That's What She SNES!

Lagoon (1991)

Mon, 27 May 2013 20:12:00 -0400

The 3-D Action Fantasy that is Attracting RPG Players in Waves!

Title: Lagoon

Developer: Zoom

Publisher: Kemco

NA Release Date: December, 1991

After a hiatus due to sheer laziness and work related items, I am back. I have gained a few followers and some of you have emailed me as to what is going on. All is going well, but I just had to put this on the back burner. I feel bad and will attempt to do my best to do at least one game a week. I still completely intend to finish this one day.

Unfortunately the game that was up next, Lagoon, was how can I put it…. terrible.

The intro made little sense, and kept looping until you hit the start button. But I’ll let that slide. Sometimes the intro is just like the trailer and is obscure. I was hoping for a little back story for an action/adventure game. I did let it loop a few times because the synthesized rock music is pretty good.

Robot(?) girl looks like something out of MegaMan.

The game starts with a bearded man telling you the water is dirty. Apparently muddy water brings along demons. Since I live right by nasty Lake Ontario, I will be demon-proofing my house tonight.

That’s all you’re told and you’re thrown into the game. There weren’t any options, or any place that I could check what the controls were. There isn’t an in-game map that I could find, and moving between the menu screens was so slow I thought that there might have been a floppy inside the cartridge.

Start playing!

Well it is an adventure game, let’s start exploring I guess. I fanned out in my search grid and started visiting houses and townspeople.

You should pack a Brita filter.

Eventually I ran into the right order of people, going back and forth a few times, visiting the sword shop, and then they let me go into the cave. Finally some action!

Exploring inside the cave, I saw only two enemies. This protoplasm thing, and another enemy that looks like an evil rabbit. Combat is terrible. If you’re facing up, you hold the sword in your right hand. Which means if the enemy is straight on facing you, you can’t hit it. Standing slightly askew? Forget about hitting the enemy. The d-pad is too sensitive, so half the time you run straight into the enemy. This is also because your sword is maybe about one screen pixel in size. You can jump, but I have no idea what it would be good for. It doesn’t seem like you really have enough air to clear enemies. Maybe small potholes that you could just step over.

Nope. Not allowed to because I didn’t save.

Eject cartridge. I hope the next game is better.

Control/Gameplay: The premise of the game (muddy water bringing demons) seems kind of silly to me. Maybe it would have drawn out more if I had persisted. Controls are absolutely horrible. Look how close my character is to the edge of the screen. That’s the direction I would have been moving in. Why would I need to see so far behind me? This almost guarantees you’ll walk face first into an enemy.

Sound: Nothing jumped out at me. I forgot I even had this category to think about when I was playing the game. The music was kind of cool. Rock track at the beginning, mellow Zelda-ish music in town.

Graphics: Well it certainly is colourful. Characters are bright and fairly well detailed. Backgrounds however seem bland and seem to repeat. I can kind of see this as being the adventure that looks the same from the beginning to the end.

Fun: No not really.

Coop: None.

Overall Presentation: This game kind of falls flat on its face. I couldn’t recommend it to anyone. Not unless you’ve played every single RPG on your list. While I didn’t play it for long, I don’t really see it improving any more. You can just tell when you play for a little while. Battling the controls, no map, nothing labeled so you never know where you’re going. It’s just not a recipe for a good time. There are better games out there.

-TWSS!

Home Alone (1991)

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 21:07:00 -0400

Title: Home Alone

Developer: Imagineering Inc.

Publisher: THQ

NA Release Date: December, 1991

Now as a kid I love this movie. It still plays every Christmas. This game completely does the movie zero justice. It looks more like an NES game with the way it looks and sounds.

The game starts with Harry and Marv scopin’ the place out and chatting. Then you start in Kevin’s room armed with a crappy water pistol. Now you’d think you’re going around his house seeing up traps and luring those two bumbling burglars into them. But nope. You go around searching treasure in hidden places, throw them down the laundry chute, rinse and repeat.

Whoever hides sacks of money in the toilet is doing it wrong.

You enter different rooms in the house (denoted by white doors, you can’t open the green or brown or whatever colour it is door yet until you get the treasures and get the door key). Press up a lot to open drawers and cabinets and find treasures hidden in them, or hidden in paintings on the wall.

You’ll occasionally stumble across different baddies in the house. There are sometimes traps set up for them. Though I think it’s stupid your own toys on the ground would injure you.

You can only hold six items in your bag, so you need to constantly make trips to the laundry chute and throw your treasures down.

I died a lot playing this game. The controls feel sloppy and floaty, and the squirt gun is pretty useless as a weapon. It does make a funny sound like someone spitting though. It takes quite a few many hits to disable anyone temporarily so you can jump over them. There is a slingshot you get early on, but the ammo is limited and it doesn’t seem to really do a lot of damage either.

Hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?

I persisted long enough to finish the first level. You end up in the basement and throw all your treasures into the vault. Then you go onto the next level which looks almost the same as the first one, except you collect different valuables and there are different set pieces around the place. I couldn’t play it anymore after that.

Control/Gameplay: The premise is simple, but it’s unimaginative and boring. After I finish the first level, I really should be somewhere else instead of the same house with different decorations. The controls feel very floaty and don’t make the game any better. You can’t stop fast enough when you see the traps, and you have to press backwards and forwards to line yourself up just right to jump over any of the bandits.

Sound: The music tracks are short and repeat endlessly which kind of grates on your nerves. The second level has the exact same music as the first one. Though you’ll probably recognize the tune from the movie. There isn’t much to say about the sound effects except Kevin’s death scream is hilarious. It is exactly the same sound as the worst sound in the world from Dumb and Dumber. I’m going to try to record this and put it up on YouTube.

Graphics: It looks like an NES game. Everything is plain looking and there isn’t much detail throughout the levels. The character sprites are pretty lacklustre as well.

Fun: The only fun I had was playing this with some friends and wondering just what the heck I was playing. I said I played this as a kid, and I did play a Home Alone game, but I remember tobogganing and such. That was not present in the game, or at least the little bit that I played. Also death scream = hilarious.

Coop: None. Thank goodness.

Overall Presentation: This is another one of those games where everything is just terrible and it all just snowballs into a cartridge of crap. It controls terribly, looks terrible, and sounds terrible. It’s definitely not what I would have imagined in a Home Alone game, and is just trying to cash in on the franchise with McCauley Caulkin’s face on the cover. I couldn’t persist long enough to get to the end of this game and in the short amount of time I gave this game, I ended up having a pretty terrible time. Hopefully the next game I review is better. Until next time!

-TWSS!

Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 (1991)

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 21:17:00 -0400

Action or Simulation. You Can Enjoy Them Both in This Ultimate Baseball Game.

Title: Super Baseball Simulator 1.000

Developer: Culture Brain

Publisher: Culture Brain

NA Release Date: December, 1991

Coincidence that I’m playing another baseball game and I’m heading to another baseball game this upcoming weekend. Hopefully the actual game I’m going to fares better that this one.

I present Super Baseball Simulator 1.000. Originally I thought it was 1,000, but I suppose it’s just version 1. Sadly version 2.000 never came out. Well baseball is pretty simple; pitch, hit, run, and catch. Let’s see how this goes shall we?

Of course I’m going to play in the ultra league!

What separates this from something like Super Bases Loaded is the presence of powerups. Powerups can be applied to the pitcher or the batter and generally make the job easier for you. Now you can play without powerups (which is the mode I’d recommend). Some will make the ball twirl around as you pitch it, or split into three balls. Some will turn the ball into a leaf as you hit it, and it gently floats down making it difficult to catch.

I still managed to hit this ZigZag ball.

Controls are fairly simple and responsive. It’s A to pitch or bat. You can use the d-pad to move the pitcher and batter around to change the angles. Up and down changes the pitching speed. It’s easy to jump into and play, but this is one of those games that I believe is most fun to play with two people.

Who wouldn’t play as the Win team?!

There are some issues with this game that make it really frustrating to play. I got into an instance where every pitch I would hit, would send the ball accelerating behind me. No matter how good the hit and the angle was, it would always foul. This actually happened to me several times. The other thing is that sometimes when the computer hits a line drive and one of the basemen run out to catch it and someone else takes over the base, you can’t throw it to them. It always ends up sailing over them. This is what eventually caused me to quit the game. Not to mention that the computer is difficult to play against.

D’oh, D’oh.

