Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Video Game Review #362: Blazing Lazers

Blazing Lazers
TurboGrafx-16




Nostalgia Factor:

I first heard of Blazing Lazers about a year ago. Everything I read about the game was positive. Everyone seemed to really like it. Kanye even mentions it in a song of his. It's a game I've wanted to check out ever since, but I kept putting it off and putting it off due to my general disdain of shoot 'em ups.

Now that I'm going through year by year and picking out games to play that I've never played before, it only made sense to finally bite the bullet and play this game. It came out in 1989. I was looking for a 1989 game to play. It all came together perfectly here. Would I enjoy this game or would the curse of the shoot 'em up strike again? Let's find out!




Story:

I'm sure that Blazing Lazers has some kind of storyline to it. The problem is, you have to either own the original instruction manual for the game or look up a recap on Wikipedia if you want to have any idea what that story is. Literally nothing is explained in-game. You fly your little space ship through a series of stages, blowing up everything in sight as you go. At the end of the game you fight the final boss and the credits start to roll. Not really much to go on here if you're looking for some kind of deep story.




Gameplay:

One of the main reasons I generally don't like shoot 'em ups is because of how unforgiving they are. One hit kills you. There's dozens of projectiles on screen at a time. You're constantly on your toes, and one tiny little mistake will kill you. I often feel these games can be cheap, as well. Enemies tend to have predictable patterns but then break those patterns when it is least convenient for the player. You could be playing a perfect game and then get completely screwed by luck of the draw.

Blazing Lazers isn't like that. This may be the most forgiving and accessible shoot 'em up I've ever played. I think I made it through the first three or four levels while only dying once. I started to wonder if the game was just incredibly easy or if I had broken it somehow. Turns out, the game is just incredibly easy... for the first few stages at least. When you get deeper into the game, it starts to get more difficult. But by the time that happens, you've already been afforded the opportunity to "figure out" the game and its controls - making it a tough challenge but not an impossible or frustrating one.

The thing that stood out to me early on was the weapon upgrade system. Power ups are plentiful in this game, so you never have to worry about being stuck with your base "pea shooter" cannon for long. These weapon upgrades are very powerful, almost making you feel like you are overpowered at times. For example, there's this electrical attack that nearly fills the entire screen with its attack radius - and it is super powerful too! All I had to do was avoid getting hit and spam this attack over and over again - and it worked. None of the enemies on the screen could avoid this attack. Like I said, the first few levels of this game were extremely easy to me.

I wish the upgrade system was explained a little bit better, however. I guess that is one of the downsides to not having this game's manual. There are these purple orbs I'd collect - and I to this day have NO idea what those orbs did. But gosh darn it I still went out of my way to collect them. Also, the weapon upgrade power ups simply appear as colored balls with numbers on them. Due to the hectic nature of this game, I could never remember which number represented which upgrade - and I'd often end up accidentally downgrading or picking a weapon I didn't want. A little picture representing the gun, or even a letter (like you'd see in Contra) certainly would have helped here.

Even though Blazing Lazers isn't too horribly difficult, it does have some annoyances. When you die, you have to return to a checkpoint rather than just respawning where you died. You don't have unlimited lives or continues - so if you make it deep into the game and then run out, you have to go back to the beginning of the entire game again. The most annoying thing to me was the "life limit". In one of the later stages, I noticed that while I had accumulated over ten extra lives, the game would send me back to the beginning of the stage after dying three times. I was struggling a bit with a boss, but I thought I'd be able to get in plenty of practice against it due to all the lives in my inventory. But no, it sent me back to the beginning of the entire stage after dying against the boss three times in a row. WTF is that?

Speaking of bosses, I did enjoy the boss battles in this game. The stages themselves are a bit easy, especially with all the screen-filling weapons you can pick up. To me, the bosses represented the real challenge of the game. In a way they reminded me of Star Fox bosses with their hit boxes and the strategy you'd have to deploy to beat them.




Graphics:

This game looks pretty darn good for its time. This could easily be a late stage Super Nintendo game with its bright colors and detailed enemies. Way to go, TurboGrafx-16! The game may not look too exciting when you first start playing it, but just wait for all the enemies, power ups, colorful projectiles, and background graphics to start filling up your screen. This game gets very crazy and colorful very fast.




