, usually representing some building or compound belonging to STAR. Blake begins with a simple sidearm when he steps in the door, but can find all kinds of futuristic weapons to beef up his offensive capability. In addition to health items lying on the floor, Blake can also pop tokens into vending machines for a small pick me up. All of this will prove to be extremely necessary, since each level of each episode is crawling with security officers, as well as a taste of Goldfire’s genetic engineering “miracles.” There are also robots, both ceiling-mounted and mobile, that await the chance to shred you with their integral weapons. One cool thing about Blake Stone is the element of ambiguity among the scientists you encounter; some of the men in lab coats are spies who will offer you info or food tokens, and some will just call for help and start shooting you.

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

At the end of each episode, you face off with Dr. Goldfire briefly. Each time, he has new tricks up his sleeve, but eventually teleports away before you can finish him off. He’s nice enough to drop the keycard you need to get to the actual boss of that episode, though… and let’s just say they’re locked up for a reason. The end of the final episode lets you finally bring down Pyrus Goldifre, but it’s then that you discover what he really is…

One of the end-of-episode bosses. Apparently just some creativity applied to bread mold. Mix in one part ugly and two parts angry and voila! Run for your life!

The game’s graphics are about on par with those of Wolfenstein 3D, but they are very colorful and varied. Nothing technical was stretched in terms of visuals, although you can tell a lot more creativity went into them, likely by necessity since this game offers mutants and aliens instead of Nazis as antagonists. A mix of 16 bit and digitized sound is used, with the digitized bits being mostly combat and enemy sound effects. As with most of his work, Bobby Prince borrowed a hook here and there from a rock song but produced a masterful soundtrack of very fitting music. The intro theme and Mission Music #6 are two favorites of mine, but the whole thing is very good. It’s very rich for a SoundBlaster-16/AdLib soundtrack.

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold was released only a week before id Software released Doom in 1993. As one may guess, Doom completely covered it and most similar games with a mighty shadow, and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold sold poorly after a good start. It was received well when it was reviewed, however, and was praised especially for its additional gameplay elements and its sound. JAM released a sequel, Blake Stone: Planet Strike, in 1994, and then closed its doors. Its three members found work at other software companies. 3D Realms owns the rights, and has included the game in a couple of compilations as well as a standalone version on their site. It has a gently improved HUD but is otherwise true to the source.

I give Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold 7/10. In hindsight, it stands toe to toe with its peers, and it has a kickin’ soundtrack. It fell victim to poor timing and the shadow of a giant, but it can’t be called a bad game by any means.

See you around the next corner, kiddos! So much planned for 2017!

Not too long ago, I took three NES titles I’d never seen before and played each one for a minimum of one hour. Then I shared my experiences with you folks via a lovingly crafted article on our internet computer website. As we put a stake through 2016’s black heart and decapitate it to make sure it won’t rise again in the sequel, I thought it’d be fun to repeat my “grab bag” routine by dipping thrice into the game library of another well-loved classic console.

The Genesis/Mega Drive has an astounding number of arcade ports, and also boasts a bounty of left-field games straight from its Japanese homeland. I did my best to choose three I’d never messed with or even read about before, which meant picking three titles that run the gamut of genre and style. “Eye-opening” is a gentle word to describe this little journey; let’s just say that while some relics should be studied and shared, others should perhaps never be found.

Make sure your straitjackets are securely fastened… here we go.

El Viento (Wolf Team, 1991)

Allow me to give you my guess at what seems to be going on in this game BEFORE having looked at any official literature: You are a beautiful and agile elf creature, one who love boomerangs and hates 1930s gangsters. You have a little bit of magic at your disposal (which is to be expected, since you are clearly some kind of fairy warrior), but you have a little trouble with stairs sometimes – especially when several men on motorcycles are trying to kill you.

Well, according to several sources, I was close on the time period; the game is set in the late 1920s. I was way off with my appraisal of the main character, though… apparently you’re a Peruvian sorceress descended from the bloodline of Hastur. You know, the Cthulhu Mythos entity also referred to as the King in Yellow. Apparently his cult has teamed up with a Chicago gang (the gang leader is named DeMarco in the US localization, but source material names none other than Al Capone) to bring about some heavy end-times shit.

Let’s put that one back up on the billboard for a moment. You’re a Peruvian sorceress descended from the King in Yellow himself who runs around killing Al Capone’s boys with razor boomerangs in 1928.

The artwork for the US localization makes her look a lot more Latina. I guess it’s because they washed off all the anime.