Graphics are meh (Super Bases Loaded looks much better) and the sound is also mediocre. A few baseball-y music tracks and your ‘out!’, ‘safe!’, and ‘foul!’. You can create your own team which probably would have appealed to me when I was 8 years old. The powerups really take the simulation out of the game (but I’ll let you guys know if any balls turn into leaves at this weekend’s Jays game). What I enjoyed about this game was the full fledged season mode. I didn’t play the whole thing of course, but you can set it for 165 games! You get a few gradations between a few games to 165 of course.

This is a game I would say to rent, if places still rented SNES games. But just give it a quick shot if you’re looking for two player baseball action and you’ve absolutely played everything else. It’s much more fun that way and you won’t have to deal with the computer’s lightning pitches.

Control/Gameplay: They are simple which makes it easy to play, but only if you’re playing against another person. It is incredibly crap to play against the computer and they will kick your arse so I don’t suggest it.

Sound: Nothing special here either. You get some neat effects when there is lightning in your pitch, but some effects seem to be randomly thrown in. A leaf floating down the screen seems to emit a sliding whistle noise. Music? Nothing to write home about either.

Graphics: Nothing that’ll wow you. Considering the amazing looking titles already out on the SNES at this point, this game just looks plain. The field looks plain, and the sky could do with a cloud or two. Seems like solid colours is the motif of this game. When a player is pitching, you can’t see the 2nd baseman behind him. What is he just sitting on the bench?

Fun: Definitely not if you’re playing on your own. Solicit the friendship of a neighbour or your siblings, but only if you want them to dislike you.

Coop: Versus only.

Overall Presentation: A mediocre game at best. I wouldn’t even really say to try this out even if you have two people and want to play some baseball unless you really have nothing else to play. You’d be better off playing something like Super Bases Loaded. Looks better, handles better, and just genuinely more fun. The powerups don’t seem to add much but frustration to this game and are much better executed in Base Wars or Super Baseball 2020 (both of which are ridiculously fun).

-TWSS!

D-Force (1991)

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:40:00 -0400

Command your U.S. nuclear helicopter through 7 grueling levels & smash the resistance!

Title: D-Force

Developer: ISCO

Publisher: Asmik Corporation of America

NA Release Date: December, 1991

A top down shooter for the SNES. Think this is the first one so far in the life of this blog. I haven’t played this before and I was looking forward to a good top down action shooter. But good it is not!

So the game starts out with your helicopter plowing through a brick wall. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know of any choppers that can do that without sustaining a lot of damage. Actually you start off on a very Mode-7 pixelated aircraft carrier. You’re piloting a top of the line nuclear powered helicopter (which doesn’t really seem like a really good idea to me).

Choppa One to base, turn off the Mode-7, acknowledge.

Right away, this did not feel like a top of the line aircraft. It sounds like the helicopter is sputtering all over the place like a 2-stroke weed whacker. It controls very sluggishly and imprecisely, and there’s nearly constant slowdown!

It was as if the programmers of the game didn’t take the time to make the game run well. I could understand slowdown if there was tons of enemies on the screen with loads of detail, but it isn’t the case. There are never that many enemies or projectiles on the screen at once, and their detail is low.

Anyways, I suppose I should talk about the game a little bit. There is one button you use. B. It shoots a machine gun. The larger enemies will drop a powerup that will upgrade your gun, making it shoot more projectiles over a wider range. You can also get missiles. You can only take one hit and then you explode. You also take one step back in upgrades. For example, if you had obtained 3 powerups and died, you would regress back to level 2. That’s pretty much it for weapons. No nuclear bombs or anything that can clear the entire screen of enemies. Then fight your way through the level and fight a boss at the end. Stage clear, move onto the next level!

Um, what.

Let me take the time now to mention that I have no idea what the story is about in this game. Normally when dinosaurs show up, I’m enjoying it. But for whatever reason in D-Force, there was a big WTF. Maybe from all the non-fun I had playing this game caused that. Anyways, dinosaurs vs. nuclear helicopter. This is where I discovered if you hit R, your helicopter would move down to a lower plane so you could hit the lower enemies, or just fly over them. Interesting mechanic, but not enough to save this game. I don’t want to play this anymore.

I did try out exploration mode briefly. I can’t figure out what is different about this mode other than, I have no weapon upgrades, and I seem to be fighting fantastical creatures only. Wikipedia only said it was a fantasy setting. News flash! There aren’t any nuclear helicopters in fantasy! Only magical ones!

Control/Gameplay: The controls lag, and combined with the slowdown of the game contribute to a very unsatisfying gaming experience. There isn’t a large variety of enemies and if you do manage to die early on, your single gun really is not enough to get you through the level. I thought this would be a military shooter, but the presence of dinosaurs in the 2nd level really shook it up. This game isn’t making a whole lot of sense to me.

Sound: The sound effects sound like someone held their cell phone up to the speaker of a 1980s mono television. They are muffled and seem to be extra low quality samples. Honestly, some NES games sound better than this. The music is also on what seems to be a 30 second loop, so that starts to grate on your nerves rather quickly as well.

Graphics: Nothing to look at. Just dull all around. Colours are dull, models are uninteresting. Every few seconds the main rotor on the helicopter seems to flicker and disappear. Actually there seems to be a general tone of flicker all around in this game. Also Mode-7 was never pretty start with, but it is just horrible in this game.

Fun: Not really.

Coop: None.

Overall Presentation: I think this game needs to go back. Who knows if they were in a rush to get it out or not, but every aspect of this game just seems like it was only half completed and then pushed out the door. You’ll probably do well just to skip this game and find another top down to play like Hot Dog Storm or Super Strike Eagle (My favourite, and it includes coop!).

-TWSS!

Super Tennis (1991)

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:40:00 -0400

Title: Super Tennis

Developer: TOSE

Publisher: Nintendo

NA Release Date: November, 1991

When I saw this game on my next to play list, I was a little skeptical. I’d never heard of it before and was going to chalk it up to a generic sports game. I was pleasantly surprised after a while.

After the short intro, you can choose to play a singles, doubles, or circuit game. I went to doubles because I wanted to see how the computer played with me. Since I didn’t have anyone to play with (*tear*), I chose to play against the CPU. Here you choose the two people on your team and the two people on the opposing team.

Um.. I think Kim is a man.

I didn’t know that each player had different attributes. It was only when I looked up the game data online that I found this out. I’m pretty sure this information is also inside the manual. Since I also couldn’t see the controls in game, I also had to look them up and they are surprisingly in-depth!

You can hard serve, soft serve (though no ice cream came out of the cartridge or anything har har), there’s even a button to dribble the ball. I bet everyone who plays this game has spent a minute doing that. It probably works better against human players though! I also thought it would just be hitting one button to hit the ball, but you can get in a soft hit, a regular kind of swing that you can direct with the d-pad, add topspin, or get a high volley in.

It took me a while to get a hang of it.

There’s no way to change the difficulty of the CPU player that I could see as there really isn’t an options menu. They are quite good. I doubt it was the CPU players I chose to play against. Sometimes your CPU player and an opposing player will get up close to the net and the ball just flies back and forth between them at warp speed. Then it’ll suddenly fly towards you and you don’t really have a good chance at hitting it. I’ll just say I suck though.

It wasn’t a match point for me.

You can’t just swing wildly in hopes you’ll hit the ball. You’ll actually stumble and fall on the ground and it takes you a second or two to get back up. Even when serving you have to wait for the ball to come down a bit from your toss or you’ll always fault it. This game actually takes a bit of skill to play. Hitting the ball at the right time, changing the direction of the ball, do I want to loft it gently or smash it across the court? This is also dependent on the type of court that you choose to play on which will affect how your ball bounces.

A singles game is just you and one other player. Circuit is kind of where you play a tournament and move from place to place. But where I think this game really shines is when you have another human player involved. Just as I was about to post this I was able to rope in a friend to play it with me. It was a whole ton more fun and invoked competition and even some animosity. This is going to be a weird That’s What She Wants as I wouldn’t say it for single player, but definitely if there’s another person!

Also Mode 7.

FTW.

Control/Gameplay: The controls are crisp and responsive and you really feel like you connected with the ball when you get a good smash in. Once you figure out the controls that is. Gameplay is fast, CPU isn’t too easy or frustratingly hard, but it will take you a bit of playing to be able to compete with the CPU’s sometime ungodly reflex time. No slow downs or anything to hamper game play. A few modes to keep you interested, but the main draw of this game is how much fun it is to play with another person. I’ll probably break this out at my buddy’s cottage (with which SNES always makes an appearance). I could see some friendships being tested here. Sadly, it does not support multitap.