Sound:

This game has an excellent soundtrack. I love the upbeat tunes, and how they really get you pumped when you're in the heat of battle. The music really fits the action perfectly, and I can't say enough about it. The sound effects are great too. Everything you'd want aurally from a space shoot 'em up, Blazing Lazers provides.




Overall:

I had a surprisingly good time with this game. It may now be my favorite shoot 'em up of all time, not that it had much competition (sorry Thunder Force II and Gradius!). It's accessible, it's fun, it's got great graphics, it's got great music, and at no point does it feel frustrating or impossible - a common complaint I have about this genre of game. I love the weapon power ups, and how they can make you feel like the ultimate badass when things are clicking for you. I can easily see myself coming back to this game in the future. I'm very glad I finally pushed aside my hatred for shoot 'em ups long enough for me to check this game out.

That said... it's still a shoot 'em up. It has no story. There's not much variety to the gameplay. You move around the screen and you shoot stuff and collect power ups while trying to not get hit so you can stay alive. That's all there is to this game. I also feel like the game started to wear out its welcome after a while. Nine stages is a lot, especially when you're doing the same thing over and over again.

I feel like a B is the highest I can possibly go here. I'm sure there are shoot 'em ups out there that I will like more than this one, so I have to leave some room for improvement as far as the grading scale goes.



THE GRADE:
B



40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:


1989:
Blazing Lazers (the review you're reading)
And coming up next:
The Revenge of Shinobi
for Sega Genesis



For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click


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Monday, April 25, 2022

Video Game Review #361: Super Mario Land

Super Mario Land
Game Boy




Nostalgia Factor:

When scrolling through a Wikipedia list of games that came out in 1989, one of the titles on that list to jump out at me was Super Mario Land. I never owned a Game Boy growing up as a kid, so I’ve never been able to check this game out, despite hearing good things about it. Now that I’ve got a RetroPie, there is nothing keeping me from playing this game. To the top of my list it went, and before you could say “spaghetti” I was giving it a shot. How would it stand up 33 years after its initial release? That’s what I am here to find out!




Story:

Does this game have a story? You basically make your way through a series of stages, looking to save Daisy (in her first video game appearance!) from the forces of evil – similar to when you saved Princess Peach in the original Super Mario Bros. game. Look at Mario with all these lady friends. He’s a playa!




Gameplay:

This game bears many similarities to the original Super Mario Bros. You play through a series of four worlds, each one consisting of three stages. The first two stages tend to be your standard Mario platforming stages, while the third one ends in a boss fight. There are side-scrolling shoot ‘em up types of levels as well.

The controls are pretty much the same as in Super Mario Bros. You have a jump button and a run button. You start out small and grow in size when you collect a mushroom. You run, smash blocks, jump on enemies, avoid piranha plants, and leap across platforms. You can descend certain pipes, which take you to underground areas where you can collect coins. The controls are a little stiffer than Super Mario Bros. Your character's momentum (or lack thereof) also seems to work a little bit differently this time around. This led to several untimely deaths on what seemed like routine jumps, but grappling with the controls was just something I had to learn to deal with.

You’ll occasionally get fire flower upgrades or star power ups, just like the original Mario. The fire flower works a little different here, as you can only fire one shot at a time. When the shot hits the ground, it ricochets into the air and off the screen. If you’re in an enclosed area, your shot will bounce around from wall to wall until it eventually hits an enemy or dies out. Oh yeah! The most exciting thing about the fire flower is how your fireball will collect a coin if it comes into contact with one of them. That comes in handy when trying to nab hard-to-reach coins that you may struggle to collect otherwise.

The shoot ‘em up levels are completely new to this game. Neither of them are very challenging. Basically, you fly around in the air, moving up, down, left, or right, as the screen scrolls to the right. You shoot enemies as they appear. You can also shoot and destroy block obstacles. Both of the shoot ‘em up levels end with pretty easy boss fights that require little strategy.

