I’m not ashamed or embarrassed at all to admit that I even get a little teary-eyed at the right piece of VG music if I’m in the right frame of mind. What does shame me is that I’ve spent so little time talking about that here – the music itself. I’ve chosen a few pieces of music to talk about, and I’ll provide a link for readers to listen along with me. I bet some of you know these soundtracks by heart the same way I do though… you can probably call them up in your mind just like I can.

Everyone’s looking for ways to cope right now, and music is fantastic tool for that. Let’s immerse ourselves in it today like a nice hot bath. Let’s listen. Everyone’s been going through some rough shit lately, and we’re not going to talk about that at all, because everyone’s sick of it. We’re going to forget the lousy news and the stress and uncertainty of it all, and we’re going to pursue some self-care together. Let’s listen to some video game music.

Crash Man Stage Music

Mega Man II

Capcom, 1988

Composer: Takashi Tateishi

Ooh there’s energy in this one. Like… I love funk. I love jazz. Those types of music pick me up and keep me smiling and snapping my fingers when things get rough or I get discouraged. I think Jazz is medicine. And this piece is funky. Like you want to move. And in Crash Man’s stage, you certainly can’t sit still. The octave-walk on the bass line, the smooth but busy lead riffs… that’s fucking jazz fusion. And it bops. It makes you bop with it.

I have also found a sick remix of this using the MD/Genesis sound set… it is cherry. Turn the key in this motherfucker and drive.

Main Theme

Space Harrier

Sega, 1985

Composers: Yuzo Koshiro, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Mark Cooksey

For an action-oriented ride like Space Harrier, this is such hopeful and upbeat music. The lovely harmonies and steady 80s rock beat lend this track a sense of forward movement, which is entirely appropriate and forms a huge part of the game’s charm game for me. You can tell that while there are aliens and obstacles to be blasted in the Fantasy Zone, Sega’s composers wanted you to remember: life can be fun. You’re playing a video game. Escape. “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone! Get ready!”

Thunder Landing (Stage 1 Theme)

Super Contra

Konami, 1988

Composer: Motoaki Furukawa (Club Kukeiha)

The music you put in the first stage/area/level of your video game can have a huge impact on how memorable it is. I always loved this one because it sets the tone for the entire game right out of the starting gate; You get that nice intro riff as your drop out of the helicopter, and that weighty orchestra hit comes back to… well, hit you.

Side note: I’ve probably gushed over this before, but Konami has always placed a high value on their music and the composers they use. I like to think it’s part of why they’re still in the ring after all these years. The Contra series is no exception.

Toxic Dump (Parts 1 and 2)

The Ooze

Sega, 1995

Composer: Howard Drossin

Yo, let me start by saying I love this fucking game. You get to play as an amorphous blob of green mutant ooze. It’s incredibly innovative and fun, and it has a killer soundtrack to boot. This is another good example of “make the level 1 music pop so they take notice.” I could listen to it on loop for a while.

I almost want to call this shit thrash-funk. Funk-thrash. You sort it out. You tell me. I just dig it. It’s dirty but frenetic. If Quentin Tarantino directed an Oscar the Grouch segment for Sesame Street this music might work well for it.

But that should never, ever happen. Or should it?

Evergreen (Ending Theme)

Castlevania 3/Akumajou Densetsu

Konami, 1989

Composers: Yoshinori Sasaki, Jun Funahashi, Yukie Morimoto

This one’s just a little piece of beauty to help close out an incredible masterpiece of a game. CV3 is one of the finest in the series (at least in my opinion), with the JP version utilizing that delicious VRC6 cartridge expansion to enrich and deepen the music’s body. To some people (who suck), it’s just some low-bit “strings” layered over each other. To me, this track speaks of comfort. The relief and peace of a job well done. Fuck you, Dracula. Get a hobby. Stop bothering us.

But then, if he ever did, we’d run out of Castlevania juice. I need that shit. I’m thirsty. (the third season of the show is so good!)

All right RetroFans… I’ll be back with more goodness later on. Stay safe and sane, and most importantly, Stay Retro!

We’re taking another, longer, more loving look at the NES game library this month, and there’s so much to love. Even the cheese. From the top-notch classics to the knockoff nostalgia, everyone’s got a favorite NES game. If this system didn’t form some small part of your childhood entertainment time, then I’m not sure where (or when) you lived and still ended up on NRW. Like, how do you know any of the other shit we talk about here? Welcome to the future, man. Hit Play.

Pizza Pop!

Ark System Works, 1992

There is nothing more empty and bleak than the vacant look of defeat on Dracula’s face right here. And no, Pizza Boy’s got no fucking clue. It’s a tragedy on wheels.

Jaleco couldn’t publish a game to save their asses in the 90s. The company was well-established in the gaming industry – Bases Loaded and City Connection were notable Jaleco titles – but somehow the firm just didn’t gain much traction on the NES. Pizza Pop is a Jaleco game for the NES; I hesitate to offer it too much of its own distinction beyond that, simply because it’s so goddamned boring. Let’s be real: this is fifty other platformers, Jaleco. This is just the amalgam of every stiffly generic and circus-hued hop and jump game that has passed through the NES’s mouth, and you’ve distilled it into this dry litter for me to ruminate over.

It’s not even that it doesn’t play well. It plays okay, actually. It’s just… stale. I get the distinct vapour, ever so fragrant and hopeless, of the dying video rental shop. Drywall. Silence. Dust. Another set of bones bleached in the sun. It’s a decent game on its own merit… just a decent game that should have come out 3-4 years earlier.

The plot says you want to buy an engagement ring for your girlfriend. That’s the whole reason we’re here. That’s why you’re out hassling Dracula, getting murdered on construction sites. Some hipster asshole is also running around in clothes just like yours, making a mess for you and generally making your job a living hell.

See, that’s what I mean. It’s like they both know this has been done ten thousand upon ten thousand times before. This tale has been writ long across stardust and primordial mud. Give it up already.

I feel more than a little fucking weird playing a game where the main character is doing a cartoon version of a job several of my friends have. It just makes me empathize with them even more. The tips are shitty, and it’s even worse in real life because you can’t leap the equivalent of thirty feet in the air. KILL EVERY BAD GUY EVER BY JUMPING ON THEIR FUCKING HEAD. You also get some kind of pizza-baking paddle or something as a weapon, but there’s no point. Just jump on everything like Mario. The graphics are of uniformly low but inoffensive quality. I would feed this game to a dog but I wouldn’t eat it myself. The sound is nothing to write home about, unless you want to write a long fucking essay on questionable music loops. There is a jet-ski part near the end that I have to admit is pretty fun, but that’s like saying you like the part during the root canal where they rinse the blood out of your mouth. Pizza Pop is not memorable, nor is it forgettable. It hangs, low fruit in a busy orchard, quiet among giants. This exercise in smallness gets 4 out of 10 because there is some small merit within it; while it’s a mediocre platform game, at least it isn’t an objectively shitty platform game.