Sound: Sound was a little lacking here. The only sound you get is when you hit the tennis ball, and it makes that satisfying ‘pock’ of a sound. That’s about it though. There’s a little bit of interlude music when you switch courts. So aurally the game is a bit sparse, but you’ll be unlikely to hear it over the shouting that will undeniably accompany this game.

Graphics: Well I guess there isn’t a lot to write about either. All the people that are supposed to be present at a tennis game are there from the guys that run across the court to grab a stray ball to a sufficiently drawn crowd. And uh.. Mode 7!

Fun: Yes! A hundred times yes! It was fun, especially two player. It was pretty good fun in single player as well!

Coop: Yes! You can play 1P 2P vs. CPU. I didn’t get a chance to really try this mode out for an extended period of time, but it does work better than you and a computer doing a double match.

Overall Presentation: This game is just tons of awesome. Sure it doesn’t look like the best the SNES can pump out, and sound is lacklustre, but man is the gameplay so satisfying. I don’t even like tennis and I like this game. I’ve said it some many times, but it is just so much fun with a friend. Wow, what a refresher to get a game like this after Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts. Please play this game if you’re looking for something to play between Call of Duty and Smash Brothers! That’s What She Wants!

-TWSS!

Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (1991)

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:24:00 -0400

Title: Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

NA Release Date: November, 1991

A side scrolling platformer originally released on the SNES; it has also graced collections or downloads on the PSX, PS2, Xbox, GBA, and PS3 to name a few. What really boggles my mind is WHY? I had a friend when I was in grade 8 who didn’t have an SNES, but bought this game so he could come over and play it at my place because he loved the game so much. I didn’t really like him, and I also didn’t really like this game. Nonetheless it is one of Capcom’s best selling games ever.

It’s a ridiculously, stupidly, hard game. If you have enough patience to make it to the end of the game, you have to play it from the beginning again with some bracelet in order to make it to the end. The game is unforgiving, controls terribly, suffers horrible slowdown, and I hate it.

You’ll see this more than you’ve ever seen in your life.

You play as Knight Arthur who must rescue a princess from some demons who have kidnapped her (probably again since there were previous Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts games). Emperor Sardius is the one that has kidnapped her and also the jerk that you must destroy with some bracelet on the second playthrough to get the real true ending.

As you start the game, you are given an ordinary suit of armour which doesn’t stop a damn thing. You get hit once and it just shatters off your body and you’re running around in your boxers. Your boxers offer just as much protection because you’ll die after another hit.

So cold!

If you lose your awesome armour, treasure chests usually hide a set for you to put back on. You can also upgrade your armour along the way. Bronze will let you add some magic to your weapons; Gold will allow you to charge a special attack and gives you a shield which blocks one attack. Finally, the third upgrade is a moon shield which will let you block 3 attacks and reduces the time required to charge your special attack. I didn’t get any of these due to ultimate frustration.

There are also multiple weapons which was my favourite part of the game. There’s the lance which goes straight ahead, there’s a scythe which is much slower, but I believe it does a double hit (useful for bosses). My favourite is the cross bow which shoots ahead and up at an angle. It’s also kind of useful for a boss because if you’re up close you can get a double hit in. There are more weapons than that, but I never got that far in the game.

Speaking of bosses, they’re fairly easy. At least the few that I got to. Their attacks are not difficult to predict and avoid, and I found that the crossbow did an exquisitely decent job of knocking them out quickly.

The game features some neat gameplay controls. For example; you can double jump. However, once you’re in the air, you cannot change which direction you’re going (you can change direction if you initiate the second jump, but then it’s harder to tell how far you’re going to go). For example if you’re trying to jump to another platform in water, if you don’t judge it right from the first jump, you’re not going to make it. You can spin around and shoot in the other direction in the air, but where you’re going to land is already determined and there ain’t no way around that.

You cannot make it to the top of this pillar. I cannot express how frustrating that is.

Some of the level designs are cool as well. There is a pseudo 3d spiral up a tower (which uses a mode 7 effect to make it happen), and also levels that change orientation. You hop into these platforms that form a cage around you and the entire level rotates.

Maybe it’s just more fun on the arcade, or maybe watching your friends play it. But it’s not one I enjoy. Its difficulty blasts past difficult and frustrating, but I suppose if you ever do get the true ending, you can go around with some bragging rights.

Until next time!

Control/Gameplay: The game is easy to pick up and play. Controls are simple and responsive, story is simple. The double jump mechanic is nice, but lack of directional control after you’ve performed a jump (or the 2nd jump) greatly increases the frustration factor. Factor in some severe slowdown at points in the game when there doesn’t seem to be a lot on the screen and where you’ve probably just jumped and now you’re watching your death in slow motion as you realize you’re falling into spokes. Variety of weapons is pointless as there’s only one good weapon in my opinion, and the bosses are too easy. You also have to beat the game twice with specific items as well. The level design is awesome. The ground moves as you walk over it, you run up spiral towers and the tower spins (incredible at the time I’m sure), or the level just rotates around you.

Sound: The sound effects are generic and dull sounding. Is there some sort of soundbank like those stock photo sites for pictures? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard these sound effects somewhere before. The music fares much better, synthesized organ portrays a Halloween-like or even Goth-like feel. Though that was nearly always promptly ruined by the death music.

Graphics: Not pushing the SNES technology to the limits, but does utilize mode-7 in creative ways and incorporates those into the gameplay. Arthur and the enemies are a little rough looking; however I must say that the backgrounds are pretty neat looking. Dark, dingy looking trees or waves of water help to convey the mood that the game is supposed to be in.

Fun: I started out optimistic remembering how difficult this game was in my youth. I ended up frustrated, cursing, and not having a good time. People will call this a classic, a must play, I am not.

Coop: Your friends will thank you that it’s only single player.

Overall Presentation: I’m not out to put down games I hate and tell people never to play them. This is one of those games where it does have a lot of fans, and a lot of those fans enjoy the difficulty level (like Ninja Gaiden for example, though you can tone the difficulty in that). I don’t enjoy it, but try it out if you get a chance to see some nice level designs, get into the goth mood, and try not to break your controller in absolute anger. If you’ve never played it, maybe you’ll find a new classic. After playing this game, you’ll see things are not as bad as Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts, and maybe you’ll go out for a breath of fresh air, pet a dog, and hold a door open for someone. Or just play Mega Man X like I did.

-TWSS!

Paperboy 2 (1991)

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:28:00 -0400

Title: Paperboy 2

Developer: Tengen

Publisher: Mindscape Inc.

NA Release Date: November, 1991

I’ll save you all some time. If you’ve played the original in 1988 on the NES, you’ve pretty much played this one. Not much has changed in the 3 years separating the two games. I was never really a huge fan of the game. The premise is simple. You’re a paperboy (or you can be a papergirl in this SNES sequel), you ride up a street, and you throw newspapers. The big gameplay difference between the first and second game are that in the latter your houses are both on the left and right side of the street! Wow! There is a two-player mode; however you don’t both ride at the same time. You just ride until you run out of lives, then it’s the other person’s turn.

My favourite part of the game isn’t even delivering the papers; it’s seeing what kind of carnage you can inflict. Throw a newspaper at the car with a guy underneath trying to fix it and it falls on him. Throw it at the old couple on the swinging bench and they go flying off it. Once you make it through your route (and delivered zero news papers like me), you are faced with an obstacle track that you weave your way through for points. I promptly hit a cone and fell off my bike though.

You can foil the robbery with a newspaper!

The premise of this game is so simple there isn’t a lot to say. I do have a few gripes about this game though. The graphics are only a mild improvement over the NES, the sound and music are abysmal, plus it controls terribly. This isn’t a game I’d ask you to play, not unless you’re a hardcore fan.

I’m surprised everyone didn’t cancel.

Control/Gameplay: The controls are even worse than the NES version. Sure there are obstacles, but the sluggish and unresponsive controls make it extremely difficult to avoid them. By the time you see a speeding car come towards you, it’s too late. Combined with the camera angle that just doesn’t work for this game, and you end up with a frustrating time. Some of the houses/mailboxes are so far from where you can ride, that you don’t even know if the paper made it in. If you can manage to pull it off, you just might have a little bit of fun though. Also who has active firing cannons in their front yard?!

Sound: The sound effects are annoying and too loud. I can barely hear the music but that isn’t really any good either. It sounds like a really early 90s ringtone from a phone that can only play beeps.

Graphics: Really aside from a few seemingly minor upgrades, like modifying the grass slightly to make it look like it had some texture, there didn’t seem to me a lot done. Oh my bad, they did that to the road too. Okay, I guess they used more colour. It just looks bad for SNES compared to some of the games that came out before this!