Other than that, Super Mario Land doesn’t do a whole lot that’s new. You’ll notice a few small tweaks as you play, like hearts taking the place of green one-up mushrooms. When you jump on a turtle, you can’t kick its shell around. Instead it turns into a bomb and blows up after a few seconds. You can jump on boulders and ride them around in a couple levels. That’s pretty fun. Stages can also end with a “roulette” type bonus stages that award you with either extra lives or a fire flower power up for the next level.


 

Graphics:

Game Boy games always look pretty primitive to me, and this game is no exception. The shapes of Mario and his enemies seem smaller than you’d see on the NES. Just look at some of these screenshots. The koopa troopas and the goombas are noticeably smaller in comparison to their appearance in older games. Especially the koopa troopas. They just look flat out weird, like baby turtles. I felt like I had to check if the game was working alright the first time I played it. Other things are really small, too, like the blocks you smash with your head.

I do have to give this game props for introducing some new enemy types, like jumping seahorses that shoot fireballs, or insects that fly above you and try to drop lances on your head. I also have to give this game credit for some of its stage design, particularly as you get deeper into the game. The first couple worlds have a generic Mario 1 feel to them, but some of the latter stages have special themes like an Egyptian and a Japanese theme that really make it unique in comparison to other Mario games.




Sound:

I’m a big fan of this game’s music. Don’t expect to hear very many classic Mario tunes, as I believe this game’s entire soundtrack is original. The first world’s music is so fun and upbeat. The Egyptian area has music that reminds me of the Oil Ocean Zone in Sonic 2. The Japanese area has a nice, classy tune that plays through its stages. There’s a weird rendition of a classical music piece (can’t think of its name) that plays when you collect a star. I love it. I love all the music in this game.

My only complaint in the audio department would be the sound effects. I prefer the classic Mario sound effects to the generic crap we hear in this game. Collecting coins, jumping, shooting a fireball… it just doesn’t sound the same.



 
Overall:

I feel like I say this every single time I review a Game Boy game, but I thought this was a pleasant surprise. I'm always so quick to write off Game Boy games. This was good, though.

One thing I have to complain about is this game's length. With only four worlds and three stages in each world, you can make your way through this pretty quickly. The game isn't much of a challenge either, especially if you manage to earn extra lives through the little minigame after each level. I had double figure extra lives going into the last stage of the game.

Most of the time I died, I was able to chalk it up to the game's stiff controls. Very rarely did I actually feel like a death was deserved. That means this game is very easy. In fact I'd say it is one of the easiest 2D Mario games I have played to date.

That didn't stop me from loving this game, however. Okay, maybe "loving" is too strong. I really liked this game. It's fun. It brings a lot of new Mario ideas to the table. It's got clever level design. A wonderful soundtrack. Definitely worth checking out!

Where does this game rank on my all-time list of greatest Mario games? I can't say for certain, but I think in terms of overall enjoyment I'd put this somewhere in the area of Super Mario World. The only NES classic it comes close to touching is the original Super Mario Bros.

In fact, I've played the original Mario game SO FREAKING MANY times in my life, I don't really have much of a desire to come back and play it anymore. Maybe if I ever get the itch to play it, I'll come check out this instead. A fresh, fun Mario experience that scratches nearly every one of those itches, while still carving out its own unique identity in the process.

That says all you need to know about this game.



THE GRADE:
B+



40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:


1989:
Super Mario Land (the review you're reading)
And coming up next:
Blazing Lazers for
the TurboGrafx-16!



For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click
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Friday, April 22, 2022

Video Game Review #360: Double Dragon II: The Revenge

Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Arcade




Nostalgia Factor:

How I never played this game as a kid, I have no idea. I enjoyed the original Double Dragon for both the arcade and the NES, and I also enjoyed (from my brief time playing it) the NES version of Double Dragon II. It just boils down to the fact that none of the arcades, skating rinks, or bowling alleys in my neighborhood ever had this machine available to play. I would have loved to play it! It just never happened.

Fast forward to the year 2022, 34 years after this game's 1988 release. I just fired this up on my RetroPie and played it for the first time from start to finish not once, but twice. What would my thoughts on the game be? Let's find out!