Airwolf

Kyugo/Beam Software, 1988

The PG, on-paper objective of this game is to rescue some dumb hostages or some shit. Something cheery, positive, official. We all know why Airwolf appealed to us as youthful consumers. Nine times out of ten, when you looked at the TV and Airwolf was on, what was Airwolf doing?

That’s right. Airwolf was tearing shit up.

And so we have this, a less-than-terrible NES version of a decent-to-OK arcade title, based off a TV show. You do a fair amount of tearin’ shit up, but there’s a moderate pace on it, and Airwolf would like to pack it in by 9 pm so the kids can go to bed. Airwolf just don’t party no more. It immediately strikes me that this game plays a lot like Capcom’s 1943, if 1943 were a side-scroller. I just immediately get that feel visually, movement-wise, everything. Maybe it’s the intermittent beach scenery and my hankering to shoot down Zeroes over Midway. Maybe it’s just that the game – or at least this part of it – is deceptively competent in its execution.

𝕬𝖚𝖋 𝖂𝖎𝖊𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖍𝖊𝖓

The aim-and-shoot first-person sections of Airwolf are clumsy and drawn-out, like most of the NES’s attempts at this kind of “realism” or “dynamics.” Lots of sprite clip interrupts otherwise acceptable pixel graphics. Outside of the slightly dated and loud sounds of war, the audio experience is sparse. What’s present is phoned-in and basic.

I will give the cut scenes and set pieces a little bit of a shout out. I always like this kind of thing, especially in 8 to 16 bit era games when each matte and landscape was its own little labor of art. Bells and whistles, the little liminal passages between… Less was more, but you had to do it big.

Airwolf receives 6 out of 10. It tried to be novel with lukewarm but not awful results, and I like the side-scrolling parts of it. Some of the random in-between shit really made it for me too, like the guy’s face on the radio screen.

Willow

Capcom, 1989

I don’t do a lot of RPGs in here, and I really should. (In fact, maybe a whole series coming up). I tend to avoid them because of the nature of RPG play: it’s a long, nuanced experience that has as much in common with a novel as it does a film. I don’t often feel that a handful of paragraphs can do that kind of thing justice.

I underestimated the mediocrity of this game. Let me take a well-aimed stab at describing Willow for the NES: it’s a lot like Crystalis, except that a film called Willow was produced by George Lucas in 1988 and that film got wrapped around Crystalis, instead of the slightly more Japanese story in Crystalis.

What passes for a climactic battle in the wizarding fucking world of Warwick Goddamn Davis.

So here we are with this can’t-go-wrong fantasy adventure, this klutz-friendly Saturday Morning version of Zelda with movie branding on it. It is extremely formulaic, mixing action with minor RPG elements like leveling and puzzle/interactions. The game has no money and you just talk to people to get stuff for free. Unfortunately, this leftist utopia is fraught with evil witches, dog mutants, and that old standby, the skeleton-people. Skeleton-people live unlife the way it was meant to be: clacking along windswept footpaths, harassing little wizards. Anyway, the catch to everything being free in this economy-free candy-land is that Bavmorda wants to kill you and has made a bunch of other stuff want to kill you. The movie plot’s subtlety is seen nowhere else in the game. Willow, if nothing else, will inure new RPG-genre players to the mind-numbing chores of reading text and level-grinding; in terms of action gameplay we’re looking at a caveman’s version of Link to the Past, but the graphics are the secret shine on this game.

But I’m not the chief…

The way the screen will change color and the grass will whip menacingly, as the battle theme starts along with the visual cues. As I said above, bells and whistles… but they count for double in the very visual world of RPG-themed games. The music, especially this piece right here (which you will hear plenty of in the game), belongs in some kind of “reverse trauma facility” government program where they use radio waves to teach you how to do drone strikes in your REM sleep. The battle theme is okay, though. I just wish, as I often do about RPG music, that the loops were longer. Oh well.

OC by Yours Truly

While Willow isn’t what I’d call truly lousy, it fails to rise above a solid “meh” in terms of action, and it feels from start to finish like it was some other game that was in development before Willow, and it got turned into Willow. It gets 6 out of 10.

That’s all she wrote… well, that’s all I wrote, anyway. Get Gruesome!

1943

Capcom, 1988

Lately I’ve been taking time to really read up (and watch countless fantastic documentaries) on the world wars. The air and sea duel between US and Imperial Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War remains one of the most gripping, dramatic conflicts of the 20^th Century. It continues to stir the human spirit and the imagination of gamers in various forms, but when I was a young’un, 1943 was what got my pulse pounding.

Let me take a moment and assure our readers of something important: I am talking about a video game by Capcom, and will offer no intentional slant either way on a conflict fought long ago by men who have now mostly passed on. All opinions expressed are pertinent to the 1988 NES port of an arcade game, not WWII itself.

With that covered, Capcom made one hell of a riveting action shooter out of this piece of history. The titanic conflict is taken from history to hyperbole, presented in a suitably intense form, and yet it still ends up an easily enjoyable breakneck plane shooter. Your brave little plane starts off as the factory-direct model, but there is some decent opportunity to enhance it along your way, as well as lovely power-ups to wield against your foes in the air and at sea. Levels are divided into high-altitude approaches and the death-defying attacks launched on carriers and other ships. The pacing and nature of the action can give you the feeling of a bona fide flying ace, but be careful… 1943 is war. As you fight through swarms of enemy fighters and outward defenses, you must take great care to keep yourself sharp for the “boss” fights against gigantic destroyers, screen-spanning super planes, and everything the Imperial Navy has to throw at you.

The hottest dog of the hot-doggers, you take on the Imperial Navy all on your lonesome. The grit was never grittier on the 8-bit screen.

The graphics are adequate, with some nice color and detail on the big stuff, which gives the epic feel an extra dose of flavor. The music has its good moments, but none of it sucks; this is after all a Capcom title. SFX takes no backseat either, all of it being at least on par with if not exceeding its contemporaries in the genre. All in all, it is a fine port of a very fun arcade game that I fondly keep in my rotation when I open the emulator and strap on my flight harness.

1943 gets an easy 7 out of 10 for me. It’s an easily approachable but healthy challenge for fans of the shmup genre, with plenty of its own twists and goodies to keep you interested.

Crystalis

SNK, 1990

Not too long after early RPG titles for the NES began enjoying notable success, the idea of combining RPG elements with real-time action game play was tossed about by various developers with varying degrees of success. Crystalis (called God Slayer: Haruka Tenkū no Sonata in Japan) is a title that sometimes gets overlooked. Modern and past reviewers have had mixed feelings about this one, but I feel that Crystalis is one of the more entertaining and effectively-framed RPG style stories that hit the NES.

