Smokey64 ‘1994’ is out now via Bandcamp.

Old School RuneScape

Old School RuneScape, launched back in 2001, is considered a retro title by today’s standard. Making its name in the web version, OSRS has finally made it to mobile, and there’s been no compromise on quality. The mobile version is a replica of the web variant, and by subscribing players will be able to get stuck into even more action. OSRS still has a considerable following, 18 years after its release, so it’s no surprise that the mobile version of the hit game is fairing so well.

Sega Forever titles

SEGA, back in the day, created some epic games, as well as characters. From Sonic the Hedgehog through to Kid Chameleon, SEGA games were stuff dreams were made of. The great news is, Android users can now get stuck into these classic SEGA titles, and they can even play them all add free. Every gamer will have enjoyed a SEGA title or two at some point and being able to relive them all on-demand is retro gold. Sonic the Hedgehog is, of course, the pick of the bunch.

Square Enix games

Like SEGA, Square Enix is a company who have produced some fantastic games over the years. When it comes to retro games, you could describe Square Enix as being old hands, and now their console classics have made it to mobile. They’ve also undergone a bit of a facelift too, to ensure they have a bit of a modern look and feel about them. Players can enjoy Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest titles, as well as others, to experience retro mobile gaming at its very best.

Tetris

Tetris is a game which has been modernised and redeveloped over the years, but it always seems to have stayed the same where the game mode is concerned, and that’s fantastic news. It was the addictive gameplay which attracted players when the game was first released, and that remains its biggest draw still to this day. Players can now enjoy Tetris in all its glory on mobile, allowing them to play on the go, just as they could when the game hit the GameBoy all those years ago.

Minesweeper

Who remembers playing Minesweeper on PC years ago, to pass a few minutes during a school lesson, or while on a break at work? The game, which became very popular due to how simple it is to play, has recently made a comeback on Android, and now players can attempt to sweep the field free of mines. It’s a classic game, with several new features added, and by far and away one of our favourite retro titles available to play on Android devices.

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!

I figured I’d be safe going to the well again with the NES games. We love to come back here. We love the thunder. The light. It’s just what we know. I’ll skip a lengthy introduction; I’m after my familiar methods today, bringing you three more games for the NES/Famicom.

BURAI FIGHTER

Taxan, 1990

Burai Fighter is another one of the great shmups for the NES. The plot is pretty formulaic (alien warfare, you’re the only one who can save us, yada yada), but playing this one is a ton of fun. You can move and fire in different directions, which allows for great control of the battlefield. And this shit does get rough. The bosses are particularly interesting in Burai Fighter, but there’s never a dull moment. Between the fighting and the goodies you can grab, it’s a thriller once you get the hang of it.

This is a moving Dio song right here. Poetry in motion.

The game looks great, nothing too fancy but crisp and clean. The soundtrack is one I can enjoy; some of it is squeaky high-end-heavy filler, but for the most part it keeps up. I give Burai Fighter 7 out of 10. An admitted bias for the genre and an appreciation for the cool bosses has me digging this one from Taxan.

DIRTY HARRY

Gray Matter, 1990

This shit is for real. You want a mean, wild game? Get in on my dude Harry here.

You are marching around kicking furniture, shooting men in the face, stomping on snakes, leaping over floor lasers. Just ducking makes you immune to ball bats. Oh, and you can swap your blue and white suits out. Suffice it to say this plays a little more like you’d expect an adaptation of Bad Lieutenant to play. It’s still a lot of fun. It’s ordered chaos in a manageable package. My only minor gripe is that it’s one of those games where so many of the scenes look the same that it can get mildly disorienting. Whatever. So would an actual city. Well done. Pretty fun active gameplay makes up for a lot though. I like kicking around in Dirty Harry. You can get pretty sick gun power ups, and it’s fun to just plow through.

He’s not even worried. He’s adjusting his collar. Fuck your gasoline in a bottle.

There’s nothing too spit-and-polish about the graphics but they get the job done. The music is kind of loud, but it’s pretty good, written by composers Steven Samler and Elliot Delman. This game, in fact, is the only NES title to credit the composers not only in the manual, but on the back of the game’s box.

Dirty Harry gets 7 out of 10 in my book. Only the eventual monotony counts against it; otherwise it’s an entertaining title with a lot of sit-and-play value to it.

TASAC

Thin Chen, 1992

Sometimes it’s important to draw attention to something because it embodies an idea, principle, or concept in action. An icon of its kind. Sometimes an object lesson.

Tasac is an object lesson in really not trying very hard.

This game was produced and released in 1992. Let’s have a look at it, item by item. Gameplay? An oversimplified, lazy version of a genre it’s hard to fuck up. The plot is kind of cool, according to a snippet I found from GameFAQs:

“In A.D. 20XX, humans are engaged in fierce warfare with TASAC – the alien bionic mutants. Landsy and Dagrel, commanders of Earth Defense Arms, are encountering the toughest enemies known to man. They must destroy TASAC to rescue the Earth, otherwise humans will be turned into slaves under the TASAC terrorism!”

The graphics? Are you kidding? Unforgivably lazy. Music and sound? 1986 sound while clumsy circus-like music meanders across the drab play space. It’s really the kind of soundtrack that belongs in a McDonald’s Playland.