Story:

The remnants of the evil gang you defeated in the first Double Dragon game pay a nice social visit to Billy and Jimmy's, uh, helicopter garage. To take revenge on the duo they brutally gun down Marian - the damsel in distress from the first game. Kind of makes the events from the original Double Dragon seem a bit irrelevant, but hey that's life. Billy and Jimmy come running out of their garage and chase the culprits back to their headquarters, where they defeat them with their karate skills once again. Hopefully they learned their lesson from the first game and didn't leave any survivors, but Billy and Jimmy don't seem like the sharpest duo out there, so I highly doubt that. Should I prepare myself for Double Dragon III: More Revenge?




Gameplay:

Double Dragon II does little to separate itself from its predecessor. The only major difference is that you now have two separate buttons for left and right facing attacks. You don't just attack in the direction your character is facing. Whatever. I totally didn't screw myself over by punching and kicking thin air repeatedly because I would hit the wrong button as I played. No, no. Not this guy.

Aside from that minor change, this game could essentially be "DLC" for the first Double Dragon. Combat is pretty much the same. There are slight graphical improvements and some new characters you didn't see in the first game, but these don't really make much of an impact on the gameplay. The stages all look like recycled versions of the stages from the first game. Just read the gameplay section of my review for the original Double Dragon because I don't feel like repeating myself here. I'm dead serious. This game could easily be just an extra set of levels they made and tacked onto the end of the first game.

It's also a very, very short game. There are a whopping four stages to be found here. Each stage ends with a boss character. Beat the boss, move onto the next stage. The final stage is essentially the same final stage from the previous Double Dragon game, with a few small differences - most notably that it is shorter. Even the big open room with the red carpet where you fight the final boss is the same as the first game.




Graphics:

This is a bright, colorful game. The 2D sprite characters are large and well-defined. There is a pretty big variety of enemy types to fight in the game. The gimp suit boss character is my personal favorite. The backgrounds look nice too. My favorite area is the farm stage with the cows in the background. The graphics do show slight improvement over this game's predecessor, even if it is hardly noticeable. Visually I have no problems with this game. Its graphics may be the best thing about it!




Sound:

There's absolutely NOTHING memorable about this game's music. The original Double Dragon had a ton of catchy fight tunes, and this game doesn't have any. Even though I just beat this game twice earlier in the day, I still don't remember a single musical track from the game. The sound effects are fine, but I am pretty sure most of them are recycled from the first game. Meh.




Overall:

I almost feel guilty for not liking this game. It's not even that I don't like it, necessarily, it's just so very bland to me. If you've played the original Double Dragon you have almost no reason to play this game whatsoever, unless "more of the same" is something you're in favor of. But it's not even more of the same, really. If anything I'd say this game is less enjoyable and much more forgettable than the original.

Double Dragon II does some things properly. I don't hate this game. It plays perfectly fine. I'm sure if you played this with a second player it would be a much more fun time than playing solo. Even if I try my best, however, I just simply can't muster up any excitement for this game whatsoever. It's so middle of the road for me. And I think its review score should reflect that mediocrity.



THE GRADE:
C


40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
(the review you're reading)


Up Next, 1989's:



For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click

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Thursday, April 21, 2022

Video Game Review #359: Bionic Commando

Bionic Commando
Nintendo Entertainment System




Nostalgia Factor:

Bionic Commando is a game that I’ve known about for a long time, and one that I’ve always wanted to play. It came out in 1988, so why did I wait to play it until 2022? I have no idea. It was just a game that I didn’t own growing up. I didn’t know anyone else who owned it. I never got the opportunity to play it. Before I knew it, I had moved on from the NES and onto the Sega Genesis. Then onto the Saturn, and then the Nintendo 64, and then the PlayStation – so on and so forth. Bionic Commando quickly became a distant memory.

How would I enjoy the game after playing it for the first time, about 34 years after its initial release? Let’s find out! Mop Up Duty continues with 1988’s Bionic Commando.




Story:

Bionic Commando is the poster child for the terrible Japanese to English text translations we were all so familiar with back in the NES days. Reading the in-game introduction to the storyline made me laugh out loud several times. The broken English is just so amazing. The basic gist of the game is that a Nazi-like group has discovered a set of plans, refered to as Project Albatross (although what this project is is never made clear) that they plan to use against their enemy, the Federation. No, not the Star Trek Federation. That would be a completely different story.