It’s a game with a relatively detailed plot, so I will avoid revealing too much in case you’ve not played and decide to give it a try. The important part of the beginning story is that you awaken from cryo-sleep years after a nuclear conflict that greatly changed your world. As things progress, you find that you may in fact be the one meant to save this new and dark place you wake up to.

Both your allies in the world’s remaining civilizations and your enemies throughout the spaces between are varied and interesting; your quest will carry you far and wide as you take back the world from the evil empire that has risen in the wake of the nuke war, requiring not only brawn but combat skill as you master your sword and magic. There are also some Zelda-esque puzzles along the way, though none of them are so convoluted that a thinking player will find them insoluble. You gain levels and improve in prowess as the plot unfolds around you, but your efficiency in doing so is mostly dictated by good ol’ fashioned thumb-dancing.

Sure, you do a shit-ton of stabbing during your adventure. But Hell, that’s an action RPG staple!

The graphical presentation is more than appropriate, with familiar tropes and new surprises alike. It’s nothing to rant and rave about, but it’s a satisfying spread. Other reviewers have faulted the game for certain challenges being just “button-mashers,” but I disagree; careful and clever play will not only bear you out of trouble, but prove more efficient in slaying your foes. The music is pretty good, but it suffers in places like underground “dungeon areas” from a bit of repetitiveness. Sound effects come out on a similar plane, being decent but nothing to write home about. In my view, the play itself saves Crystalis from being mediocre or plain. The story (again, trying to avoid too much exposition here) is also an engaging and suitably “RPG-like” tale laced with mysticism and heroism, not to mention some great villains.

Crystalis pulls down a 6 out of 10 from me. I like to play it as an action-adventure game, its depth is reasonable without being too elaborate, and its overall presentation is satisfying if not truly stellar. It’s worth a look for anyone who enjoys the hybrid of action and role-playing.

TMNT 3: The Manhattan Project

Konami, 1992

Here’s the one I shit on, folks. Not even because it’s that terrible… it’s just kind of a letdown. To address the elephant in the room, it’s essentially just more of what we saw in the NES version of the TMNT arcade port. It’s more than playable, but it’s just a reuse of something they did only a couple of years before, Very little effort to add much new dynamism or excitement… I mean, they didn’t release the actual Super Mario part 2 here until All-Stars, for this exact marketing reason. “Will they swallow the same pill twice?”

The answer is yes. We did.

WAIT, THOUGH. Maybe I’m not being entirely fair. In the vein of some other beat ’em ups, this third TMNT NES game allows you to choose whether or not “friendly fire” is a factor in 2-player action. It also allows you to change your chosen turtle in between horrible deaths, and for a second player to join in the game in medias res during a 1-player session. Essentially, it’s an opportunity to make the game more similar to the arcade experience in certain ways.

You tell me, folks. After all, you’re as opinionated as I am. Aren’t you?

I maintain that the formula changed very little and that you’re mostly just getting more levels to play in the style of TMNT II, but is that necessarily a horrible thing? At least the premise is exciting: Shredder has turned all of Manhattan into a floating fortress under his control, and the Fab Four must end their vacation early to return home and put a stop to their arch-villain’s plans once more.

The graphics really seem to have taken a hit, as far as I’m concerned. Things look just a little more goofy, but it’s still enough to get the job done. Just barely. The music… well, it’s Konami. Their taste in (and impressive variety of) BGM composition almost never fails, and this is no exception. It’s good, rollicking, authentic shell-kicking music. Otherwise the presentation isn’t too far from the previous installment in the series, and they even made a pass at a decent intro sequence for TMNT 3.

I’ll soften up and drop TMNT 3 a 6 out of 10. It’s comparable to its predecessor, with some neat little options added in, and if you’re after more of the same, you won’t be disappointed. Besides, even though I’m the final authority (sarcasm) on video games excellence, this ain’t all about me.

NRW Gaming 2019 – STAY RETRO

Keep your eyes peeled in March for another three-parter. Stay Retro!

I haven’t been talking as much about the 8-bit era lately, specifically the NES. How can we not keep coming back to the NES? To many (maybe even most) retro gamers, the NES is the iconic console of the 1980s, and it was certainly the beginning of a golden era for the hobby. It had a remarkably long run when measured in the span of time during which games were released for it; over 700 titles were produced, not counting unlicensed games, from ’85 to ’95. That’s a full-bodied decade-long reign.

Long Story short, we’re gonna go on a three-article grab-stravaganza. I’m going to talk about three games per article, all randomly picked from the NES library, and we’re gonna show the little grey box some love, like we should.

Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak

Taito, 1993

I played a couple of these Flintstones joints for the NES (yes, there are multiple), but this was probably the most decent one. In This one you play as Fred and Barney, between whom you can switch a la Castlevania 3, as they set out to find their dumbass caveman kids who wandered off.

The severe drawback this game has is that it was made in ’93, yet its audiovisual presentation seems more like 1986 NES fare. Not that this is a huge problem, but come on, Taito, you’ve had time by now to figure shit out and you’ve also made some games that don’t look like shit. The color palette is criminally underutilized, even for a game based on a cartoon, and the sound is almost 2600 quality. What saves Dinosaur Peak is that it’s a great platformer from a play and design standpoint. The ledge-grabbing thing is something a lot of otherwise cool games could have benefit from, and there are actual pros and cons to both playable characters. Fred’s a basic bitch who just swings around a club, but he can hit really hard with it, and Barney’s got a weak little slingshot, but he can use it from a safer distance than Fred can swing. The cutscenes… well, I can see that they put effort into telling an actual story, but the cutscenes are kind of weird and boring. I can forgive this easily, because like I said, at least they’re playing at a storyline. They just could have not bothered, really. It’s the goddamn Flintstones.

I’ll drop Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak a 6 out of 10, because it’s fun to play despite looking like a grade schooler drew it.

Section-Z

Capcom, 1987

Y’all know how I feel about shmups. They are very much my shit. I sometimes load up an emulator to play a few when I can’t sleep, and the pure dopamine release lets me sleep after. Section-Z is a great example of an earlier member of the genre really going the extra mile. It also stands as a fantastic example of an arcade port losing none of its playability in translation, at least as far as I’m concerned.

You play as an astronaut who’s out to destroy an alien base led by a creature called the Bangalool. Don’t look at me, I didn’t name the fucker. Beautifully, that’s really all the plot we need, because this game kicks ass for its time and the genre it most fits in. The best part of it for me is the way you move through the game. You do a lot of linear movement and standard dodge-and-shoot, sure, but you’ don’t just fly offscreen at the end of a section. You’ve got to move through a series of teleporters to get to the section boss. There’s also that great front-and-back action, combined with variably-paced speeds for different areas. The game also looks great, because Capcom knows what the hell they’re doing. We’re not looking at much more complex palette use than the Flintstones since it’s 1987, but there’s an appropriate amount of implied detail to the backgrounds and a great variety of baddies and bosses represented. The music’s pretty kickin’ too.

