That's What She SNES!

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 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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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’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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

You have to pick a caddy and…. Hahahahaha!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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