The Federation sends in their best soldier, Super Joe, to retrieve these plans, but he is captured. I didn’t know this but apparently Super Joe is the main protagonist in 1985’s Commando for the NES, a game that I have never played. Nice little nugget of trivia there. Since their original plan worked so well, the Federation decides to send in another operative – the titular Bionic Commando (his name is Ladd) – to rescue Super Joe and discover the secret behind Project Albatross.




Gameplay:

This game has a bit of a learning curve to it. When you first start playing you are greeted by an overhead map with a ton of different numbered tiles on the screen. You start on the tile marked zero, a helicopter icon marking your place on the map. You’ll notice green truck icons moving around on the other side of the map, but you don’t have to worry about those quite yet. Your basic goal is to hit up each location on the map in the order you see them. White numbered tiles indicate an action stage that you have to complete, while red numbered tiles indicate neutral locations filled with hospital tents and soldier encampments. Visiting these neutral locations and exploring every building is key to completing this game, as you’ll find these locations contain many essential items that you’ll need down the road. Just make sure you don’t fire your weapon in these locations, as enemies will swarm you and attack you incessantly if you do so.

The action stages are where the meat and potatoes of this game take place. They play out more like your typical NES side-scrolling game. You have a defined start location and an ending location, where you typically fight a boss character or destroy one of the enemy’s super computers (or both). Using the D-pad, you can move your character left and right. You can duck. You can shoot. But you’ll quickly notice that one major element from most NES side-scrollers is absent: you can’t jump. This is a bit jarring at first, and I can’t say it didn’t take me a while to get used to. In lieu of jumping, you have a mechanical arm that acts like a grappling hook that you can use to swing over obstacles and pull yourself up to higher locations. It may seem like just a silly gimmick, but mastering the use of your grappling hook arm is essential if you want to beat Bionic Commando. Although it did take a me a while to adjust to this game mechanic, after a while it became second nature to me.

During each action stage you’ll come across a computer that gives you the option to communicate with your fellow troops back at the base or eavesdrop on enemy communications. I’m not sure if it is essential that you use these stations or not, but I did it anyway just to be on the safe side. I didn’t want to have to backtrack and find them again. As you get deeper into the game you’ll collect different colored pieces of radio equipment which you’ll need to equip in order to make these communication stations work. If you have the wrong color equipped, all you get is a garbled message in return. Again, I don’t know if it is essential or not to listen to these messages with the right piece of colored equipment in your inventory, but even if I didn’t have the right equipment I’d still listen to these garbled messages anyway on the chance that simply listening to them unlocks something, even if you can’t understand what it is.

Every time you enter a new stage, the game asks you what equipment you’d like to take with you. As you play you’ll unlock different guns and different special items (like one that refills your health) that you can take with you.

Your ultimate goal is to play through each stage until you get to the last level. Beat the last level and you beat the game. Hurrah! The ending cinematic shows Hitler’s face exploding in a mass of blood and gore, which is pretty cool. Pretty unexpected, too, for such an early NES game.

Oh, the green trucks! I forgot to mention them. When you do encounter a green truck on the overhead map between stages, you are forced into a battle against an enemy battalion. These battles take place from an overhead perspective, similar to what you’d see in a game like Rambo: First Blood Part II or Gun.smoke. No worries, though, these stages are laughably easy and I breezed through them without getting hit once. The game on the whole, however, is fairly difficult – even if you know what you are doing. Many of the swinging moves that you pull off have to be done 100% perfectly or you risk falling in a pit of spikes or some other kind of hazard that will lead to your immediate death. Bionic Commando is a long game, too, so you want to be really cautious as you play. Nothing sucks more than sinking several hours into a game and then having to restart it from the beginning because you ran out of lives. Luckily I didn’t have to worry about that, as I played this game on my RetroPie using save states. But I can just imagine playing this as a kid back in the 80s and getting frustrated by this.