Section Z gets an 8 out of 10. I’d forgotten about this bad boy and was glad to rediscover it.

Sword Master

Athena, 1990

I’m not gonna beat around the bush: this game fucking rocks. I watched the opening cut scene and was blown away. Prime example of a game really milking everything it can out of the NES’s capabilities. You play as a warrior who’s on that stereotypical save-the-princess routine, except this time you really are a hardcore nonstop bam-bam baddie destroyer.

In true old-school fantasy fashion, you’re a skilled swordsman – one might even call you a master – pitted against all kinds of gargoyles and skeletons and shit, and some of the enemies even require you to stop your progress and carefully out-duel them to the death. Once you get used to how fucking sly some of these monsters can be, it’s a lot of fun to play. Sword Master has solid graphics, especially in the cut scenes, but also featuring parallaxing and fairly crisp, well-defined characters. This game’s music is even gnarlier than Section Z’s. It’s almost headbanging good.

Sword Master also gets 8 out of 10. It is old school heavy-metal fantasy goodness in distilled form.

I will see you in a few days for part 2 of this NEStravaganza (I actively cringed while typing that) when we knock out three more games! Stay Retro!

At the end of last month, we looked at three titles from the year 1987, taking stock of their pros and cons thirty years after their original release. I like to think of the process as something between an honest review, a nostalgic look back, and a brutal Friar’s Club roast (except I’m nowhere near as funny as any of those guys). This week I’ve chosen three more games from ’87 for us to slap around before giving them a big kiss and saying “happy 30^th.”

Karate Kid

Atlus/LJN

November 1987

Daniel turns the Japanese kids on to some Florida-style death metal. I like how “map” is just a line.

Here’s another license LJN got their grubby hands on during the 80s. I never had a strong opinion about any of the films,but karate was a big deal during the era in question and I understand why they had such success. I hear they’re doing a TV series, which makes me happy for Ralph Macchio since he really faded into the background once he hit adulthood. I digress… the NES game lumps the first two films together, focusing mainly on the second installment set in Japan. The first “stage” consists of a karate tournament that can be won relatively easily by spamming kicks and being insanely aggressive. Once you end up in Okinawa, things get trickier. You have to fight tons of thugs (some of them are carrying what look like harpoons), walk through a typhoon, and save your cute Japanese girlfriend from the massive prick who’s the student of Miyagi’s rival in the second movie. You actually have to save her twice, but only one of those times require you to actually beat Growly Scowly (a quick Wikipedia search tells me his name is Chozen and the girl’s name is Kumiko). Truly, Daniel-san was living a modern otaku’s wet dream. Or hero fantasy. I don’t know.

I can’t really smear Karate Kid in terms of overall quality. It’s hard but not stupid hard, has some pretty cool minigames, and there’s a level of polish present that you can tell Atlus was responsible for. The graphics are pretty good except for two things: the power-ups are just letters, and what the fuck is up with Daniel’s face in some of the minigames?

like a kewpie doll cross-bred with a Roswell alien.

My one complaint is that the game’s kind of short once you get the hang of it. Otherwise, Karate Kid is one of those few exceptions to a rule: a game published by LJN that didn’t come out the other end looking like forty dollars worth of chewed bubblegum.

Black Tiger

Capcom

August 1987

Listen up, because this is one of Capcom’s less well-known arcade titles, but probably one of its best from the pre-SFII era. Black Tiger is fucking crazy. The story’s fairly basic: three dragons slapped a kingdom around until that kingdom was pretty much bullshit; enter the protagonist, a berserk knife-hurling bodybuilder who wears just enough armor to look armored but never enough not to show the world how he keeps it real in the gym.

“Like what you see?”

Let me veer slightly off topic for a second, in reference to the main character’s melee weapon: these things are called flails, not morningstars or mace-and-chain. A flail, which evolved from the ancient tool used to process grain, is one or more weighted heads on lengths of rope or chain, affixed to a handle. A morningstar (also called a godentag, meaning “good day,” a morbid twist of humor I adore) is usually just a massive club with bands of iron and spikes augmenting the ass-beating end.

So our dude here battles his way through a dangerous fantasy world using a deadly throwing knife/flail combo, smashing the minions of the three dragons and un-petrifying some “wise men” he finds as stone statues along the way. For his trouble, the stone-to-fleshed guys will give the hero extra time on the clock or zenny coins. I KNOW A BUNCH OF YOU NERDS LOVE MONSTER HUNTER, so that currency will sound familiar; Black Tiger was the game that first featured it. Anyway, chests and hidden treasures (in walls, etc.) have more powerups like armor, life refills, extra lives, and more. Just like another Capcom title, Magic Sword, some of the chests are full of nothing but fuck-you and will hurt you if you don’t react quickly after opening them. You can also spend those sexy zenny coins on items in shops run by the little beardy guys you keep de-stoning. While the game is a platformer, it has a lot of areas to explore… almost enough that you’d want a map screen or something, but it’s pretty hard to actually get lost.

Bedecked in gold, ready to obliterate a dragon-man.

I am all about Black Tiger. It’s very Capcom with its epic but cartoon-like presentation, and it’s a lot of fun to play despite having a level of difficulty typical of a coin-op title. Capcom has a history of doing fairly well when crafting fantasy-style games, and this is no exception. I can’t even come down too hard on the one misgiving I do have about Black Tiger: when heard through the original equipment (or an emulation thereof), the sound effects are fucking annoying. As if to compensate, the music is of a quality on par with Capcom’s other arcade stuff… above average.

Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa

Sega

October 1987

The cutest little sapient spaceship you ever did see.

I love the original Fantasy Zone. I enjoy shooters in general, and Fantasy Zone‘s combo of excellent gameplay elements and a goofy style has me lovingly devoted to it. I cannot and will not speak ill of it. It is severely awesome and if you disagree with me you should probably just go the rest of the way in that direction and admit that you’ve secretly hated video games since you were born.

I don’t get the same gooey feeling in my black heart when I play this sequel, but it’s also very good. The first thing I noticed was that the backgrounds are absolutely breathtaking. Much more

both the laser-burger boss and the candy-cake mountains are rendered in deliciously deep color.

attention was paid to this aspect the second time around, and it’s most evident in the arcade version (which came after the Mark III/Master System version, in a world where arcade versions are usually the mommy). The music isn’t quite equal to that of the original in terms of catchy-ness or charm, but a couple of tracks (notably rounds 1 and 5) come close to hitting the mark.