Fun: I only had a slight amount of fun playing this game. Perhaps this was because I was playing this game while some wedding planning was going on and this game only slightly relieved me from the frilly world of doilies and bridal showers.

Coop: None :(

Overall Presentation: Lacklustre graphics, poor sound, unresponsive controls. You do the math and it’s pretty dismal. It has an unusual and quirky style that will appeal to some and prior fans of the series, but don’t expect that appeal to last. You won’t replay it much and it’s just pretty much the same thing as the original, but somehow more aggravating.

-TWSS!

Final Fight (1991)

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:21:00 -0500

Title: Final Fight

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

NA Release Date: September, 1991

Another classic for the SNES. I think most people have played Final Fight before. Is this the first side scrolling beat ‘em up I’m going through for this system? I think it is!

I first played this at the local Pizza Pizza on one of those arcade machines. Coin-op it was, but it also featured 2-player simultaneous. Sadly, the SNES port did not include the second player option, but later games in the Final Fight series would. Also missing in the SNES port was an additional character by the name of Guy. He would return in a later SNES game; Final Fight Guy.

Originally this was supposed to be a Streetfighter style game, but it was later changed to be a side scrolling beat ‘em up. I think I prefer it this way a la Double Dragon. Your daughter Jessica is kidnapped by the Mad Gear gang. You either play as Haggar, former wrestler and mayor of Metro City or as Cody, boyfriend of Jessica.

Gameplay is simple. Move with d-pad, attack and jump. If you move near an enemy, it is possible to grab them and punch the crap out of them or you can jump and do a piledriver-esque move.

Yeah, Clush heem!

A somewhat destructible environment is also featured with the occasional barrel, crate, or door.

Deeeestroy!

You just beat your way through the different levels until you reach the bosses.

Now onto what annoys me about this game. Haggar is slow, Cody is somewhat faster. I’ve played as both and never really noticed enough of a difference to offset what really annoys me about this game. For example. I can do a drop kick at a boss, and I time it right just so my feet meets their schnoz. They can immediately grab me out of the air somehow and perform some boss attack that drains me of my health. I can be in the middle of an attack such as throwing someone through the air, and someone can interrupt me. This then drops the guy I was attacking in front of me and immediately I am in a situation where I will lose that life.

Everytime I get hit, it takes way too long to recover. Come on! Haggar, you’re a professional wrestler and everytime you get hit it’s like, ‘You broke my nails!’ When he gets knocked down, he takes way too long to get up, allowing the enemies to again surround you.

Whenever I play the first Final Fight, I go from ‘Yeah! This is an awesome game’ to wanting to throw my whole system out the window. It’s amazingly frustrating, combined with how slow your character can move.

Well at least there’s a car bonus level that will remind you of the game’s Streetfighter roots.

Oh my car!

Oh well, regardless this is still one of my favourite games of all time to play, and one that you should definitely play if you haven’t before.

Control/Gameplay: Controls are very simple, reminiscent really of any side scrolling beat ‘em up. The gameplay could use a little tweaking. Especially with what I noted was the really annoying as how the bosses or anyone really could interrupt my drop kicks. I don’t think the guys who developed the game realized how much effort it takes to stop 200+ pounds flying through the air.

Sound: The sound effects are pretty good, the punches, screams, death cries. I did notice there aren’t any females in the game so, everybody sounds the same. The music does sound pretty good, in its arcadey-like form (since it was originally a coin-op game).

Graphics: Due to Nintendo and their game publishing policy at the time, there aren’t any blood droplets, or bottles of alcohol. I also remember some level transitions in the arcade version that weren’t in this game. I find the game colours to be kind of drab/dull as compared to the arcade as well. However, for 1991 I think this is a pretty good looking game regardless of the cosmetic changes.

Fun: Heck yeah. Side scrolling beat ‘em ups have remained one of my favourite types of games. The action is fast, the enemies are aplenty. Just nevermind the fact that a little love tap will throw you halfway across the screen.

Coop: None :(

Overall Presentation: Despite Nintendo’s neutering, some gameplay issues, it is nevertheless one of the best games for the SNES. It’s easy to pick up and play, and you’ll be in the action in no time. I promise you a good time if you play this game and you’ll be glad to know that there are 2 additional instalments to this series for the SNES! That’s What She SNES for sure.

-TWSS!

Darius Twin (1991)

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:59:00 -0500

Title: Darius Twin

Developer: Taito Corporation

Publisher: Taito Corporation

NA Release Date: November, 1991

A side scrolling shooter set in space. Nothing too original there, but as you’ll see, the enemies aren’t just robots, they’re all themed around robotic *fish*. I think everyone knows the premise of these games. You have a main weapon, you have a secondary weapon, you avoid enemies, and you kill the boss.

Robot fish in outer space.

The story in these games are usually something you can ignore pretty well, and that’s what I did here. I’ve never played any other Darius games at the arcade or any other system.

You have a main weapon which shoots straight out front. Sometimes after you defeat a certain group of square shaped enemies, you will receive a power- up. There are different colours for what it gives to you. Since I’m colourblind, this system mainly doesn’t work for me. I noticed some gave me a shield and some powered up my secondary weapon.

Speaking of secondary buttons; you hold down Y to shoot your main gun repeatedly. You hold down the B button to fire your secondary repeatedly. There is no point in the game that I know of that you would want to stop shooting either. Why couldn’t they just use one button to do it? Using your thumb to cover Y and B really gives your thumb a cramp after a while.

Eventually you make it to a boss and you’ll see a warning screen telling you the boss is approaching and what their name is.

Watch out for the Hyper Greatthing.

The bosses were somewhat tough. Some of them were pretty annoying to play. But I guess that’s what this genre thrives on, having difficult bosses that shoot 30 missiles at you that you need to constantly dodge while scoring very few hits against them. You can figure out their pattern in short time and then defeat them soon enough.

Defeat the boss and you get to a map screen where you can choose where you want to go. I suppose this adds a little bit to the replayability of the game.

I am suddenly reminded of Star Fox.

I’ll leave you with some screenshots and move onto the final verdict.

Control/Gameplay: There really isn’t much to the controls of this game. The D-pad works appropriately, though it would have been nice had they given you a setting to change the sensitivity of it. I got a terrible thumb cramp holding down the Y and B buttons down for so long though. Gameplay is simple. There aren’t many variations of enemies though and there never seems to be a whole ton of action on screen. Perhaps a hardware limitation. The non-linear story progression was nice too. The game is very easy in some parts and very difficult in others.

Sound: Sound effects are dull and just very generic sounding. The music doesn’t seem to match the game and kind of throws the ambience off.

Graphics: The backgrounds are well done in some of the stages. The clouds on the land based stages are very detailed but the space levels are really bland looking. The bosses take up a large part of the screen and are very detailed as well. The smaller enemies that can be destroyed in one hit are not very good looking at all, but any of the larger ones are detailed and intricately coloured.

Fun: The game was fairly fun, but there was just something about it that I couldn’t put my finger on that just didn’t make it that good. The game feels like it didn’t move fast enough, but regardless it was a decent time killer. Though after a few tries, I stopped playing!

Coop: Yes! 2 player on the same screen coop! Same thing as single player but with two of you on screen. This is what made me want to start playing the game again! The only other 2 player on screen at the same time coop that I played was Ikaruga on the Dreamcast.

Overall Presentation: An average shooter at best I think. Though I will give it top marks for the coop play. Sound could really help, speed up the movement of the ship or provide sensitivity controls. It’s not a bad game by any means, but I’m not wowed by it. If you’re into two player side scrolling shooters, search this out and play it and I guarantee you’ll have a good time. It’s probably not a must hand nor must play though. Until next time!

-TWSS!

Reblogging

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:46:00 -0500

Hello Everyone!

If you haven’t noticed, I added a reblog button on the top of each post. Turns out it’s a huge deal in the Tumblr community. Anyways, I’ve been testing it out, so I’ve been reblogging my own posts if you guys are wondering why I’m tooting my own horn here.

I’m having problems gettings the notes counter working. People will like my post but it won’t show in my dashboard or as a note. For example, my ActRaiser post had no likes. I tested my reblog, and all of a sudden there were 3 likes. But the notes counter only said ‘1 Note’ due to my reblogging. I had a friend like the post, and that pushed it up to ‘2 Notes’. But the other 3 likes weren’t counted.

In past posts I would see the notes but not who liked it. This seems like a sporadic problem for tumblr, because my notes counter worked (and I scoured all afternoon to figure out if it was broken or not).

Does anyone have any solutions or hints? I will be super gratified if you can help me fix it. I will also play a SNES game of your choice from beginning to end and make a super post about it! That reminds me, I should really finish Super Mario World.