 

Graphics:

Bionic Commando may not look like much on first glance. The outside areas are pretty basic looking, and the color palette used for this game looks like it was pulled directly from a Crayola crayon box. That said, I think this game has a charming look to it, especially when you enter buildings. The background textures and the small details you see when you are inside remind me of something from Metroid or Mega Man.

The enemies look good. The boss characters look even better. Even the “cutscenes” have a nice flair to them. It’s not the best looking NES game out there, but the effort put into this game is certainly admirable.


 

Sound:

This game has a classic NES soundtrack, also worthy of any Mega Man-type game. It's upbeat. It gets you into the game. I love it. When music is done right in NES games it can be so, so awesome. The downside? I'm not sure if it's catchy enough to have stuck with me. I'm only a few days removed from playing this game and I already can't remember any specific musical tracks. All I can remember is that I liked it.



 
Overall:

I would have absolutely loved to play this game when I was younger. I missed out when I was a kid! It's got a unique concept. It's fun. Its graphics are good. The story is amusing. The game's a challenge, but it's not too mind numbingly difficult. And for the year it was released (1988) it brought a lot of new ideas to the table, like being able to pick the order you want to play the stages, being able to backtrack to old stages, and being able to select from your inventory the items you wanted to bring to each stage. You can change your weapons. You can walk around and talk to people in the neutral areas. There's so much you can do that you couldn't in your average platformer back then. This game was seriously ahead of its time.

I'm so glad I finally introduced myself to Bionic Commando. It's success stories like this that make my Mop Up Duty review tour so very, very worth it. I may have never played this game otherwise, and it would have been my loss.



THE GRADE:
A-




40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:
Bionic Commando (the review you're reading)
And next up:
Double Dragon II for the arcade!


For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click


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Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Video Game Review #358: RoboCop

RoboCop
Arcade




Nostalgia Factor:

This should be quick. Until a few days ago, I had never played this game before, nor did I even know that an arcade version of RoboCop existed.

Perfect game to pick for Mop Up Duty, don't you think? I don't have much else to say, so let's kick off the first of my three 1988 game reviews with RoboCop.




Story:

This game very, very loosely follows the plot of the first RoboCop film, not that it really matters. The plot means nothing in this game. You play as RoboCop as you fight against a group of evil bad guys who are looking to take over the city. At the end of the game, the focus of your fighting switches as you battle OCP, the corrupt corporation pumping out ED-209 walker robots. Defeat their leader, who cowardly grabs a woman to use as a human shield, and you beat the game.




Gameplay:

This is a pretty simple game. It starts off like it is going to be a beat-em-up, as you are only allowed to punch enemies at the very beginning of the game. About 30 seconds in, however, RoboCop pulls out his gun and the rest of the game becomes a shooter from then on out. Why they made the odd decision to only allow you to punch for about 30 seconds, I have no idea. I just review games.

The gameplay itself is nothing I haven't seen dozens of times already. You walk to the right and you shoot enemies. You pick up weapon upgrades. You jump over the occasional gap or obstacle. You fight a boss at the end of each stage. Pretty basic stuff, here. Your character moves extremely slow and is not maneuverable at all, so you often have no choice but to just sit there and absorb enemy bullets. Many of these stages become wars of attrition as you simply have to power your way through like a tank. There's little strategy to the boss fights either aside from jump and shoot. You can tell that this is a game designed to eat up your quarters because you die CONSTANTLY. I didn't keep track of how many virtual quarters I had to plug into the machine, but it was probably around 20 or so.

That's why it is hard for me to take this game too seriously. It's fun, sure, but there is little strategy to it. You run forward, you take a bunch of damage, and you shoot at enemies. You're going to get hit and you're going to die, and there's simply no way around it. Sunset Riders or Contra this game is not.




Graphics:

I think this game looks pretty good. RoboCop himself is easily identifiable and is a solid portrayal of the character. The ED-209 bosses look good. The stages are nice looking with some fun background details. I like the use of color in these backgrounds. The office building at the end of the game looks like it was pulled right from the movie. Visually, I don't have much to complain about here. Although it is an arcade game, RoboCop has a 16 bit feel to it. It looks like it would have been right at home on a Super Nintendo or Genesis console.




