Paperboy
Sega Genesis
I have very mixed feelings about this game. I was raised with the NES version of Paperboy. I played the heck out of it and I loved it. I had played the arcade version a small handful of times when I was a kid as well, but I had never owned or even played the Genesis version of the game. I had played its sequel, Paperboy 2, over at a friend's house on his Genesis once. But the original? Nope.
Well that changed here in January of 2018. It only took me 27 years from the game's initial release date, but hey - I finally played it. Upon booting it up, I immediately noticed that it was different from the 8-bit NES version. Like the arcade version of the game, Paperboy for Sega Genesis offered 3 different routes to play: Easy St. Middle Rd. and Hard Way.
I started out on Easy St. because... well, because. I was going to play all 3 of them anyway. Why not start on the easiest one? Turns out, "easiest" would be a relative term.
For those of you not familiar with Paperboy, I really don't want to associate myself with you. How da eff could you not know what Paperboy is? I kid, I kid. I hope you know the idea of the game, but I will explain it anyway. The premise of Paperboy is simple. You control a boy on a bicycle. Not just a boy, a PAPER boy. The goal of the game is toss your newspapers onto the doorstep (or directly into the mailbox) of your subscribers. If you succeed, congrats! You just hung on to a subscriber. If you miss, you lose their business. Oh noes!!!! You can tell the difference between a subscriber's house and a non-subscriber's because of the way their houses are painted. Subscribers have nice white, blue, or yellow houses. Non-subscribing households have the whole all black goth thing going on, complete with signs in the yard saying "go away! or "keep out!". They must REALLY want everyone to know that they don't want a paper and that the paperboy better stay away. Now that is dedication to their cause.
That is the basic premise of the game, but things aren't quite that simple. If you successfully deliver a paper to a subscriber but do damage to their house or property, you lose that subscriber. How do you damage someone's house? The number one culprit in this game is missing the mark with your paper and knocking out their window.
The game is structured around days of the week. Each day of the week, the game gets progressively harder. If you successfully deliver a paper to all your subscribers, you gain a new subscriber. The more subscribers you have, the more points you can earn in the game. I tried my dardnest to complete a perfect run on Easy St, but it just wasn't meant to be. I could never do it on the NES version either. Something always managed to pop up and throw a monkey wrench in my plans.
On the flip side, if you miss a subscriber's house or break their window, you lose that subscriber. I think you start the game off with about 10 to 12 subscribers. If you lose all of them it is game over no matter how many lives you have left. Bummer.
If you have never played Paperboy before (I'm still judging you), you are probably thinking that this sounds really boring. So you drive around on a bicycle and chuck newspapers at peoples' doors. What is the big deal? Let me explain what makes the game interesting: the obstacles.
The neighborhood in this game comes directly from the nightmares of Tim Burton. It looks like a nice little suburb on the outside. But no! Its residents seem to have one thing and one thing only on their minds: murdering the paperboy. Construction workers hammering on the sidewalks. They want to kill you. Old ladies with shopping carts. They want to kill you too. Break dancers, kids on tricycles, the homeless, skateboarders, burglars, street artists, brawling inmates, kids with remote control cars, fat angry looking dad types in wife-beaters, the freaking Unabomber, even the Grim Reaper himself: they all want to kill you. So the sidewalk isn't safe, think you can just drive on the road instead? Think again. Cars come flying down the street with no regard for human life whatsoever. Even the pets and animals of the neighborhood want to bring you down. Terriers, cats, poodles, giant swarms of bees. They all want your blood.
Therein lies most of the charm of the game, seeing what crazy shit this neighborhood is going to throw at you. The place feels like a war zone most of the time. You are constantly swerving around, going back and forth, trying to avoid all these obstacles. You can even smack most of these things with your newspaper and stop them dead in their tracks. It is a very satisfying feeling.
As mentioned earlier, the game progressively gets harder each day of the week. Monday is the easiest and has the least amount of obstacles. By the time you get to Sunday you are going to feel like you have been through WWII. Each day's route ends with a little obstacle course you have to navigate to earn extra points. At the end of the obstacle course, a cheering crowd awaits you. WTF, first they want to kill you, now they want to cheer you on? It is funny how I never questioned this as a kid.
Make it through all 7 days with at least one subscriber remaining and you beat the game. There are 3 different routes to take, each with 7 days. Each route takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. So this is not a long game. Not only is it short, there is not much replay value. The only reason you keep playing Paperboy is because it is so damn challenging. It took me many, many attempts just to beat Easy St. The other 2 routes, forget about it. I am lucky to make it to Thursday. But I actually found Hard Way to be easier than Middle Rd for some odd reason.
I don't think I made it quite clear enough in my last paragraph how hard the game is. It is FREAKING INSANE. The game throws so much at you, it is nearly impossible to dodge everything. It is impossible actually. And the game puts you in a lot of lose/lose situations where no matter which way you go you are destined to be taken down. Not only that, but the game's collision detection is wonky too. It happened many times in this game where I would give an obstacle a wide berth but it still would somehow manage to take me out. Like, I wasn't even near that fire hydrant. I was driving down the middle of the sidewalk. How the crap did it hit me? This happens quite a lot.
Plus, the game's controls aren't very responsive either. It handles... fine. But if you are trying to make a sharp turn or move swiftly to avoid something, you will go too far in that direction and hit something else. It doesn't control crisply or fluidly enough. It is very jerky and mechanical. This would be acceptable to me if the game wasn't so challenging and didn't require such precise movements. It is quite frustrating to be honest with you.
That sums up my time with the game: frustrating. With a lot of these classic retro reviews that I write, I often allow nostalgia to get in the way. Not this time. I appreciate Paperboy's relevance to the video game world. It is a clever game. At times, it can be a fun game. But for the most part it is not. It just made me want to chuck my controller through the wall. I honestly find the NES translation, although it is not as faithful to the arcade version as this one is, to be the better game. This one just pissed me off most of the time. It looks old, it sounds old, it doesn't control well, it is short, and it is frustratingly difficult. Not just difficult. If it was simply a hard game I could handle that. But it is flat out unfair and that I do not approve of.
So this won't get a good rating from me. I don't want to give it a bad one either, because damn it, it is still Paperboy. There is still a part of me that is going to forgive some of this game's shortcomings no matter how many there are. But it does not get my glowing recommendation. Before I go, kudos again to my cousin Ryan for loaning me a box his Genesis games to play and review. This was yet another one of his games. I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate it!
Overall:
C-
No comments:
Post a Comment