Thanks for your patronage and I hope I have brought back some memories for my readers!

-TWSS

ActRaiser (1991)

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:23:00 -0500

Create Order from Chaos!

Title: ActRaiser

Developer: Quintet

Publisher: Enix America, Inc.

NA Release Date: November, 1991

Alright, straight off. That’s What She Wants.

A mixture of a platformer and top down city planning god overlord game that is notoriously fun. This was a game that I rented from the local Blockbuster (when they still existed), and beat in one night.

You are known as ‘The Master’ to the people and the evil guy is Tanzra. So you were defeated by Tanzra and six of his friends and you left for your sky castle to sleep it off. Tanzra split the world up into six pieces; one for each of his friends.

Now you’ve come back and are ready to take over.

Skycastle!

In the top down city building view, you fly around in this skycastle. Inside your castle, you can choose different options such as magic you want to take down with you to the platforming stages. At this point you don’t have any magic, and you don’t have any cities that are faithful to you so all you can do is choose to go down and fight.

The screen spins around Mode 7 style until you go into the platforming stage.

The first stage is called Fillmore. You aren’t high enough level yet to visit any of the other stages. On each of these worlds, there exist these statues your sky master ‘presence’ inhabits and animates and then you go hack n slash platforming.

The first time you visit every world, you must first defeat the boss before you are allowed to go down and direct the people. None of the bosses you face will be terribly hard. You might die a few times to figure out their pattern and then you’ll pretty much be unscathed provided you still got some reflexes left in your old age.

Check out them biceps!

In the city-building-directing phase, you take the form of an angel that can shoot arrows. You’ll find enemies spawn out of these portal like things on the ground. You don’t build any of the buildings directly a la SimCity, but you can select an area where you want your people to build towards. You want to build towards a portal and your people will seal it.

You also have magic you can use. One of the magicks you’ll probably be using most is lighting. It can destroy trees and allow your people to build out more. The sun can dry up marshy bits, and earthquake can alter the landscape (but it will also knock down your village if they haven’t built earthquake proof shelters).

You keep building and your villages will find artifacts that can give you more MP, or allow some villages to have boats. In each city once you’ve been building for a bit, your villagers will tell you there is castle or a cave or something that has another boss in it that you must dive into the platforming stage to do. Once you defeat this boss that world will be completely free.

What a game! I started playing and just couldn’t put it down again. So I finished the game. I guess the downside to this game is that, it is short, and it is terribly easy. Anyways I leave you with some screenshots!

Control/Gameplay: Gameplay straight off is amazing. It’s such a good mixture. When you tire of the action, you can just hop in your sky palace and fly somewhere else. Build a city and then hop back in the action and slash your way through. The controls could use a little tweaking however. They’re not the most responsive controls. They’re fine in the city building phase but when you’re in the action sequence and you hit the attack button there is a little bit of a noticeable lag, resulting in me getting hit more often than I would like.

Sound: Yuzo Koshiro composed the music to this game and according to one of my old Nintendo Power magazines, I believe it said that he was one of the most famed composers of the era. I mostly remember his music from the Streets of Rage series.

Graphics: Look at any of the screenshots above. During the action sequences the backgrounds are incredibly detailed. The top down city building view isn’t as detailed, but at least you can see the little guys running around destroying the caves! The bosses are very big and detailed as well. Mode 7 is seen throughout the game. You’ll see it when you’re zooming down from your sky palace into one of your cities, and in some of the backgrounds during action sequences. The enemies and the player don’t move the most fluidly, but it’s rather easy to overlook.

Fun: While the game and concept seem rather simple, it is tons of fun. The first time I played it, I went all the way through without stopping. This time I did it again.

Coop: None :(

Overall Presentation: A completely amazing game. Really I think the only fault that detracts from it is that it is short and extremely easy. Sure some of the bosses will give you a little bit of trouble, but you’ll figure out any of their patterns rather easily. Play this and you will not be disappointed! That’s What She Wants!

-TWSS!

True Golf Classics - Waialae Country Club (1991)

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:17:00 -0500

Title: True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club

Developer: T&E Soft

Publisher: T&E Soft

NA Release Date: November, 1991

Yes! Another golf game! I am somewhat partial to golf games. I used to play Tiger Woods PGA on the original Xbox with 3 other friends and it was a completely blast to play (regardless of how boring it may sound).

Waialae is an actual golf course in Hawai’i. Now I don’t know if the different greens are based on the actual greens at Waialae, but I’m just going to assume that they are. Whether they are or not doesn’t add to the fun of golf, hit ball a few times and putt into the hole. Repeat 17 more times.

Before you start playing, you do need to register your name. You can also play up to 4 players. You will need to share controllers though. It’s not multi-tap compatible.

I chose to play the tournament.

You have to pick a caddy and…. Hahahahaha!

I think the second one has a mullet!

So you start. You can see the course, the wind direction, where your ball is sitting. You can hit a button to see the green but, it’s not really all that useful. Choose your club (usually the best one is automagically picked for you), hit another button to choose the power.

I didn’t get a screenshot of this part but right after you select the power, a little dot superimposed over the ball travels from left to right, bottom to up so that you can choose where you want to hit the ball. If you’re in the sand trap you would want to hit it lower to dig your ball out. In all the other golf games I’ve played, you could use the D-pad or analog stick to choose. This one is like a game of centipede and you have to bit the button just at the right time if you want to smack it dead center. It moves quickly too so it’s hard to hit it where you want to.

Water hazard!

Pretty much repeat until you win, or lose terribly like I did. Due to that crappy ball hitting mechanic, my golf balls were constantly veering off into the forest, sad traps, or water hazards. When I did eventually make it to the green, you will find it overlays a grid like most golf games so you can see the terrain. Putting was immensely easier than any other part of this game. I put it in the hole most of the time in the first or second shot.

Once in a while, a guy will pop up on the screen and tell you how well other players are doing compared to you. Your caddy will also randomly pop up and give you some comments or a kudos.

Sweet blog dude!

The menu music is all happy and sounds like steel drums. There isn’t any of this distracting music in game (thank goodness). Other than that, birds chirp, leaves rustle, and you get a satisfying thwock when you hit the ball with a driver.

A pretty decent golf game, marred by that one mechanic in the process of hitting the ball. Well it’s still fun to play but I’m not going to give it a That’s What She Wants.

Control/Gameplay: Other than that one control mechanic I spoke about, the game is very playable and pretty good. However it’s not a mechanic that just slightly disturbs your game, it makes it pretty hard to shoot the ball. I don’t know why they chose to make it like this as I’ve never played a golf game that had this mechanic. Maybe every other golf game learned a lesson from this game. Other than that, it’s a basic golf game without a complicated control scheme.

Sound: Standard fare here. I will have to admit that there is a satisfying sound when you get a good powerful hit on the ball. The birds chirping and wind bowing doesn’t distract you from the game and the menu music is not present in the game.

Graphics: The trees are the most detailed and so is your golfer. I suspect they came from photos and were dumbed down for the SNES. You can’t compare the look of the green to today’s games but even Hal’s Hole in One Golf looked better than this with more subtle shading and gradients. If I could somehow nick those graphics and put it with the sans top down view of this game, it would be much better.

Fun: It was alright fun! Due to some time constraints I didn’t play through all the way to the end of the tournament. I was losing pretty badly but I was improving towards the end of my gameplay session.

Coop: None :(. It’s playable with up to 4 players in total, sharing the same controller. Of course you are playing against each other!

Overall Presentation: If I was grading this game like a term paper, I’d give it B. It could have been an A game if it had a little bit more polish into it. It does present itself as a decent golfing game to play, but it’s not a must play!

-TWSS

RPM Racing (1991)

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:18:00 -0500

Title: RPM Racing

Developer: Silicon & Synapse

Publisher: Interplay

NA Release Date: November, 1991

I knew I shouldn’t have expected much when I found out that RPM actually stood for Radical Psycho Machine instead of its traditional meaning. The goal of this game is to win races (surprise surprise), upgrade your vehicle until you win the final level and get 30 million big ones. Well let’s get radical then.

Choose a save slot and let’s get started. You choose a chassis. I forgot to take a screenshot here, but there are three different chassis’. Monster truck, a Lamborghini Diablo-esque shaped car, and an F1 car. Each has different levels power, endurance, handling, and etc. You are then taken to the upgrade screen but you don’t have any money to buy anything at this point.

I now proceeded to race. Apologies in advance for the quality of these screenshots, but the game has decided to double the resolution but interlace everything.

I’m terrible at this.