Sound:

I like this game's music and sound effects as well. The classic RoboCop theme song is flawlessly turned into stage music. It's one of my favorite movie themes of all time, so the first time I heard it, it brought a huge grin to my face. Occasional voice clips of RoboCop speaking are thrown into the action from time to time, and it helps to give the game a lot of personality. I can't understand what's being said in one of the voice clips, however, and it is one they use quite frequently. Comrade? Coming? Come in? Common? What is he saying????




Overall:

I liked this game, sure, but let's be real: it's no masterpiece. As I said before, it's nothing I haven't seen or played dozens of times in my life. You walk, you shoot, you get killed, you pump in another quarter, and you jump right back into the action. There's no strategy. There's little to no variety to be found in the gameplay, and no the shooting gallery bonus stages do not count as variety. If you're playing this game on an emulator, you'll fire it up and you'll likely have the whole thing beaten within about 20 minutes. There's not much to keep you coming back as far as replay value goes either. Once you finish this, you're pretty much done with it.

All that said, I still had an enjoyable time with the game, as short as that experience was. It's not original, no, but it's still pretty fun. The graphics are good. I loved the music and the sound effects. This game does have a certain undeniable charm to it, particularly if you're a fan of the source material. I can't give this game anything higher or lower than a dead average score, due to its limitations, its simplicity, its short length, and its severe lack of replayability. But I just want you to know, RoboCop, that I appreciate you.


THE GRADE:
C


40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:


1988:
RoboCop (the review you're reading!)
 Next up:
Bionic Commando for
the NES!!


For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click



Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Video Game Review #357: Adventure Island

Adventure Island
Nintendo Entertainment System




Nostalgia Factor:

I've known about Adventure Island for the longest time. I regularly saw ads in the game magazines for this when I was a kid. I recognized the main character. When I saw him I could identify him with the Adventure Island franchise. I always thought the game and its sequels looked like a lot of fun to play, but as fate would have it I'd never end up picking any of them up over the years.

Until now. My last review from 1987: Adventure Island for the NES.




Story:

I'm not in possession of this game's manual, and nothing plot wise is ever explained in-game. I was able to gather that this is a simple "man rescues princess" plot that we've seen dozens of times before from other games.




Gameplay:

If you approach this game the same way you would any other 2D platformer, you're going to quickly find yourself in a world of hurt. Quite often as I played this game my character would just die, completely out of the blue. I'd be running across a bridge, collecting an item, or in the middle of a jump when all of a sudden I'd keel over without an enemy in sight. And this happened to me multiple times. I was almost convinced my copy of the game was broken, and that some glitch was making enemies invisible.

I put them game down out of frustration and took a break from Adventure Island for a few days. I remember reading some reviews on the game when all of a sudden it dawned on me what I was doing wrong: I wasn't collecting enough fruit as I made my way through each level. See, there's a timer on the top of the screen that is hard to notice if you aren't paying attention. Collecting fruit adds more time to the timer, which is constantly winding down as you play. When it winds down to the end: you die. I had approached Adventure Island like a Mario game. I was taking my time. I was checking stuff out. I was being extra cautious around enemies. And as a result, I kept running out of time. That's why I was mysteriously dying all the time.

Once it clicked I began to enjoy the game a little bit more. You have to make your way through each stage very quickly, collecting as much fruit as you possibly can so the timer doesn't run out. Since time is of the absolute essence, you have to constantly move to the right, taking very few breaks to catch your breath. Go go go is the name of the game. Although they are two very different games, in a way Adventure Island has a lot of similarities to Black Panther, which I just got done playing not too long ago.

As you make your way through the game you can pick up items, like a hammer that you throw to kill enemies or a skateboard that increases your speed and allows you to get hit an extra time before you die (normally one hit kills you). Since you don't want to stop very often due to the timer, you are going to find yourself holding the right button, jumping over obstacles and killing enemies in as smooth a motion as you can pull off. It almost begins to feel like a rhythm game or a musical stage from Rayman Legends after a while.