FZII plays very similarly to its predecessor; a little added complexity comes from the fact that each zone has two “sides” to clear before the boss shows up. Speaking of the bosses, expect no punches pulled. They are every bit as challenging as you’d hope, and you’ll have to stay alert and be quick. While FZII seems on its surface to to be a minimally altered clone of its predecessor, I’m already planning to open up my emulator after this to play it some more. Unlike so many sequels and second chapters in various media, it’s satisfyingly true to its origin but enough of its own animal that it could stand on its own merits.

Karate Kid – 6/10 (It’s not a classic, but it’s really quite good for something LJN has its name on, which impressed the shit out of me)

Black Tiger – 7/10 (when I rate something 7/10 it means I like it but I couldn’t play it nonstop for more than a day or so, which is right where this one falls in. Still a fantastic arcade platformer!)

Fantasy Zone II – 8/10 (I’ll stop comparing it to the original, but it’s definitely worth playing if you liked the first one.)

I don’t even need to say it, but I will… Halloween is on the horizon. Creepy is the current flavor. You can even sort of smell the spooky in the air. Or is that hot wiring and burning plastic? It’s a magical time of year, and not just for adults who like to get drunk in costumes; this is a perfect time to explore the most precarious and mercurial of video gaming’s genres… horror.

There’s a spotty but colorful history inside the history… a scattering of games many of us have never seen or may only have read snippets about on some niche site. Games that never went past domestic in their home country, or were considered too strong in tone for Westerners (that’s a good one…). In any case, I’ve collected a small selection of horror games that may be new to some, but definitely play an often-overlooked role in the history of the hobby.

In ’81, a Taito contract worker named Akira Takiguchi wrote a program for the PET 2001 called Nostromo. As you may guess by the title, the game was strongly inspired by 1979’s Alien. The player must attempt to escape from a spacecraft that has been invaded by an alien monster… that’s completely undetectable unless it is directly in front of you. You must somehow avoid this alien even seeing you, AND rely on limited resources. In fact, in certain scenarios, you won’t have what you need to escape, and have no choice but to simply wait to be eaten. The program was ported to the PC-6001, and in fact the only image related to the game that I could find is that version’s box art. Sadly, I also could not find anything close to an English translation or a modern port.

This is it. This is the box art. Not even too creepy, until you think about it. Think about it materializing in front of you just as you’re reaching an airlock door, and think about what kind of horrible fucking mouthparts it must be hiding beneath those Arthur C Clarke fiber optic dreads.

Another endeavoring horror game that never made it west was Shiryou Sensen: War of the Dead. Produced by Fun Factory in 1987, this game combines horror, RPG, and side-scrolling action elements. Shiryou Sensen features random encounters not unlike how Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest functions; these battles, however, are waged from a side-scrolling perspective similar to that of Zelda II. The management of limited resources (namely ammo) makes the game all the more tense as you attempt to rescue survivors in a town infested by demonic monsters. Released for the MSX, NEC PC-8801, and PC Engine, Shiryou Sensen became part of a successful trilogy – but never left Japan.

Much to my amusement, I also discovered that the 1981 film Evil Dead got the old pixel treatment for the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum in ’85. The overall effect can best be described as “laughable,” and it seems that both contemporary and modern critics elsewhere agree with me. It astounds me that there was any demand for this game four years after the film’s release… but hey, there really is no accounting for taste. One quick browse through prime time TV proves that.

1986 brought us Castlevania, while Splatterhouse came along (actual controversy and all) two years later. Plenty of people were impressed by the latter’s gore and monsters… but you ain’t played shit ’til you’ve gotten your hands on an English translation of 1989’s Sweet Home for the Famicom/NES. It’s hard to accept that Capcom, who produced the cute and friendly Megaman, could have a hand in something so gruesome. In this RPG (created by future Resident Evil maestro Tokuro Fujiwara), your team must try to unravel the mystery of a cursed house through puzzles and fifty-year-old diary entries… all while battling horrible monsters and risking permanent death. Unlike so many RPGs, there are no Phoenix Downs or shrines in Sweet Home… only monsters, melting, and unremitting horror. I’ve swiped a few gifs, since mere stills do this game no honor…

And I could go on from there, but I think we’ve seen enough. These are a few of the games that wait for us, lurking in forgotten corners dark and deep. We will, I hope, fall prey to countless more.

ＨＡＰＰＹ ＨＡＬＬＯＷＥＥＮ

ＰＬＡＹ ＲＥＴＲＯ － ＳＴＡＹ ＲＥＴＲＯ

Since the very dawn of video gaming, ever since the first of countless alien invasions and nameless ninja clan insurgencies, gamers and developers have all agreed on one thing: peace is nice, but it’s incredibly boring. A common theme has emerged throughout electronic gaming, one of conflict and mayhem, where the stakes are never low and neither is the adrenaline level. We crave games of war, and damn it all, the developers and publishers have always been right there with us on the front lines.

This trend, when examined, waxes and wanes; an observer of the timeline can see it ebb and flow from simple sword-fighting between two nameless knights to full-scale nuclear war (and the theoretical after-effects). The mid to late 1980s seemed to hit a particular stride, when Cold War phantoms mixed with constantly more badass-looking real life military hardware to spawn a long list of not only films but video games (sometimes directly inspired by said films). War, we knew, was hell… and as this era burned bright red in celluloid and pixel-screen, we strode happily forward to swim in hellish waters. The devil himself was happy to take our hand, and to point out the price… 25 cents for a dip, $40 per cartridge to buy our own backyard pool.

This trio of games is not meant to be a best- or worst-of list, nor a definitive one. These three titles simply stick out most readily in my mind as examples of the over-the-top gloss we often give military strife through the lens of entertainment. And yeah… they’re pretty awesome.

Jackal/Top Gunner

Konami, 1986

I said this wasn’t a best-of list, but this definitely has to be one of my favorites. Jackal is called Tokushu Butai Jakkaru (“Special Forces Jackal”) in Japan, and was marketed in some regions as Top Gunner. In Jackal you play the role of a Special Forces unit tasked with the noble mission of rescuing POWs behind enemy lines. This kind of work is extremely hazardous, so it’s a good thing the brass gave you jeeps that maneuver like gazelles and are as bloodthirsty as you are.

Red beret, devastatingly precise mustache… Easy to tell who drives the jeep… who’s in charge. There’s a cooler in the back. Help yourself to a martini or some Dom Perignon. This will all be over soon, soldier.

Up to 2 players can play, and that’s the better way to go about it since you WILL be mobbed constantly by both infantry and enemy vehicles. The cool thing about most soldiers on foot is that you can just run them over in cold blood, mangling them under your jeep’s blood-soaked wheels as you laugh. The bad news is that they are rarely alone; not only do soldiers pack weapons that can destroy your jeep in one hit, so do the tanks, gun emplacements, bombers, and jeeps similar to yours that tend to accompany them. That’s why you also have a machine gun and a seemingly limitless supply of explosives.