For some reason, even in single player it is split screen. You can see one of your opponents race on the bottom. You can’t turn it off. Why couldn’t they do something like Super Mario Kart and have a large map down there? Also I have just realized this game is a lot like Rock n Roll Racing.

Watch out for mines.

You can purchase mines if you want. By default your vehicles comes with one. I ran into one during my race and it just makes you instantly explode. But don’t worry, you respawn a few seconds later and you’re good to go again.

I lost my first race completely and won a grand total of 0$. So I played again, and completely destroyed the race, and I won a hot total of TWO dollars. It’s not enough to upgrade anything or even pay the entry fee into the next race. The controls are terrible, the framerate sucks, the music is quiet and it sounds like it really sucks also, and the sound effects are pretty mediocre as well.

I attempted to use the track editor and you can put down varying pieces of track as well as change the elevation of those sections. But it is very complex to use and it just kept on dinging at me.

Well onto my final thoughts.

Control/Gameplay: The controls are terrible. It really feels like you’re trying to drive a car in the mud the way it steers. I did find out if you press Left+L or Right+R, you’ll corner a lot better. After a couple races you get a little used to the sharp corner of this double button pressing. You can never go off the track. Even on the flat sections, just touching the edge of the dirt makes your car stop and it sounds like you hit a wall. Do this enough times and your car will explode. Good thing reality isn’t this unforgiving. There’s no speedometer to judge the efficacy of your upgrades (not that I played long enough to get any upgrades), the mines don’t add much to the game because nobody will run over it but yourself. I did not like the way this game handled at all.

Sound: I found it really amusing that when you’re moving inbetween the different menus, the game plays a ‘ding’ sound. Similar to that when you open your car door but have the key in the ignition. It sounds oddly familiar to my car. The heavy metal Klingon opera music is too quiet and it sounds terrible. Really if I was giving points out for a game, I’d give it a 1 for the ding and that’s that (out of ten).

Graphics: The framerate is similar to that of John Madden Football, and this is one of those important things in a racing game. I mean, just look at how fluid F-Zero is. The perspective of the camera with no points of reference on the sides of the track makes it very likely that you’ll frustratingly ram your car right into a corner as you’re trying to corner with controls that are too slow or too fast. The game does feature a 360 video of your vehicle around the track since you drive from a 3rd person view and the track doesn’t move unlike SMK or F-Zero. But the downside is that the transitions are not smooth. It is rather like someone took a photo of the side of the car, took a few steps to the left, took another photo and so on. Also, get that damn split screen off when I am playing single player. I don’t need to see a CPU race around the track and lap me.

Fun: Meh. I like the upgrade system and such, but if you’ve ever played Top Gear, that was a far better game. I’m pretty sure I had just slightly above no fun with this game.

Coop: None :(. However you can race head to head. I did some reading around and people were making custom tracks with a loop off to one side and it would confuse the AI leaving you and your friend to race by yourselves…. if you had a friend who you wanted to hate you afterwards for subjecting them to this.

Overall Presentation: Pretty bad! The game has almost nothing going for it in my opinion other than being the first SNES racing game with an upgrade system. I don’t know if it was the first game ever, I didn’t really play a lot of racing games in my youth. The sound is terrible, control is terrible, and graphics are mediocre. Don’t play this.

-TWSS

John Madden Football (1991)

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:19:00 -0500

Title: John Madden Football

Developer: Park Place Productions

Publisher: Electronic Arts

NA Release Date: November 1991

FOOTBALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL (Please refer to the Simpsons). I can’t find the clip so I might have to make one myself out of my DVDs

I don’t know how to play football. As a Canadian, hockey is more of my sport, or even baseball. I vaguely know the rules. Get the ball to the other end, and play stops a whole bunch of times during the way.

The way this game plays, I have no trouble believing he had input.

The game kind of throws you in like a lot of games of the era. There isn’t a tutorial mode, nor does it tell you what the controls are. I guess that’s just sometime I take for granted now. When I get a new game for my 360, the instruction manual doesn’t even get touched. I just throw the disc in and expect the game to tell me what to do through some sort of interactive tutorial.

Since the only football team I recognized was Green Bay, I chose them and played against Buffalo. So I chose some play, hit B, and ran for it with the quarterback. Believe me I tried to pass but no matter what button I hit, I couldn’t do it.

It’s good!

Beginner’s luck that I completely destroy them on the first play. Even the kick was good! Since I had no manual for this, I now opted to look up the controls on gamefaqs. Needless to say it’s complex. However I kept on playing to see what the game is like on the defensive.

Well turns out my team is pretty good at tackling the offense, so I didn’t really have to do a whole lot except recover a fumbled ball. I just kept on picking plays and getting tackled and repeat over and over until you are on the defensive again. I stopped playing rather quickly after that. Sorry football fans, it really isn’t my game.

Control/Gameplay: The controls are rather complex and not very responsive. I felt like I really had to mash the pass button to bring up a window to choose who you want to pass to. That’s why I had so many problems when trying to do it originally. Gameplay isn’t too bad. It’s quick between plays so you’re always right back into the action. I have played other football games before and it plays similar to them. Snappier controls would have made the entire game feel much better overall since the game is really dependant on complex controls. What really killed the game was the framerate. It played pretty choppily and made it hard to control.

Sound: Well the whistle sounds authentic. Other than that and the occasional checking sound there isn’t really much to hear. The music was standard fare at the time. I mean if you played any of the NHL or NHLPA games on the SNES, it sounded pretty much like that with it’s synthesized…. uh I think organ and electric guitar. It’s the perfect dullness so it doesn’t interfere with your gameplay allowing you to try and figure out the dang control scheme. With John Madden backing this, it could have included a sound byte from him. Actually that was really all I was looking forward to.

Graphics: It doesn’t look terrible. You can easily distinguish between your players and theirs and between that and the field, what else really is there? Green, players, football! The players are detailed enough. Okay, the field does give a convincing feel of some speed as you run up the side for a touchdown, but the players do move kind of jerkily. I’m not sure if that’s due to lack of fluid animation frames or because the whole game runs jerkily in general.

Fun: It was alllllright. It wasn’t completely terrible but there are better games out there. The framerate killed the buzz for me as I was learning how to play.

Coop: Yes! There is! You just set the mode to teammates and you can go ahead. Player 1 controls the plays and all that. It was pretty dismal. Just the same thing as single player with a friend controlling one player on the field. I couldn’t manage to pass to my friend successfully anyways so…. Oh well. Probably better to play head to head. But you can see the other player choose plays!

Overall Presentation: Well, it’s okay. It doesn’t seem like a very polished game, but single player isn’t too bad. Complex controls and the framerate really destroy the game for me. I can overlook the sound and the music if other parts of the game make it up. It’s just a sports game so it’s not like the music adds to the ambience of epic storytelling or anything like that. If you happen to come across a friend that has the game, give it a quick try to see what the first football game for the SNES fares for yourself. Otherwise I wouldn’t go out of my way. There are other John Madden games that come in later years that I hear are much better so I look forward to comparing those to the first on SNES.

-TWSS

Check out SNES games in action!

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 02:45:24 -0500

Someone has done what I couldn’t be bothered to do and that was to record my game play, edit it and post it on youtube. They don’t comment on the games because I think they rely on visitors to leave comments so their website hasn’t rendered mine moot.

Check them out at http://snesguide.com/ and it offers a few minutes of gameplay of SNES games. I’m not sure if it has all the games, but it does have a big variety of them at the very least!

Enjoy!

Final Fantasy II (1991)

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:17:00 -0500

Title: Final Fantasy II

Developer: SquareSoft

Publisher: SquareSoft

NA Release Date: November 23rd, 1991

One of the very few Final Fantasy series games that I’ve not had the pleasure of playing. For some reason, everyone had heard of Final Fantasy III, but this one was hardly mentioned. At least that’s how I perceived it anyways. This one is actually Final Fantasy IV (Just like the North American release of Final Fantasy III is actually FFVI). They renumbered it just keep continuity in North America, however the DS remake is actually named under its original title.

Apparently the difficult is reduced! What do those Japanese developers think we North Americans are? Noobs?! Later on there was even a remake called FFII EasyType that reduced difficulty for the Japanese release. I think most important was that some of the story were removed from the NA localization, supposedly for space limitations. As far as I know, the Super Famicom and SNES had the same sized cartridges (memory wise). The game was even censored to remove religious references and some of the magic spells were renamed (Holy was White in the NA version). At the time, the ESRB was not yet formed, so I guess Nintendo went all Nanny state on us.

Anyways, interesting tidbits from my research aside, let’s see what the game is like.