Christmas candy choo choo train colors and big clunky crunchy -looking fuckery. Hudson had this kind of shit beat in 1987. This is out of some kind of mill. Some kind of terror-basement. I never.

This is two steps up from Galaga. Not to talk shit on Galaga, even. Galaga outshines this easily. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Game FAQs rates it 2.5 out of 5. I’m giving Tasac a 2 out of 10. It is a game. I’m not willing to give it much else.

Thanks for tuning in again. We’ll do three more on Thursday. Stay Retro!

WCW World Champion Wrestling

Nichibutsu/Pony Canyon/FCI, 1989

It’s no lie to say that I was a bit of a kook for pro wrestling as a kid, and even today I sometimes listen to podcasts and “shoot” interviews featuring the sport’s old hands and classic geniuses; sometimes I will cue up a playlist of Jim Cornette’s colorful and profanity-laced rantings just to entertain myself while I’m about my daily tasks. I remember the WCW NES game becoming available – I first knew of it from a DC Comics ad in early 1990 – and I remember being… okay with it.

WCW features a popular spread of the promotion’s wrestlers from the late 80s, including the Road Warriors, Lex Luger, and The Man Himself, Nature Boy Ric Flair. WCW has a pretty cool feature that a lot of its contemporaries didn’t: each wrestler has a unique move set, and you assign four moves to the four directional buttons before each match. This not only lets you mix things up to keep the game from getting too boring, it also allows for a little bit of strategy if you decide that you want to get that in-depth with this shit.

Sting and Michael P.S. Hayes perform a gratuitous and elaborate sex act, right before your very eyes.

The real drawbacks are that the controls do take some getting used to, heavily overshadowed by the typical Pony Canyon graphical laziness. It’s saved by some really good in-game music and surprisingly clear digitized voices.

I give WCW a 5 out of 10. I’d say check it out if you’re into old school pro wrestling, but be ready to take a few minutes to settle in and just enjoy the nostalgia while you’re at it.

The Three Stooges

Incredible Technologies/Beam Software, 1989

This is another one of those games where they tried desperately to lash a group of mini games into one cohesive product. I hazard to say that Three Stooges isn’t entirely bad, it’s just… well, let me try something new and be polite. I, for one, think this game is kind of shitty. There may be people out there who like it, or even love it. I haven’t met any.

The story is noble enough, a blue collar drama wherein Larry, Moe, and Curly aim to help the orphanage stay afloat despite the efforts of a Snidely Whiplash-style “evil banker.” The trio go into action, making money for the tots in a variety of fittingly absurd ways. Pie throwing and cracker eating contests, moonlighting as doctors and waiters, the Stooges are broad in their vision when it comes to making dough. My favorite so far has to be the hospital job; no HMO will cover the high-speed lunacy of the gurney race. The “contest” themed gigs play a lot like parts of LJN’s Back to the Future, which is not a compliment. It’s more of an accusation.

One of the many classic moments where I have no fucking idea what’s going on, but I’m doing my best anyway.

This is a port of a 1987 computer game so I’ll pull my punches a little bit. The graphics are actually pretty good for what we’re dealing with, and even the usually lousy “realistic” close-ups of familiar characters are very on-point. The sound is absolute dog shit, however. Dinky, repetitive music loops, badly garbled voice samples… I believe the audio was where they cut corners when updating this game from its original format. Compared to, say, Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II, the sound is absolutely piss-poor.

The Three Stooges gets a 5 out of 10 for effort, because while the sound drives me fucking nuts, a couple of these sub-games are actually pretty fun to play and I think the spirit of the source material carries through fairly well.

Super Spike V’Ball

Technos Japan, 1989

I am normally pretty wish-washy on sports games, especially on early consoles like the NES. The RBI series and Blades of Steel are exemplary games for the system, but most of the rest of the NES sports games amount to convoluted crap as far as I’m concerned. I was happy to find another exception to that rule in Super Spike.

My stupid ass didn’t have too much trouble figuring out how to serve and keep the ball in play, and I felt very much like the challenge level was scaled appropriately. I felt like Super Spike was giving me a chance to learn the ropes before violently strangling me with them.

Ball-bashing Chad action at its finest.

One look at the game in action will remind you of Double Dragon I and II for the NES; decently-defined sprites and appropriately intense sound effects mark this as Technos work through and through. The game plays pretty smoothly and the action gets intense. The music is hit or miss, but when it’s good it’s on par with any of the ballsy tracks from the NES version of Double Dragon II.

Super Spike gets a 7 out of 10. I was pleasantly surprised by it, well-entertained, and found it to be another solid piece of work by Technos Japan.

Be sure to keep an eye out for the finale of this round of reviews on the 28^th. Perhaps after this, we will move on to another system we’ve neglected so far. If you have any suggestions, feel free to email me or hit me up on the Facebook page. I’ve got to sweep the cutting room floor now, so goodbye until then, and stay retro!

It’s almost October, and with a second season of the intense Netflix animated series based on the classic video game franchise, we’re taking a look at all of the info confirmed for Castlevania Season 2!

1. When is it coming out?

Castlevania Season 2 will be premiering on Netflix in its entirety on October 26th, 2018. Season 1 dropped July 7, 2017, and while it was an action-packed addition to the summer, the new season coming just in time for Halloween warms our spooky hearts.