Your POWs are in little buildings, and you open those buildings safely by blasting the shit out of them. Most of them just file out and climb into your seemingly bottomless jeep, but the guys kept alone in their own little sheds upgrade your blammo-factor from grenades to rockets that upgrade each time you rescue another such prisoner.

The arcade original, not unlike that of Contra, is non-stop, with very little in the way of transitions between areas of strife. Not so for the NES port and some other versions; in those, you even get cool little cutscenes illustrating what a rad time you’re having cutting a swathe of carnage through the enemy. Every version has bosses, though, and they’re no joke… from mammoth war machines to walls of launchers and even hostile rows of statues, each set will turn your life into an exercise in move-or-die.

Guerilla War

SNK, 1987

A big part of what makes this one stand out is its original choice of subject matter, which was hastily and clumsily scrubbed for Western release: in Guerilla War, the two players are supposed to be Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, overthrowing the Batista regime. In fact, the game was called Guevara in Japan. Both the titling and dialogue were quickly altered for release in the USA, in hopes of rendering the entire thing generic… I’d say they did nine tenths of a job.

I CAN STILL KINDA TELL THOUGH, CAN’T YOU? I GUESS IT’S JUST INTUITION.

But whatever. This isn’t an opinion piece or a history lesson. Anyone can agree it’s a ballsy move to make a game about that kind of heated subject, and anyone who’s played Guerilla War can agree it’s a pretty balls-to-the-wall run and gun game that is at least worthy of having such a past attached to it.

The only tactical concern of yours besides not dying when you dismount a quick boat to singlehandedly topple the entire enemy force is not to kill hostages accidentally. This is hard, not only because your enemies are all over the place and it’s hard to tell what’s going on, but because it’s tempting to just fire wantonly into cross-traffic and hurl grenades in front of you to clear a path through the chaos of battle. While this is a viable tactic about 2/3 of the time, it gets risky when there are bound and gagged men from your side nearby. Let’s be realistic: some will die. Rescue the ones that don’t.

In the grand tradition of war-themed video games, this one has no shortage of over-the-top enemy shit. You want to fight a train? Well, get ready to fight a fucking train, Che. All by yourself.

Strider Hiryu

Capcom, 1989

Many of us have played the NES title Strider, and most of us know it’s a far cry from the source material. Strider Hiryu, released originally as an arcade title and gradually ported to tons of systems besides the NES, is based off a 1988 Kadokawa Shoten manga of the same name. Hiryu (which means Flying Dragon) is also the protagonist’s name. Here’s what makes it a war game: Hiryu is an assassin sent to kill the overlord of a Communist dystopia in the year 2048. This game was a taste of sci-fi blended into the familiar orgy of violence, and while the overtones may have been lost on a lot of casual players, they still set an interesting example of theoretical futurism carried across different media. While the Red Menace of Soviet Russia ended up reaching a far different fate in real life, the 2048 of this timeline is still a hell of a place to be a super-assassin.

Yep *hitches thumbs through belt-loops* that there looks purdy Soviet to me, soldier. You know what to do.

As Hiryu, you get not only a plasma-generating sword and the acrobatic skills of a jacked-up gibbon, but you can also call upon three different “option” robots to help you unleash a whirlwind of murder on the Motherland. You also get a grappling hook, which seems superfluous after mentioning the other shit, but it comes in handy. All this gear is good, because your target, the Grandmaster, has spared nothing in defending himself. Be ready for robot gorillas (far larger, of course, than organic ones), elaborate laser traps, and more troops than you can shake a plasma sword at.

Robo-Ivan just got knocked the fuck apart by a sword made out of what’s inside the Sun. Robo-Sergei back there is having one of those moments where you wonder what your robo-life would have been if you’d just stayed in robo-art college and studied robo-cubism instead of joining the People’s Droid Army.

I’m kidding. Shake it at all of them. Leave none alive.

FINAL VERDICT:

Jackal – 7/10

Guerilla War – 7/10

Strider Hiryu – 8/10

One of Jackal’s aforementioned cinematics. See you mid-April for more red-blooded gunpowder action!

By this point I’m fairly certain a lot of our readers were kids or preteens when the Disney lineup of cartoons was popular in the 1990s. Some of them were barely memorable, but the ones like DuckTales, TaleSpin and Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers were good enough that some of us (definitely including myself) can sing the theme songs verbatim on the drop of a dime. Of course, in the period between ’89 and ’92, during the last big boom for the NES, a lot of these and other pop culture staples got licensed games. Again, some of these were unfortunate flops in terms of quality, but Rescue Rangers was actually one of the decent ones.

I sang along with this all the way through before grabbing the embed code. Please feel free to do the same. If you’re self-conscious, just make sure no one’s watching… they may want to join in.

If you’re not familiar with the history of the chipmunk duo, they had been around well before someone put clothes on them and made them tiny detectives. They were actually created back in 1943, and appeared in 23 short films until about 1956. They usually acted as gentle antagonists or foils to the dog Pluto, another staple background character in the Disney lineup. In 1988, Disney got the idea of reviving the two chipmunks as part of their flourishing series of network cartoons. The series was run on Disney channel in 1989, and entered network syndication on ABC and CBS in 1990. The show lasted until 1993 on television, and was quietly phased out along with most of Disney’s early-90s afternoon syndicated toons.

While researching this article, I actually learned that their names are a pun on the name of a famous 18th Century cabinet maker, Thomas Chippendale. It has nothing to do with the erotic male dancers. that’s… oddly comforting to me.

In the summer of 1990, Capcom released the Rescue Rangers game for the NES. This was Capcom’s second Disney-themed release for the NES, after 1989’s hugely successful DuckTales title. Overall, Chip n Dale sold 1.2 million copies worldwide for the NES, which we’ll acknowledge as a modest but solid success for a game of the period. It is widely praised not only for its creatively designed gameplay, but also for its engaging 2 player experience wherein many parts of the game are much more fun if played with both chipmunks.

The North American and Japanese box art. The game’s Japanese title is Chippu to Dēru no Daisakusen, which just means “Chip n Dale’s Mission.”

The plot of the game begins with the duo investigating a lost kitten, which turns out to be a ruse by the series villain, Fat Cat. The porcine feline has used the trick to kidnap Gadget, the team’s tech wizard, and put her talents to nefarious ends. From stage to stage, she is able to send small hints via a crude phone she makes without Fat Cat’s knowledge. Chip and Dale must navigate a not-totally-linear series of stages to try and reach Fat Cat’s lair before he achieves his evil plan, whatever it is. Part of your pursuit of Fat Cat involves using a rocket to go to a whole new map of levels.

He not only used a baby as a diversion, but a baby of his own kind. Heartless bastard.