Robbing is our duty!

You start out watching the intro and you are a knight named Cecil and you’re going around on an airship stealing crystals. What for, I have no idea.

Take my package!

Apparently the King of Baron wants these crystals, but Cecil has an ethical moment and questions the King’s motives and promptly gets sent out on another quest with a Dragoon named Kain along with the King’s package.

Detroit? They must be moonlighting.

Now you get a little bit of time to explore the castle and talk to people and learn about the world. I’m trying not to ruin the story, but I think it’s safe to say, then you head to bed and head out into the overworld.

It’s really hard to talk about this game without ruining more of the storyline since it is an RPG and I believe probably rather lengthy as well. I don’t know how game reviewers do it. Instead I will just leave you with some screenshots! I will say that even though I only put maybe an hour or so into the game so far, this is definitely going to get a That’s What She Wants and I’ll have to play this through completely. I might go grab it for the DS instead though so I can carry it around.

Control/Gameplay: I’m sure most people have played a Final Fantasy game, or at least some variant of it. It controls and plays pretty much the same. It’s turned based fighting, different people have different abilities, magic can be had, items can be used. Characters can stand in front or if they’re casters, in the back row to reduce damage, and random encounters are in the overworld. This game feels exactly like FFIII (NA version). Controls feel responsive and I had no problems with it at all. I love this style of game and it’s done so well. For those people who played the original Final Fantasy (the very first one), you know that if you move between dungeons or areas too quickly, you will find yourself rather overpowered by everyone. This game is more balanced and so long as you aren’t skipping too many random encounters, you’ll be alright. I like that. On a side note, Lost Odyssey was like the original FF, where if you went somewhere too early you just got your butt kicked and it was tedious to have to grind levels.

Sound: Nobuo Uematsu anyone? The music in this game fits so well as in all the FF games. This guy is pure musical genius, so much that one of my Japanese cousins and fellow fan of the FF series informs me that his music class at school was even teaching one of the songs from this very game. I don’t remember which track though, I will email him and update the post. Battle sounds sound nearly identical to the ones in FFIII but of slightly less quality (a little muddied). Despite that, the sound and music go extremely well together.

Graphics: Looks like FFIII. Graphically not technically at the top, but the models still look great and with the gigantic variety of enemies sure to be in the FF universe, you can be sure that nobody really cares if Kain on the overworld looks like Rex from Super Mario World.

Automatic Package? I don’t like the sound of that.

Fun: Yes! Especially if you are a fan of RPGs and the FF series. If you haven’t played one before, you MUST play one. Pick either this or FFIII. I am going to head out to the local videogame authority later today and see if I can get a DS copy.

Coop: None : (, however, you wouldn’t want coop. Could you imagine arguing about which way to head next? I already hear enough of that in the car from the girlfriend. No thanks!

Overall Presentation: Graphics, sound, music, all seem to fit so well together as we gamers now expect from the FF series. I did miss out on story. I don’t want to comment too much on that because I don’t know the story, but I am expecting great things out of it. I assume that it will also be great and make this game completely outstanding. Everyone should play this AND FFIII on the SNES. Amongst the best games on the system.

-TWSS

PS. Apologies again for the delay. I’m horrible at this regular blog updating thing. Having been busy with work and my health again, along with the recent release of Battlefield 3 means I have neglected you friends again. I’ll try my best to put some time in this weekend! My 360 is not close by so I know I can’t go on Live!

Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball (1991)

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:48:00 -0400

Title: Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball

Developer: Hudson Soft

Publisher: Hudson Soft

NA Release Date: November, 1991

Who has never wanted to push the kid in gym class hogging the basketball? Come on don’t lie. Fortunately for us, we had this game to keep us from actually doing it. Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball. I don’t actually watch basketball, so I have no idea who this man is.

Remember it is the year 2030, and all the players are robots (I guess that’s why they never get hurt), but for some reason Bill Laimbeer has chosen to stay as a human… that also doesn’t get hurt.

Begin Play!

This game is very simple to play in its top down view, even down to the fact that other than the D-pad the only other button that does anything is the B button. You can only back court, and throw the ball out. Other than that, it’s all fair game to go checking anybody on the court.

You press the D-pad + B to slide and check someone when you don’t have the ball, or to pass it when you do. Then you just press B to shoot it in the general direction of the basket. One annoying thing I found is, that if you’re facing away from the basket and you press shoot, your guy (I have no idea if you play as Bill or not) does a really slow 180 before shooting, leaving you susceptible to a check.

Darn it!

Not only that, when you pass, it only goes in the direction that you point it in, which makes sense, but your AI partners always seem to be somewhere else leaving only the other team in front of me. Even during the play, your AI never seems to be in the right place, so it feels like mostly a solo effort.

I blame the AI for this one.

It’s an alright game, that I would play once in a while with a friend. I used to play this when I was younger with a friend over and it was much more fun to do that than play against the AI. It was already frustrating enough to play on beginner mode; I don’t know how frustrating it would be to play on the professional difficulty setting. Give it a shot, but don’t expect too much out of it.

Yay I’m winner!

Control/Gameplay: Gameplay is simple, and is fun against another person, but sloppy controls make it frustrating to play at times. Controls feel laggy, and it feels much too easy intercept or check anyone making your play with no way out if you corner someone. You can block but it is way too hard to do it in the middle of gameplay (also not to mention that I don’t remember exactly how). Shooting requires you to let go of the D-pad and press B only, but due to laggy controls, you often just throw a pass out of bounds.

Sound: Not much to say about sound effects. They sound really generic. On the title screen, Bill Laimbeer catches a basketball and it sounds like a wet sponge landing on some tiles. I don’t’ think that’s what catching basketball sounds like. The music was good, mellow with its futuristic overtones.

Graphics: It doesn’t look great. A pure 2D top down view, complete with slowdowns. It doesn’t even seem to slowdown when there’s a lot of action on the screen of which that is rare because your team AI is stupid and just standing somewhere else. Nothing to write home about here.

Fun: It’s kind of fun when playing with someone else.

Coop: None : (, but there is a Versus mode.

Overall Presentation: I would just say it’s okay. The gameplay wasn’t bad but could use some improvements like adding a different button to shoot would be a start. Also tweaking it so your chances of scoring get better as you get closer to the net instead of having equal chances from half court. Graphically, it didn’t great but the music helped it from being a complete disaster in the AV department. It’s fun to play against another person, and so you should! Not going to get a That’s What She Wants out of me, but it wasn’t a terrible game either. Try it out and see for yourself.

-TWSS

As of this posting, Picasa has introduced a new feature that detects faces! I tagged Bill Laimbeer in title picture. At least now we know he at least looks human… but so are his robot friends.. uh oh… Skynet?

Ultraman: Towards the Future (1991)

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:30:00 -0400

Title: Ultraman: Towards the Future

Developer: Bandai

Publisher: Bandai

NA Release Date: September, 1991

I had thought I had heard of Ultraman before. I was right. It was an animated series in Japan and I had one of the robots from the game as a toy. I’ve never seen the show and never played this game until now. Thank goodness.

This is probably one of the worst fighting games that I have ever played in my life. There’s absolutely no menu or anything. No options, no description of the controls. This is all it looks like when the game starts, followed by the stage description.

Ultraman smiles like he has candy in his van.

According to some anime lore that I found online, the Earth must protect itself from Alien invaders which is the job of the Science Special Search Party. I thought Ultraman was part of this party, but apparently running from some alien, Ultraman crashed his ship on Earth. Apparently he is the ultimate warrior and protector of peace in the universe. Unfortunately this videogame doesn’t show his skills off at all.

All Ultraman can do is punch, kick, jump way too high, and fire your special weapon. I wish I had known this when I started playing. Once you use all your lame punches and kicks to get the boss to ‘Finish’ mode, you have to use your special power by hitting Y a few times. But you need to do it when the meter at the bottom has built to L4 or the boss will just get their life back slowly.

Finish him!

Yeah I didn’t know that. I kept kicking his ass left and right and he just wouldn’t die. Eventually I just lost.

Ultimate protector my arse.

Once I did figure that out, I started to get a little better at the game. The bosses do get harder. Degola for instance has some sort of laser attack that’s pretty hard to dodge because Ultraman starts his jump a little too slow. If you try to jump and kick the boss, you’ll probably end up way too high in the air and then when you land right in front of the boss, you’ll just get kicked in the face.

Degola really looks like Alf.

That’s really all there is to the game. I didn’t enjoy this one. At all.

Am I glad this review is over.