All that aside, the game plays really well. Once I got the hang of how the boomerangs functioned, I was moving through at a pretty quick pace. “El Viento” means “the wind” in Spanish, and the name is fitting; the character is very fast and agile. This got me hurt a couple of times as I accidentally bulldozed my way into trouble or dropped into a hail of bullets from above, but it also let me pick and choose my battles to some degree once I got used to things. I found myself surprised at not only how many purple cars Capone had on hand for me to destroy, but also how many shirtless men carrying machetes he had on his payroll.

Hey, maybe Wold War 2 is shorter in this timeline if we have shit like this in 1928.

Then I got killed by a very futuristic tank, apparently the boss of the first set of levels. Bullshit. But then, things ARE pretty anime up in this game.

Curse (1989, Micronet)

I’ve had this in the MD/Genesis ROM folder for a while, and its incredibly generic name had inspired me to save it as a surprise sometime in the future.

Holy shit is this game a nightmare within a dream.

I powered on and was pretty delighted to find a shoot-em-up. Not only that, a side-scrolling one instead of overhead view. Not to brag, but I am better at shoot-em-ups than almost any other genre of classic game, so I set to seeing just how far I could make it. The difficulty was pretty tough, but I never felt like like I was being hardcore spammed or cheap-dicked. The difficulty climbed as I reached the third and fourth levels, but I noticed something rare in a shooter: as the heinous crowds of enemies and huge fuckoff minibosses continued to intensify, the powerups and goodies kept up. The game is pretty generous even as it challenges me.

I took a brief break to make a cursory Google search about this game. It has interesting artwork… maybe even a little ominous. Nothing I’d seen yet seemed to correlate with this box art:

I also found out the game has a built-in stage select, so like a dumb-ass Icarus soaring full-tilt toward the Sun, I went to the fourth stage again and tried to beat the game. The fifth stage is pretty hardcore, and I found myself barely squeaking by. I was eventually confronted with a near-spitting image of the box art, which both fascinated and bothered me.

Then, in a span of moments now woodburned into my grey matter, as a 16-bit video game legitimately frightened me for the first time in memory:

I did not defeat whatever that thing was, and I’m not sure I want to try again. This was a Japan-only title; apparently an American company showed interest in publishing it but that never panned out. Maybe the saw the shit-your-pants horrifying final boss and reconsidered.

Sword of Sodan (1993, Innerprise)

I just realized this screenshot snapped a second before the dithering effect finished. Her face is doing some Cronenberg shit.

A long time ago I had read a review of this game completely trashing it. I figured I’d give ti a try; after all, it was sword-and-sorcery theme, so it couldn’t be all too bad. Its overall reviews were mixed, and the small handful of screenshots I looked at made me want to try it.

I chose the female warrior for my first try, and headed out into some kind of wilderness. A steady stream of armed men tried to murder me, and some succeeded in injuring me through sheer attrition. I was pleased to discover that I could swing my sword a couple of different ways by manipulating the D-pad while attacking. After a while, I made it into a walled city whose entryway included gratuitous spike traps. I’m not sure how that’s conducive to foot traffic for any of the citizens, let alone merchant wagons or caravans, but I braved the obstacle in order to make it into the city…with very poor results.

Battered and bloodied, I randomly drank some of the potions I’d been picking up. I finally found the one that replenished health and moved on… straight into my own doom.

There’s a lot of them, and they all do the same thing: murder you.

Things quickly went from militiamen and soldiers to tandem giants and huge metallic monsters. A pair of the giants slowly wore me down with repeated clubbings until I was hopelessly dead. Sword of Sodan had just told me, “that first bit was a good warm-up, but we’re through fucking around here.”

I tried with the male character and achieved similar results. The movement controls are strange, requiring you to sort of tap the Jump button to turn around yet allowing you to leap roughly five times higher than any real human. As far as I know, there is no way to block; you just have to murder someone fast or play the reach game with them. Obviously, that’s not going to work on a lot of the non-human monsters you eventually encounter… especially not the ones that dwarf you in size.

Abort. Cancel. Fuck this. I have a sword with pitiful reach and exactly four little potions. Bye.

I quickly lost interest in Sword of Sodan, because games that use a difficulty curve as a “members only” door are like public toilets that don’t flush; they’re full of shit and it’s best not to be near them.

THE AXE COMETH DOWN:

El Viento – 7/10

Curse – 8/10 except for the visceral and haunting finale

Sword of Sodan – 4/10

See you in 2017. So, you know… in a couple days. Stay Retro!