Not to say you won't have to stop moving from time to time. Some jumps are extremely precarious, and you want to make sure you've got your next move planned out before you make it. Remember, one hit kills you in this game. You also have a limited amount of lives you can use, and no continues. Once your lives are gone, you have to start the entire game over again. Seeing as how this is such a long, brutally difficult game, I had no qualms about using save states to make my way through this. Sure, I could have sat down and attempted to master this game, but then I'd be playing it for weeks and like I've said many times throughout this blog: I don't have time for that shit. I've got a back log of hundreds of games and I've also got a soon to be two-year-old taking up most of my time. The most I'm willing to devote to Adventure Island is a couple days, then I have to move on.

Things get progressively more and more difficult as the game goes on. You have to be so, SO fast. You can't get touched even once. Your jumps have to be pixel-perfect. If you screw up even once, you die. There's a particular point near the end of the game that has a ridiculously difficult jump that I must have attempted 50 times before I finally nailed it. And that was with me using save states. I can't possibly imagine only having three or four lives for the entire game, and then burning them all up in the matter of 30 seconds after playing for an hour and then having to go all the way back to the beginning of the game again. It would have infuriated me.

Another thing that adds to the difficulty level is the fact that some item drops are actually negative for your character. There's this little flying blue creature you'll occasionally pick up who drains your timer about three times faster than it would normally drain - and most of the time you end up dying because it drains so fast. So these "items" are basically an instant death sentence. To make it worse is that you don't know what each treasure chest (represented by a giant egg in this game) contains, so it quickly becomes a game of trial and error. If you accidentally pick one of these guys up, you simply have to remember not to crack open the same egg your next time through - and then remember to avoid that egg on each subsequent playthrough. This game is tough enough. The random element and the constant threat of knowing that you could be unfairly killed by opening a treasure chest is just too much.




Graphics:

Adventure Island is one of those games that doesn't look like much by today's standards, yet still retains a massive amount of retro charm. Sure, the graphics are simple, but they are fun to look at. I like the animation of the character running. I like the design of each stage. The whole game has this funky, off-beat feel to it. 

A random part of the visuals I enjoy is the design of the brick castle where you fight against the boss characters, and how it changes colors as the game goes on. It just screams classic NES, and I love it.




Sound:

Adventure Island's music is okay. It's nothing iconic like you'd find in Legend of Zelda or the Mario games, but it does its job. That said, be prepared to hear the same thing over and over again, because there isn't much variety to be found here.

What I like more are this game's sound effects. They match the whimsical tone of the game quite well. Some of the sound effects you can tell are pulled directly from the Mario series, and I thought it gave the game quite a bit of personality.




Overall:

I like this game. I appreciate what it tries to do. I'm not gonna lie and say it's one of my favorite NES games of all time, however, because it's not. While I did enjoy this game (for the most part), it has a LOT of flaws - the difficulty being numero uno.

Part of me wants to give Adventure Island a free pass because it is such an early NES game. Compared to some of the crap you'd see for the 2600, this game is virtually a masterpiece. No doubt it was an influential title for its time and a real trendsetter as games began to morph from "who can get the highest score" into challenges that could be completed and beaten.

I just wish the game was more accessible. I like its gameplay and I like the concept of the game, but it is brutally difficult, crossing the line into unfair territory time and time again. I guess if this was the mid 80s and I'd received this game for Christmas, I would have had to make do with it. I can see myself sinking hours and hours into this game, for sure.

But by today's standards? Ehhhh... This game does a lot correctly, don't get me wrong. And I did have an overall favorable experience with it. But make no mistake about it: I am not coming back to this game. I checked it out. I sated my curiosity. I beat it (using save states, of course). And now I see no reason to play this game again. There are so many other games out there - Adventure Island's sequels among them - that render this game fairly obsolete in my mind.

I'm glad I played it. I'm glad I finally know what the original Adventure Island was like; where the franchise began. It's a fun game, sure, but not on the same level as some of the top-tier games for the NES console. Let's move onto 1988.



THE GRADE:
C+




40th Birthday Mop Up Duty Celebration Tour:



1986:


1987:
Adventure Island (the review you're reading!)


Coming Up:
1988's
RoboCop!



For a complete index of all my past posts and game reviews, click



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