Control/Gameplay: This game controls like expired molasses. Every button I press has some appreciable delay before the action occurs. You hit jump and you jump way up in the air and then you can’t see the boss anymore. Then you land right beside him and get kicked right in the schnoz. The gameplay is terrible as well. There isn’t any sort of backstory for those who have never heard of or watched the anime, nor is there any sort of segue between the bosses. You just go from fight to fight. To put the icing on the cake, it’s also really difficult.

Sound: The music is just always a battle-y like kind of drone in the background. I am pretty sure it just loops over and over as well. The sound effects define generic and sound like the microphone was underwater when they were recorded.

Graphics: The graphics are really bad. The interface is generic and plain. The animations are terrible and there are so few of them. Punch, kick, 4 special weapons, jump, and a really stupid looking roll.

Fun: I can’t associate this word with this game in any way whatsoever.

Coop: None. Your friends thank you.

Overall Presentation: I did not like this game. Nobody enjoyed watching me play this game other than the fact I kept on getting my ass kicked and the 3rd boss kind of looked like Alf. Just another game with awkward controls, bad looping music, and terrible sound effects. I’m really going to have to come up with a tag for games that nobody should ever play.

-TWSS

U.N. Squadron (1991)

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 03:45:00 -0400

Title: U.N. Squadron

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

NA Release Date: September, 1991

Oh what a game to follow Super R-Type. Basically another side scrolling shooter but perhaps a little more rooted in reality as you fly airplanes (that I believe are real or at least semi-real). Originally released in 1989 on the CPS arcade system (the menu even looks like Streetfighter). It was called Area 88 in Japan and was based on a manga series. The subtle difference between the arcade and SNES port in 1991 was that the console version started you with 3 lives vs. 1 in the arcade, and that there were more airplanes in the console version.

Your mission is to defeat a group of terrorists known as Project 4 by simply piloting your ship and shooting everything in your way.

Oh so lucky.

Once you start the game, you get to choose who you want to pilot and their corresponding jet. Each pilot has a jet that performs a little differently. For example; Shin’s weapons fire forward only but rapidly vs. Greg whose A-10 fire forward and downwards on an angle.

The pilots you can choose from.

I chose to go with Mickey (whose weapons do more damage). Then you choose a ship, buy your weapons and select on the map where you want to go fight the terrorists. As you destroy enemies, you make more money and can buy more weapons or a more powerful ship (which will unlock different weapons). Some enemies will also drop powerups that you need to collect a certain number of to upgrade your primary weapon.

This game is a little more forgiving than Super R-Type but I also think it is a little more difficult. For example, if you take a hit your shields will drop (usually down to danger), but if you avoid taking hits for a while, you’ll regain most but not all of your shield back. However I think the game is more difficult because of all the ground forces shooting at you and your limited supply for secondary weapons. I would love to buy more than one megacrush, but it won’t let me.

Ahhh ground forces!

If you die, you have to choose your loadout again and choose on the map who you want to fight. However the grids that represent the enemy move closer to your base with each turn whether you lose or win. The bosses were quite difficult, but your jet is less twitchy than that of Super R-Type. Combined with your limited amount of secondary weapons, it caused me a lot of level restarts.

I made it to about level 3 or 4 after I got used to the level layouts when I decided I should put the game down. It was quite difficult but I persevered as long as I did because of the gorgeous graphics, giant boss battles, and great music.

U.N. Squadron, you get a That’s What She Wants from me. This game could only get better if there was a coop mode like Super Strike Eagle.

Control/Gameplay: It controls well. Our jet isn’t too twitchy or too slow, but some levels have a ridiculous amount of ground forces that make it difficult to fly around and kill anything while dodging. I really like how you get to purchase new ships and weapons to go along with it. Though similar to Super R-Type if you die, you go back to the beginning. However any of the money you earned on the way you get to keep.

Sound: The sounds for the explosions and various weapons are crisp and sound good to the ear. Combined with the music that is cheery, catchy and fast paced to match the gameplay. It does sound like a lot like an organ. The tracks sound great and I’m off after this post to see if I can find an OST somewhere.

Graphics: The background and foreground are quite detailed and there are various detailed enemies as well (both flying and ground based). This game suffers from the occasional slowdown when there is too much on the screen. Even the character selection and weapon selection stages are quite detailed.

Fun: Again, if you love shooters, you’ll love this game. I really enjoy how you can purchase different weapons and jets.

Coop: None :(

Overall Presentation: I believe another classic here. I remember playing this at the arcade actually and remember there always being lineups. I vaguely recall there being a coop mode at the arcade though. Great gameplay, great graphics, great music puts this entire game together as something that everyone should play. It’ll take a bit of playing to semi memorize enemy placements before you can really make some progression in the game, but I love it. I’ll try to see if I can actually beat this game.

-TWSS

Super R-Type (1991)

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:11:00 -0400

“R” you ready for super graphics, higher-powered action and a galaxy full of challenge? Super R-Type is ready for you!

Title: Super R-Type

Developer: Irem

Publisher: Irem

NA Release Date: September, 1991

One of my favourite shooters when I was a child. Though I’d like to presume that I was much better at it when I was 10 than now. I think amongst my friends, it was known as a frustratingly difficult game to play. Even today after playing many iterations of R-Type, I still end up finding this one the most difficult.

You pilot a ship which I believe is called the R-9 in a side scrolling manner similar to a game like Gradius. However, what is unique is that you get control of a little pod called the Force which can kind of act like a secondary ship. You can attach it to the front of your R-9 to be like some sort of shield, or you can leave it floating around as a secondary weapon. The Force is kind of invincible in a way. You can shoot it into a crowd of enemies and while it does also shoot, it cannot be destroyed so enemies that run into it just explode.

Pod away!

Your ship can also fire. You start off with a weak repeating pellet shooter, and you can get powerups along the way that speed up your ship, change your weapons, and upgrade your pod’s weapons. You can also charge up your R-9 for a super attack that annihilates most of the enemies in a wide swath in front of you. Holding the B-button down and waiting until the charge meter at the bottom fills up twice and starts blinking allows you to unleash the charge with a release of the button. If you wait too long though, the meter will stop blinking and your attack becomes rather ineffectual.

Supa powa!

Don’t get too many speed upgrades or you’ll become like the ship in Gradius III and smash into a wall with a simple twitch of the d-pad. Which brings me to one of the reasons why the game is so difficult. Your ship is very twitchy. Without any speed upgrades though, it’s way too sluggish. The other really annoying thing is that if you die from a single stray hit anywhere, you have to start over from the beginning of the level. How freaking annoying is that not to have any checkpoints. You just played through the whole level to get to the boss, to twitch-smash your ship into something and having to start over.

I was even playing this on easy mode, and it still felt like I was being punished. It’s almost like there’s no difference between easy and hard mode really. This game also unfortunately suffers from the slowdown effect where there is too much on the screen, however this makes it somewhat easier to play.

You’ll be seeing this a lot.

Aside from some of these misgivings, it is still a solid side scrolling shooter. There are a variety of weapons to try out such as missiles, bombs, and rebound lasers. That one is my favourite, bouncing laser beams off the walls. The only problem for me here is that the upgrades are colour coded so…. I never know what I’m switching to. For example a few times I changed from my bouncing laser to some sort of sound wave weapon which I didn’t like as much.

I will give this game a That’s What She Wants. It is a classic amongst side scrolling shooters and I think everyone should give it a little more than just a glancing try because it is a difficult game. Fortunately you can keep continuing from the level you’re currently on… if that makes you feel any better.

Control/Gameplay: Unique companion with the Force buddy, but the ship is a little twitchy. Needs to have a better speed upgrade system instead of molasses slow and lightning fast. Slowdowns during action, but it doesn’t really ruin how great this game is.

Sound: The sound effects aren’t that great. They sound kind of muddied and generic. The highlight of this game is definitely the soundtrack though. It has this rock track and beat that just makes you want to destroy those bosses.

Graphics: Well it looks alright. I don’t think it’s anything special to really write home about. I will forgive it for having slowdowns as one of the early SNES releases. The bosses do look pretty detailed and impressive.

Fun: Yes! Definitely if you love shooters. But also very very frustrating at times. Might be best taken in small doses if you don’t enjoy dying 50 times in a row.

Coop: None :(

Overall Presentation: It’s a classic, what can I say? Most people know the game R-type, having seen it at the arcade beforehand. It is fun when you become accustomed to the twitchy controls and stop flying into walls, but I wouldn’t say it is a game that will probably keep you coming back. If you haven’t played it though, definitely give it a shot and then try some of the other R-Type games like R-Type Final for the PS2.

-TWSS