2. How long will it be?

Castlevania had a tumultuous journey to be the violent animated action we can stream today. It was originally intended to be a film, and the length of Season 1 reflects that. In fact, that’s a valid criticism of the first season. 4 episodes of 23 minutes each were nice, but it felt like it just didn’t tell enough of a story. The good news is that Castlevania Season 2 is going to be twice as long, with 8 episodes ordered. That’s enough to give it a proper season arc after what felt like a prelude.

3. Who is writing Castlevania Season 2?

As with Season 1, acclaimed comic book writer Warren Ellis will be writing Season 2. While Ellis is undoubtedly more known for his science fiction stories — of which he is likely one of the best living today — Season 1 proves how effectively he could tell a dark fantasy story. He also clearly has a love for the series, and the game this is based on in particular (aside from one character). He has been trying to get a Castlevania adaptation on screens since the mid-2000’s, so you can only imagine the passion he has for his work now.

4. Which video game is it based on?

Just like Season 1, Castlevania Season 2 will focus on the story of the 1989 classic Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. This makes sense from a narrative standpoint as it has three well-defined characters at the center and a great overarching story to tell. You might notice that visually, the Castlevania series doesn’t seem to match the aesthetic of the NES game. That’s because the animated series is stylistically modeled after the PlayStation classic Symphony of the Night, which forever changed the visual language of Castlevania.

That’s not all though. Based on the Season 2 trailer, we think that Curse of Darkness might be making its way into the season. We’ll talk more about that in a little bit.

5. Who are the main characters?

Trevor Belmont was undoubtedly the main character and focus on Season 1. Castlevania Season 2 has been confirmed to focus on the three characters united at the end of Season 1. While we are used to Trevor Belmont, we will get more time with Dracula’s son Adrien Tepes and the mage Sypha Belnades. Adrien Tepes, also called Alucard, is an extremely interesting character from the entire game franchise, so the greater focus on him could be a highlight of the entire season.

6. Who is the cast?

The cast will be the same in Season 2 as in Season 1. The primary voice actors being acclaimed English actor Richard Armitage, James Callis of multiple successful science fiction series, and Scottish actor Graham McTavish.

7. Will this be the final season?

Castlevania Season 2 wasn’t confirmed until Season 1 was released. We already have confirmation that Season 3 has been greenlit. With the team behind the show knowing that they have longer to tell their story, we can’t wait to see how much they are able to set up come October.

8. What about Grant?

Warren Ellis has said that Grant is his least favorite character from Dracula’s Curse, and his absence from Season 1 was noticed. We aren’t the biggest fans of Grant here either, so that was fine by us, but some fans took issue with it. The trailer shows what appears to be Grant attacking Trevor, so we’re left wondering if this will be a throwaway easter egg, or something more.

9. What about the Vampire Killer?

The Vampire Killer is the whip the Belmont family uses to slay Dracula throughout the centuries. In season 1 we saw it as a leather whip in the hands of Trevor Belmont. Warren Ellis proved excellent at showing the video game convention of a party of heroes coming together interpreted for a TV series, and the trailer clearly shoes Trevor with an upgraded, chain whip. It will be interesting to see how Season 2 handles the convention of weapon upgrades.

10. What was that about Curse of Darkness?

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2) is a sequel to Dracula’s Curse, taking place three years later. The main character of the game is Hector, a former ally of Dracula who betrayed his master. Promotional art from those involve confirmed that Hector will be a part of Castlevania Season 2. With Season 3 confirmed, we have to wonder if that is Ellis’ endgame for his show.

Check out the trailer and its synthwave inspired sounds here!

You really can’t go wrong with some Super Mario action. It’s been clear-as-a-bell true since the poor bastard first dug in his heels and made a giant ape his hammer-bitch. The plucky plumber and his perpetually overshadowed brother Luigi have since stood as the mascots – no, the AMBASSADORS – for Nintendo across the world. When the NES hit our shores in ’85 and we first took a crack at the original Super Mario Brothers, it’s been simpatico.

I can still remember getting my grey box for Christmas in 1990. My supplemental was a starter set of three games: Castlevania III, Contra, and that glorious smiling flying asshole on the cover of Super Mario Brothers 3. I was quickly convinced that SMB3 was the hard-wire shit, and it was.

But I had no idea what was coming. The NES had a big brother, and it had one barn-burner of a Mario game. To quote the late, great Captain Lou Albano: Often imitated, but never duplicated.

Super Mario World hit Western shores (no doubt blasting “Immigrant Song” on a boombox) in the late summer of ’91. I don’t need to sit here and run my trap about this being one of the best games of all time; 20,000,000+ copies sold can’t be wrong. When viewed within its place in time, SMW understandably changed everything, because it was Mario squared. In typical Nintendo R&D fashion, work began as soon as a previous project ended. Shigeru Miyamoto (the man we have to thank for all of this) had come up with the idea of setting a Mario game in a “dinosaur land” back during SMB3’s run, and had even conceptualized Yoshi by then. Though some difficulty was anticipated when it came to tackling a new platform, the team’s trepidation was balanced by the promise of far greater capability – the limits of the NES were a thing of the past, and it was time to make some art.

Yoshi, the original martyr-complex beta-male.