Our tiny pair of gumshoes are besieged the entire time by a strange crew of baddies: evil robots, metal mice, shapechanging glop monsters, rude kangaroos, and assorted other ne’er-do-wells who want to keep them from their goal. Chip and Dale are able to defend themselves by taking a page out of Super Mario Brothers 2‘s book, lifting and hurling all kinds of objects. They can even hurl one another, although this can be a risky tactic at best. Larger items, when lifted, can slow you down a little, but these are few and far between. Gameplay involves not only tossing tiny boxes at your enemies, but also navigating nasty puzzles. Notable are two examples: a series of faucets you must turn off as you advance to avoid being scalded, and a set of switches attached to machines that will drop heavy metal ball bearings on you if not deactivated. The bosses are all huge (compared to you), and require a few smacks with some item nearby to put them down. You can also get a powerup that summons Zipper, the little mosquito or hornet guy, or whatever he was supposed to be. Not only are you invulnerable while he stays on screen, but he flies around stinging the shit out of anything he can reach, which can clear a screen pretty quick.

A small gallery of the lunacy our eensy-weensy heroes must endure to rescue their friend and stop Fat Cat. Click an image to enlarge it (a little bit).

Both this game and DuckTales got sequels on the same console, and those titles were fairly popular as well. A completely unrelated Chip n Dale game came out for mobile in 2010, but I wasn’t able to find much about it anywhere. Also of note, the game was ported to Nintendo’s PlayChoice10 arcade-style console.

I grant Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers for the NES 7 out of 10 stars. It’s a really fun game to play with two players, it’s respectably difficult but approachable, and overall it’s a memorable Capcom title. It also deserves credit as another example of a licensed game that isn’t utter shit.

That’s all folks! See you later in June for more NRW Gaming action! Tune in next time!

I write a lot about games I love. Writing for NRW has given me the platform to do that, and it’s wonderful. However, I can’t neglect the games I absolutely hate. Ranking high on that list is Ghosts & Goblins, a game whose enduring success baffles me to this day.

Ghosts & Goblins is an arcade platformer that not only enjoyed success in coin-op form but was ported to numerous systems over the years. Initially released by Capcom in 1985, the game did well enough in American arcades to be considered memorable. I’m willing to wager the majority of my readers will remember one of the console ports; the NES and Genesis both got one, and the SNES received a sort of sequel.

The X68000 (left) and NES box art. Click to enlarge.

In Ghosts & Goblins, you play as Sir Arthur, a remarkably brave but fragile knight whose lady friend has been kidnapped by “Satan, King of Demon World.” Satan gets the drop on you and your maiden fair “Prin Prin” while you two are bonding in the cemetery.

Nude in a graveyard. She’s fully clothed. I’m not sure what’s supposed to be happening here, but tragedy will soon strike. Not that it probably wouldn’t anyway.

Arthur must battle through six stages of random and numerous monsters to reach the throne room of Satan. On his way, he can find… well, surprisingly little. There are some better weapons than his lance lying around, chiefly a cross and some fire. There are a lot of things you can pick up that give you points, too, like treasure. Once in a while, you might even find a replacement suit of plate mail if yours falls off from being hit once by a monster. Don’t get hit while you’re in your underpants or you die! That’s right, G&G not only murders you repeatedly, it kills you while you’re in your undies.

It doesn’t look like Lucifer’s wearing pants either. I guess when you have a second huge terrifying face for privates, that gets kind of cumbersome. Elastic waist only. If ever.

I’d like to stress: we’re not dealing with normal, “reasonable” difficulty here. This game is insane. It’s sadistic. Once you get rolling, there’s no such thing as a safe spot to collect yourself. You’re constantly assailed on all sides, your armor absorbs one hit, and (SPOILER) if you beat the game without using the cross or flame weapon, you get a message like this:

This happens to me all the time in real life, except I’m usually in front of a keyboard. I am still usually in my underpants, though.

I think I’d rather allow a bullet ant to bite me than play this game for an hour, but that hasn’t done much to stymie its popularity. The Wii/3DS Virtual Console and Game Boy Advance have ported it in recent years, and it was released on several home computers in its day, including the ZX Spectrum, X68000, MSX, and Amstrad. G&G was also part of Capcom’s Arcade Cabinet release for the Xbox 360. The franchise continued with multiple sequels under the Ghouls & Ghosts banner, with the game formula barely changing. Two spin-offs were made, Gargoyle’s Quest and Maximo. Characters from the games are featured in Marvel vs Capcom 3.

I will say this: the original arcade cabinet looks gnarly. I see actual ghosts and actual goblins. 

I’ll be generous and give Ghosts & Goblins 5 out of 10 stars. It’s one of those games I fail to understand the appeal of, but it’s not total crap. It’s just weird and hard and kind of… creepy in ways it maybe didn’t mean to be. In any case, it’s part of our hobby’s history.

As a bonus, here’s a speed runner completely tearing ass through the whole game, which is vindicating for me. It’s like watching my dad beat someone up. Not that he ever did that. My dad’s nice… that’s where I got it from!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/05/20/ghosts-goblins-capcom-1985/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2015/03/11/street-fighter-ii-the-world-warrior-capcom-1991/ https://newretrowave.com/2015/03/11/street-fighter-ii-the-world-warrior-capcom-1991/#respond Wed, 11 Mar 2015 17:40:23 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2015/03/11/2015311street-fighter-ii-the-world-warrior-capcom-1991/ Street fighter II: The World Warrior is where the franchise started for most fans; though its prequel enjoyed moderate success, it was this one that truly caught on and blew new air into arcade fighting games as a genre.

]]> Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (Capcom, 1991)

When I was a kid, my dad used to do league bowling. I’d stay home the nights he actually did league, but on some nights he’d go to practice a few frames, and he’d take me with him. I had no interest in bowling; I just knew the alley near our home had a sizeable arcade (for a bowling alley). I also knew if I bothered him enough, he’d pop a few singles in my hand for the change machine and jokingly grumble at me to get out of his hair. I also know what I’d be spending those quarters on, more often than not. My love affair with the Street Fighter franchise all started when I heard this, as I walked in to the arcade area…

Street fighter II: The World Warrior is where the franchise started for most fans; though its prequel enjoyed moderate success, it was this one that truly caught on and blew new air into arcade fighting games as a genre. In SFII, your chosen fighter (ranging from karate masters to Russian wrestlers to sumo guys and even the animal-like Blanka) battles all comers in best 2 out of 3 matches for the chance to tackle 4 bosses and win the title of World Warrior. While later versions of the game (Hyper Fighting, Championship edition, etc.) expanded character selection and gameplay options slightly, this was the original “where it’s at” that got the hype started.

Your choices were limited, yes, but they were still awesome.