The story of SMW picks up right where the 3^rd NES game left off… or I suppose a little bit afterward. The brothers decide to treat Princess Toadstool to a nice vacation in… you guessed it… fucking Dinosaur Land. Why no, Mario, I don’t expect anything horrible or tragic to happen. Not here on this landmass full of monsters. Needless to say, Her Highness vanishes, and it turns out that 12 pack will have to wait. The boys have a princess to rescue… again. After looking around a little bit, Mario and Luigi find a huge fuckoff dinosaur egg, but thankfully its tenant is friendly. Out pops a goofy, soft-serve little dinosaur named Yoshi, and the first thing he does is complain that some of his kin have also been taken. AND GUESS WHO DID IT?

Turns out, not a single goddamn one of them learned their lesson.

You guessed right.

While the basic concept of SMW is a snug fit with its predecessor,s there’s so much more going on that the comparison must end there. Koopas and Goombas make up a thin sliver of the pie chart when it comes to enemies; you’ll be harangued by dinosaurs, the coolest moles ever, Bullet Bills the size of a goddamn house, lava monsters (my favorite), and huge terrible assholes in ill-fitting football pads. THOSE GUYS. In a shining early example of clever AI and design, Chargin’ Chuck is… well, he’s inventive when it comes to assaulting you at every turn. Mario can spin jump in addition to his normal move set, which is helpful when you need to, oh say, bounce off giant saw blades or body-drill your way through some blocks. Sometimes Yoshi (or one of his color-themed cousins) will show up to give you a hand. Yoshi is pretty useful for two things: eating shit that’s about two hand spans in front of him and taking the fall like a dope when you need some extra air time on a jump. A lot of the same power ups are around, but this time instead of a raccoon suit or any of that shit you just get the sickest cape this side of James Brown’s id. Not only can you get it to behave similarly to the raccoon leaf in SMB3, you can even parachute-glide insane distances with it. Mario and Luigi Die Hard their way through forests, seas, caves, ghost houses (yes, entire houses full of ghosts) and castles to put the hot stop on all of King Koopa’s brats… all the time knowing that Big K is waiting.

SMW has a save function, which is entirely necessary because this game isn’t just some mindless platform jumper. There are some steep challenges, including but not limited to:

• saws everywhere
• entire rooms literally flooded with ghosts who mock the very life in your veins
• an ample amount of secret shit, namely some Star Road levels that get Evel-Kneivel-on-meth intense
• tons of thwomps; is he reproducing, I swear, how do they even have sex
• pissed off triceratops that are apparently named Reznor (BOW DOWN BEFORE THE ONE YOU SERVE)
• I hope you like those jet-black invincible munchy-plants because it turns out they’re like kudzu here
• entire sections of the game world without terra firma, offering you only the aimlessly drifting platforms you’ve come to dread
• the ceiling just falling, not centered on you but you know, fucking everywhere

Obviously the graphics kick the shit out of anything on the NES, with a comparatively rich color depth and other luscious details like parallaxing skies and pleasingly detailed animation. The sound stays neck in neck with the visuals; SMW’s soundtrack is one of those OSTs that I can listen to the “extended” versions of on YouTube and never get tired of. There’s a ton of character in the music, most notably (to me) the underground BGM and the “athletic” music.

Two other aspects of SMW that it should be praised for are its replay value and its overall charm. 8-bit graphics only showed us in so much detail; it turns out that those Italian boys have a lot of character, and so do their friends and foes. The appeal was (and is) universal.

I rate Super Mario World an 8/10. It’s one of the cornerstones of retro gaming, a pivotal point of acceleration for one of the world’s most recognizable and well-loved cultural icons.

Thanks for reading! Stay Retro!

I’ll start this off the way I like to start as many conversations as possible these days: I have a ton of emulators now, not to mention a handful of working consoles. Every moment I don’t spend writing, doing other work, playing D&D, sleeping, reading, or doing gangster shit (read: more sleeping), I tend to spend screwing around with games no newer than the year 1998 or so.

It occurred to me that hadn’t done a “grab bag” style write-up for a while, so I looked over my breadth of selection and got an idea. I could just use a particular year as my theme. Any platform, and genre, any style. Here’s what I’m thinking. Let’s do it up right and have a look at some games that are turning 30 this year. That’s right… get in the DeLorean, because we’re going back to ’87, and we don’t need roads because your ass can sit right there and enjoy the show.

R-Type | Irem | July 1, 1987

The shoot-em-up remains one of my favorite styles of game, and the 1980s were its formative era. We saw the genre that began with games like Galaga begin to transform, yielding high-octane excitement that progressively offered more and more challenges along with the advancement in gaming technology. R-Type is notable in the history of the shmup not only for being one of Irem’s most successful games, but also for its considerable difficulty and innovative gameplay elements.

Yo… this is vaginas. You’re not even trying to hide it, Irem. You straight up made a boss monster by stacking up lady-parts.

For real though, this game is fucking HARD. Like a lot of shooters, the focus is on the game itself, not the plot; you’re responsible for saving humanity from an alien menace hellbent on destroying it. This life form is called “the Bydo,” and apparently its preferred method of war is the relentless bullet hell. At least they gave you a badass little ship!

Well, okay… it doesn’t start out badass, but powerups let you improve your main gun, and you can also get a little “pod” that can float near your ship or detach from it. This little guy provides more firepower, not to mention versatility. You’re gonna need all the extra guns you can call in, too. I would say that we’ve seen harder shmups since; that’s not hard to say with confidence since I’ve played Ikaruga and also seen some of the insane shit people have home-cooked on the Internet. Don’t let that take away from the challenge of R-Type, though. It is not, in any way, fucking around.

The visuals are pretty rich for 1987, most notably the environmental art and the huge (sometimes gross) bosses. Lots of attention to detail, rich color depth, and surprising complexity for 384×256. There is a giant spaceship, as well as several aliens of varied forms, and all of them are rendered in surprising detail. The music is pretty ponderous, and the sound effects get annoying quickly, but that’s really the only department in which R-Type suffers.

NetHack | Mike Stephenson/NetHack Dev Team | July 28, 1987

I’ve waited for a long while to bring up the roguelike genre in one of these articles. If we were to go just by logged hours, by sheer time spent playing, I’d say this genre of game would rank in the top 3 for me personally. I will define the format in the briefest way possible: the player chooses from a couple of sets of parameters (usually a race and character class, like most RPG fans are familiar with), then is placed at the beginning of a randomly-generated dungeon or other environment with the idea of achieving a particular goal. Play is turn-based instead of realtime, allowing for careful thought and planning. You will usually die a horrible death before achieving your goal, but the fun is seeing how far you can make it.

NetHack is only two generations removed from  Rogue, the 1980 Unix-based game that started the genre. I’ll go ahead and mention now that the graphics for these early games were not the focal point. NetHack is also not known for its breakneck action, although it can get really exciting if you’re into it and have an imagination. And for those of you who don’t, well, there are tilesets for the modern iteration of it that offer a richer visual experience. In fact, the game has continued to see maintenance and updates, last releasing a new version in 2015.

In NetHack, you choose your race, role (class), gender, and alignment (lawful, neutral, or chaotic) and head down into the dungeon to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. The amulet is said to grant immortality if offered to the gods. Why the hell anyone would want to live forever is beyond me, but maybe I’m just a downer. There are, of course, sub-quests, one of which is specific to whatever class you chose. The dungeon is about 50 floors, and the journey is never the same twice. Needless to say, the dungeon is chock-full of all kinds of monsters (and I mean all kinds; the variety is staggering), most of whom want to murder the shit out of you and eat your body. There are also a lot of leftover bits of gear lying around from the chumps who tried this before you, and some of them (potions, scrolls, etc) give no outward indication as to their purpose or effect. You can always go in blind, but that’s as risky as it sounds. Drinking something when you don’t know what it is? Sounds like the way several of my early D&D characters fucking died. Let’s do it!

Oh, and when you die… you’re dead. No retry, no saved game. Start again. Make a new character. Therein lies most of the challenge and enjoyment of the game.

Like many truly oldschool roguelikes, NetHack is entirely and truly free. I also recommend DCSS, which is a more frequently-maintained and sometimes more approachable oldschool roguelike.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link | Nintendo | January 14, 1987

Usually I take a giant shit on at least one of the games I write up in these articles. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect me to do that to Zelda II. It received positive critical reception in 1987, and even some modern gaming sites consider it to be pretty solid. However, if you ask many individual players – real folks like you and me – they’ll tell you that Zelda II is clumsy, needlessly elaborate, tedious, and unapproachable without a guide or walkthrough.

This. This, right here, is gaming at its finest. Please put a flathead screwdriver in my brain.

I fall somewhere in between. I’m not crazy about the game’s tacked-on RPG elements; I think that, at the very least, they could have made leveling up go faster. It’s also incredibly annoying to have little figures chase you on the world map. More significantly, the game relies on a lot of hints and instructions from people in the towns, and a little clarity seems lost in translation. The plot is also utter bullshit. In fact, it angers me. It’s Zelda, but not the Zelda from the first game? How many Zeldas am I gonna have to fuck with, here? There was no need. No need.

It’s not a terrible game, though. Zelda II has a lot to offer the modern player.

Sneering, it mocks you in your weakness.

Get yourself a walkthrough, preferably one that focuses on clarity. Walkthroughs can suck the fun out of most RPGs, but this one actually benefits from a little help on deck. That way, you can focus on not getting your ass constantly kicked in stupid ways. Don’t forget to pick up the stupid little goddamn bags that appear when some monsters die. That’s part of leveling up.

When you are able to separate from these elements, it can actually be a fun challenge to navigate through Zelda II. Progress involves fighting carefully, calculating risks, and learning the weaknesses of the monsters (particularly the rowdy crew of assholes inside the palaces).

The graphics are standard for NES in 1987: not great, not bad. The music, though… let’s put it this way. The overworld/map screen music would make terrific music to pipe into a room you were confining someone in for aggressive psychological torture. It’s this violently cheery, over-wrought, bizarrely jaunty tune that belongs nowhere except maybe on a level of Hell that is made out of grandma-candy. The rest of the soundtrack is fairly good. If you pay close attention to the intro music, at one point it sounds like the melody to a Nickleback song. Don’t ask me which one, because the only times I’ve willingly listened to Nickleback were out of tolerance or sheer circumstance. I just have an ear for music.

JUST RATE ‘EM ALREADY

R-Type – 7/10 (hell of a good shooter, innovative for its time, good challenge. Why does one boss look like a huge alien cooter though?)

NetHack – 8/10 (If you like an RPG experience that is protracted, cerebral, and casual yet detailed, this type of thing is for you.)