Expanding upon concepts introduced in the prequel, SFII’s gameplay included command-based special moves, such as the famous Hadoken fireball and Shoryuken uppercut of the game’s unofficial protagonists, Ryu and Ken. It also featured gameplay dynamics that allowed for “combos” – carefully timed or orchestrated sets of moves that could set up an unblockable or difficult-to-avoid string of damage to one’s hapless opponents. The 8 fighters you have to choose from each have different styles and strategies (save for Ken and Ryu, who admittedly have very few differences). This allowed players to experiment and gave the game an extensive replay value, essential for any arcade title’s success.

Chun Li takes to the air (upside down, no less) to kick the crap out of a staggered Ken. Each character’s special moves could be used as part of a rich tapestry of beat-down magic.

The graphics weren’t astronomically ahead of their time, but were definitely high-quality. Seeing as this was the 14th title released by Capcom for the CPS hardware, they’d had time to practice and polish – and it shows. The backgrounds of the stages are richly illustrated and often animated, showing pumped-up crowds and even elephants on Dhalsim’s stage. The sound and music are perhaps more worthy of accolade; certain themes and sound effects are so memorable that they have carved themselves into pop culture (one good example being Guile’s stage theme). There were lots of neat little things about gameplay, too, like little bits of dialogue when you won or lost, and individual storyline endings for each playable fighter.

You go, girl

“My favorite character’s ending. E. Honda is the man.”

SFII: World Warrior has spawned countless sequels and ports; the selection of characters has more than quadrupled (probably an understatement) and the complexity of gameplay has increased with tons and tons more special moves and more mods to gameplay. There have even been crossovers with other franchises, even Marvel superheroes. But nothing, in my humble opinion, compares with the simple quality of the original. Lots of old-timers are also purists; count me among them, at least where this franchise is concerned.

 

Thanks for reading!

Click HERE if you want to watch someone play through the game as Ryu, the “good guy.”

 

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2015/03/11/street-fighter-ii-the-world-warrior-capcom-1991/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2014/12/01/wretrowave-com201412retro-gaming-mega-man-html/ https://newretrowave.com/2014/12/01/wretrowave-com201412retro-gaming-mega-man-html/#respond Mon, 01 Dec 2014 16:00:00 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2014/12/01/wretrowave-com201412retro-gaming-mega-man-html/

Old games used to get overly serious and realistic art.

Arcade games and console games are fundamentally different
in a lot of ways. While the hardware, game mechanics, and depth of narrative
might be the most obvious, there is something at the core of the two that keeps
them separated. Before going in depth with my retrospective review on Mega Man (1987), I’d like to
first analyze the intention behind the design of an arcade game and a console
game.

We’ve written about arcades before. The period from
the late 70’s to the mid-80’s is known as the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games. As the popularity of arcade games decreased by the end of the decade,
console games were experiencing a boom thanks in part to the Nintendo
Entertainment System. Because of this shift, many old NES games feel more like
arcade games.  The fundamental purpose of
a console game is to provide you with satisfaction to justify your purchase of
the game. Games are usually not very cheap, so designers try to make their
product the most worthwhile for your money (ideally, at least). Arcade games,
on the other hand, are all about taking your money in small sums (quarters),
giving you a brief, enjoyable, and difficult experience, and then encouraging
you to play again to go further and get a higher score.

Mega Man feels
like an arcade game. It is so hard that it feels punishing at times and so
addictive that you can’t stop coming back to it. The amount of trial and error
inherent in the classic platformer makes the experience feel like learning a
song. Through your failures and deaths you wind up developing something
resembling a rhythm. You know  which
screen is coming next or which flying penguin is going to dive on you. I wasn’t
able to beat any levels on the first try, but on the attempt where I did beat them, it looked like I was an
absolute professional.

Though the level design was difficult at times, there were
several gems hidden throughout. As an avid player of the Mega Man X series, I knew that each boss gives you a new weapon to
your arsenal. And I also knew that each boss weapon was super effective against
another boss. They usually make sense, barring a few mix-ups (Ice > Fire? I
guess that means… thunder on the ice guy? Okay.) For example, Elecman’s
weakness is the weapon you receive from the truly epic Custman (my only
reasoning is that scissors cut wires?). Elecman’s level is full of these small
platforms with enemies on top that make avoiding them difficult. If you switch
over to the Rolling Cutter weapon, you’ll notice that the odd trajectory of the
attack fits the level design perfectly. The level becomes much easier if you
use the Cutsman’s weapon to get through it. Ideally, by the time you reach the
end of the level you will be pretty comfortable with using it.

I stand by what I said about completing each level being
similar to learning a song. That said, Iceman’s level is like learning a song
and then being expected to flawlessly improvise with someone else who is also
improvising. Everything is typical Mega Man gameplay, and then this happens…

Those platforms shoot sideways. Okay, okay, annoying, but
whatever it’s a challenge. Oh, but they also move in a completely random and
erratic pattern. Well that just doesn’t sound fair. Oh, and one more thing,
we’re going to throw some robot penguins at you for the last half of this part
of the level. But wait, that might be too difficult. Let’s make sure the player
has a platform to rest on halfway through. Good point, but we shouldn’t make it
too easy for them. This is a video
game after all, this is serious business, not Soviet Russia Handout Land. Let’s
cover that platform in ice. Video game
ice. Which science has proven is twice as slippery as regular old boring ice.

Seriously.

The other issue I have with this game is about rationing out
lives. There is a checkpoint immediately before each end of the level boss
fight. Should you die in the boss fight, you will respawn there with full
health and one less life. The game is so difficult that many times I would reach
the boss, look to see if I had an extra life lying around, and just let the
boss kill me so I could tackle him with full health. That is just poor design.
Also, your health replenishes with each respawn, but your ammo does not. This
means a particular difficult stretch of a level will become progressively more
difficult. The general difficulty of this game is also distributed oddly. It is
very difficult in the beginning when you don’t have any special boss weapons,
and especially difficult in the end (cough, Boss Rush). The middle portion of the game
is by far the easiest. This uneven difficulty may be annoying for some players.

You can tell the designers were on to something when you
play Mega Man. It has vibrant colors,
an excellent soundtrack, and surprisingly rich and deep gameplay, with little
secrets here and there. The game is pretty easy to find. I played the PS2 port
from the Anniversary Collection, but you can also find it on the virtual
console. Though Mega Man 2 is widely
considered better than this game, this is the game that has lent its design to
Mega Man’s character in the new Smash
Bros., as well as the fact that one of the bosses from this game appears in
the new Smash Bros.

Final Thoughts:

Favorite Song: Elecman Stage

Favorite Boss: Cutsman, I actually have a shirt with him on
it!

Favorite Weapon: Magnet Beam, of course.  

Fun Facts: It’s Mega
Man, not Megaman. I’ve been
making that mistake for over a decade.

– Joey Edsall

(@JoeyEdsall)

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