Zelda II – 6/10 (There’s plenty not to like about it, but I can get into it if I just turn off little parts of my consciousness or achieve ego death.)

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2018/03/31/grab-bag-1987-games/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2017/11/30/grab-bag-capcoms-disney-on-the-nes/ https://newretrowave.com/2017/11/30/grab-bag-capcoms-disney-on-the-nes/#respond Thu, 30 Nov 2017 19:25:36 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2017/11/30/20171130grab-bag-capcoms-disney-on-the-nes/ NRW Gaming -The Place Where Dreams Come True. Join Bryan as he stacks up five of the numerous NES titles Capcom produced for Disney during the console's heyday and golden years.

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)

 

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This may or may not surprise you, but I have a pretty short attention span. With a scant few exceptions, I tend to get bored quickly. This applies to video games as well. I don’t tend to play most of them for long, and despite their entertainment value, they don’t really suck em in most of the time. As I said, there are exceptions… and Vice: Project Doom is definitely one of them.

Left: The US box art. “Chris Isaak knows two things: the spice must flow, and he’s pissed that you tore his shirt.” Right: Some promotional art, wherein Hart gives us his version of the Rick Deckard look.

The first thing that grabbed me was the intro, which I have lovingly curated on YouTube for you:

Once I pressed Start and got to playing, I found that the intro was simply the first of many immersive cut scenes in the game. Not unlike Ninja Gaiden, V:PD offers a lavish story that is conveyed through a set of nearly movie-like cinematic sequences between the action bits. It’s still only 8-bit, to be objective… but what’s accomplished with that level of graphic detail is incredibly impressive.

While the story and cut scenes really steal the show for this one, don’t let me tell you that the game itself isn’t a spectacle in its own right. You play as a character named Hart, who we can draw from context clues to assume is some kind of cop or agent in a dark future reality. You start out by bringing down a maniac on the freeway, and end up investigating the disappearance of a fellow agent/cop. As you go on, you discover the incident has ties to a corporation called BEDA and a substance called “Gel…” and to avoid spoiling anything, the story gets more intriguing as you go. Just one semi-spoiler: when I finished the game (by the skin of my ass), the intro made a lot more sense and seemed less non-sequitur.

Plane trips and pervy shadow dudes… all in a day’s work for Hart.

You lead Hart through the city, travel to an area of Central America, and end up doubling back after you learn a few things out there. The game borrows a page from the Konami turd-fest The Adventures of Bayou Billy and improves on it tenfold: Hart not only must make his way through platform-style levels, but must also handle a couple of first-person-perspective shootouts and top-down driving scenarios. In fact, the very first thing you do in the game is a hectic top-down chase that ends in a showdown. Your futuristic car even shoots little Galaga bullets!

Meanwhile, the reporter in the traffic copter above struggles for the right words. “Folks… maybe, uh… shit, maybe find a detour if you need to use the freeway. Traffic’s gonna be backed up for a good while.”

The platform levels start out fairly easy and quickly ramp up the difficulty; the best way to describe them would be “a collection of situations wherein you are battered constantly to death unless you couple lighting reaction time with paranoid vigilance.” It’s sometimes really fucking annoying, but overall, I found V:PD to be genuinely enjoyable despite its difficulty. I think it was because I felt involved and connected to what was going on plot-wise by the awesome cinematics. It’s also cool that you get a selection of tools with which to deal out death; not only does this cop have a sword for some reason, but he also has a gun and grenades. The grenades are almost as effective as you’d assume, causing wanton destruction but being slow to throw in succession. The gun has a terribly truncated range, but is often the best way to clear a path in front of yourself. The sword? Well, the sword actually rules pretty hard. It’s got the most rapid rate of fire for any of your weapons, and it’s no less lethal. I honestly had an easier time dispatching some of the bosses with it than grenades or the gun.

Three gun toting assholes and a bird try to make my train ride as unpleasant as possible. The enemies in this game have football-style playbooks on how to make you fall into gaps or get hit six times before you can move. This is not some kid’s birthday party. This is not balloon animals and colored handkerchiefs. This is the big leagues, Chuckles. Try not to die.

And let me tell you: the bosses and enemies in this game are one big round bright red son-of-a-bitch. Birds show up to play their time-honored console game role as assholes who help knock you into pits, and red ninjas co-star in that role; there are times when the game seems like one big exercise in mocking you for trying to gain an inch of ground without plummeting to your demise. Mutants galore fill out the ground force, as expected for a game like V:PD. There are also more-or-less human seeming soldiers (or maybe they’re just guys with guns, who knows) and even some mixed-in bullshit like dudes with jack-o-lantern heads and pissed-off house cats. One whole stage seems to be a Chinatown-like affair, complete with extremely dangerous caricatures of that culture. The bosses include a massive robot that uncreatively spams the screen with missiles, a goo man, a tree man, and your classic “end boss with multiple forms” setup. It is worth mentioning that this game absolutely LOVES making you fall into pits by placing small fucking armies of birds/assholes with projectile weapons/static hazards on either side. You also leap backward when hit and are unable to react for a second, which it takes full advantage of. V:PD is a cruel mistress, but her kiss is all too sweet.

The shooting levels are governed by the game pad, but the controls are nice and tight so you’re not flailing all around the screen while people shoot you to death like in Bayou Billy. The car scenes are also pretty well-handled, even allowing you to shift gears while driving. (did I mention that your future car shoots adorable little spaceship bullets?)

Left to right: the guy who looked so cool I almost didn’t shoot him (but then I did); mutant rats in the Mountain Dew sewer; the red ninja makes sure I don’t get too far across the huge chasms inside the mansion.

The music is… well, I can’t say it’s stellar, but it’s good where it’s good, if you know what I mean. Some level music is awfully damned repetitive, but a lot of the music for cut scenes is suitably intense and dramatic. The graphics are on par with something Sunsoft or Konami would put out in the same class, and in fact they remind me a little of Sunsoft’s Batman NES game: muted but almost candy-like colors with a lot of drab tech-aesthetic shapes.

I’m gonna go with my reflex and throw 9/10 at Vice: Project Doom. It’s another classic from late in the NES’s library history, a real artistic effort with a great story and plenty to keep players interested. It’s occasionally a bit insane in terms of raw difficulty, but I didn’t find it as stupidly hard as Ghosts & Goblins or Battletoads. I was eventually able to beat the sumbitch and get the sense of accomplishment we all love from that triumph.

See you for more at the end of November, folks, and don’t forget to keep an eye on NRW Gaming’s YouTube channel! It’s tons of videos of me failing at your favorite retro games, set to all your favorite NRW-featured tunes!

We’ve been over the coals with LJN before. Not just me. Everyone has. I’m far from the first hack to put his fingers on a keyboard and write about this stuff, and it’s been established that 1) LJN games mostly sucked but 2) a couple of them didn’t. Well, these three sure do. All were released in 1989, seemingly to contrast tons of great NES titles released that year, before, and after. In fact, it seems as if LJN’s very purpose for a span of years was to produce terrible licensed games for any intellectual property they could wrangle.

I did not have to narrow this article down to three games. Out of mercy, I chose to.

Back To The Future (NES)

LJN/Beam Software, 1989

We all hoped this would be good, right? I mean, the 1985 film is undeniably one of the best things to have come out of the 80s, period. How can you screw this up?

Apparently the quick answer to that is, “let LJN handle it.”

When we turn our NES on, we’re greeted by a short, repetitive, and spiritually empty loop of music. Get used to this, because unless you mute your TV, it’s what you’ll be hearing for a while. The introductory level consists of a town street which, with or without you, moves forward at a steady pace. Everyone and everything on this street wants to hurt you, and that isn’t hard. Like, don’t even touch a fence or a bench. Marty’s pretty fragile. If you ever make it past this first stage, there’s a handful of others that are pretty much the same, broken up by a series of mini-games. Where have I heard that music before? Oh, that’s right, EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE GAME, FROM THE MOMENT I TURNED ON THE NES.

The world is a living hell no matter where you are in time.

Now, I understand the concept of making a game difficult so as to give it good replay value. No one wants a cake walk, especially not at the price point an NES cart sold for back then ($30-40 new). However, if you make it stupidly difficult AND have it look and sound like crap, people will feel like you stole that $30-40 from them and stuck a turd in their pocket as “collateral.” The combined elements of this game make it a capital offense. The graphics look more at home on a console from the previous generation, there are minimal sound effects (except for that AWESOME F*CKING MUSIC THAT PLAYS ON LOOP FOREVER), and it’s really hard to get into what you’re doing when a bench can kill you. The only saving graces are the diner and guitar mini-games, if you can make it to them.

LOOK GUYS IT’S JUST LIKE THE MOVIE

X-Men (NES)

LJN/Pixel, 1989

This time we’ve got a reliably cool and popular comic license, one that would later translate itself fairly well onto 16-bit systems and the arcade platform. This one writes itself; just get a good set of programmers and artists on it, and we’ll be golden, right?

Instead we got this weird top-down mess. More laughable art that seems to mock the characters represented more than anything else. We’ve got marginally better music than the previous title (in fact, the menu music is downright grooveworthy) but more Pong-style sound effects. Level design seems random and meandering; in fact, one could argue that the levels were just pieced together. Imaginative design also led to enemies like giant springs with googly eyes. It often seems like LJN had a sort of bland contempt for video game consumers. “You’ll buy anything.”

Well, that may have been true, and arguably still is today, but that’s beside the point.

Two-player action is easily ground to a halt by the fact that the characters move at very different speeds; it is, in fact, possible to get the slower character trapped behind something irrevocably, effectively killing the game. There’s also a set of clues combining things you learn from the game with information on the cartridge itself, and these clues are supposed to help unlock the final level. Enough with that kind of arcane bullshit, we all played Simon’s Quest and we had to buy that issue of Nintendo Power to get anywhere. Thankfully, Konami produced the X-Men arcade title and Sega handled the Genesis game.

Friday the 13th (NES)

LJN/Atlus, 1989

I will start with something positive: the title screen kicks ass.

Unfortunately, that’s where the ass-kicking ends, unless it’s Jason kicking kids’ asses off-screen while you try and fail to navigate your way to where it’s happening.

Oh, good. I’ll only have to look at this five or six thousand times every few minutes to find out I’ve gone halfway in the wrong direction.

The biggest issue most players have with this one is the absolutely counter-intuitive map interface. Think you’re going the right way? Better check… SURPRISE, YOU’RE NOT. Meanwhile, that car-horn sound you keep hearing? The one that seems to match up with the number of kids slowly decreasing? That’s Jason Voorhees, going nuts with a machete in a cabin on the other side of the camp. You’d like to get there in time to stop him, wouldn’t you? Tough shit. Don’t worry, though. Jason occasionally takes time out from frenzied streaks of infanticide to personally murder you at random. He is pretty much invincible until you achieve a bunch of stuff later in the game (while simultaneously keeping him from killing kids). In his absence, you’re accosted by waves of nondescript zombies, because LJN is all about phoning it in when it comes to details.

You like repetitive music loops, right? Because, while the instrumentation has gotten a little richer, the composition surely hasn’t. In fact, the music when you’re outside is probably even shorter and more annoying than the main theme from the Back to the Future game. Have fun listening to it while you get lost in the woods, looking for stuff you need in order to finish this game. At least here, you can throw away all pretense of the map being useful, because it does jack shit for you.

But hey, if you’re that committed to finishing this game, that’s your problem, not mine. You might want to get your head examined.

I’ll eventually get the wind up to talk down some more terrible games, but goodbye for now, RetroFans. See you in September for more articles and videos!

 

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Any fan of film or martial arts will undoubtedly be familiar with Jackie Chan. His affable, smiling face is synonymous with both modern day action and classic kung-fu mayhem. He was the Fearless Hyena. He fought like 30 dudes with a ladder… accidentally. He does all his own stunts, which is something worth being proud of.

You remember that time he beat up the Prince of Sorcerers?

Just like all those times he threw balls of mystical energy at dragons made of magma.

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu was developed for Hudson Soft by a firm called Now Production in 1990. Now had previously done some work for Bandai and other companies, notably producing a Splatterhouse parody for the Famicom. They would later go on to develop 2 sequels to the popular Adventure Island NES game for Hudson. Now Production (also known as NowPro) also produced the game Yo! Noid, one of the more unfortunate licensed games late in the NES’s history.

Okay… (TG-16 Version)

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu is by far NowPro’s best effort of the time period. It was released for the NES and for the PC Engine, known as the TurboGrafx-16 here in the West. Both versions are similar in terms of overall appearance and construction; players will note that the Turbo-Grafx 16’s version requires a bit more from them, but also has slightly better production value. The TG-16 game offers a decidedly more arcade-like experience, but then, the TG-16 was a bit more advanced than the NES hardware-wise.

Box art for the TG-16 (left) and NES versions. 

In either game, you play the role of Chan himself, reigning undisputed kung-fu champion along with your sister Josephine. The story begins when some jerk calling himself the Prince of Sorcerers (who looks oddly like a wing chun style Dracula) zaps you silly and takes off with Josephine. Your quest will lead you through many obstacles and to the Prince’s fortress, where you must put a stop to his wicked reign and free your sister.

Video game villains really need to work out their issues and stop taking them out on the women close to protagonists. You’re the Prince of Sorcerers, dude, where’s your low self esteem coming from? (TG-16 Version)

Luckily, Jackie isn’t the kung fu champ for nothing. He’s both a prodigious leaper and a skillful combatant, whose normal array of punches and kicks can be supplemented with powerups. These grant limited uses of special moves, usually whirlwind-style kicks or some other acrobatic maneuver. Jackie can also charge up energy in his fist for use as a projectile, not unlike Ryu or Ken from Street Fighter II. Jackie can do it more easily, though; all you have to do is hold the attack button down for a second or two.

Below are some of the scenes of mayhem one can expect when entering the mythical world of Jackie Chan’s digital adventure.

Did I mention you get the powerups, as well as rice bowls to refill health, by beating the shit out of cute little frogs?

This image captures it all. Look how angry Jackie is, and look how blithely oblivious the frog is. Little does it know it’s about to get a jump-kick powerup punched right out of its stupid mouth. (NES Version)

Despite your wanton cruelty to animals yielding such bounty, the way ahead is still thick with danger. There are five levels in total, although the later levels get quite long. The latter half of each is a sort of fortress or shrine, which contains a boss. Some of the lesser enemies include evil warriors and monks, dragons made of lava, little creatures that hide under massive bowls and throw darts at you, and an assortment of bats, rats, and snakes. The challenge isn’t too over the top, but it’s appreciable; it bears mentioning that you are straight-up fighting wild tigers in the first level.

The most comprehensive study of deaths due to tiger attacks estimates that at least 373,000 people died due to tiger attacks between 1800 and 2009, the majority of these attacks occurring in South and Southeast Asia. The number of tigers killed by Jackie Chan, however, remains a mystery due to incomplete data. (NES Version)

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu was fairly well-received by critics of the time, but both versions received higher scores from modern critics looking back. The graphics are obviously nicer on the TG-16, but even the NES cart has good visuals and a great cartoony look. The music for both versions is about the same, and while it’s far from classic, it’s catchy. I couldn’t find a complete rip of the slightly better TG-16 soundtrack to link here, but the NES version’s pretty good for 8 bit.

I give Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu 8 out of 10. It’s a lot of fun to bounce around and throw moves like a kung fu superstar, and the game is very well thought-out. It was perhaps underrated in 1990, but still holds up well as a fun action title.

Hang in there! More coming in July!

 

 

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