Dan Geeks Out

1985:

Rambo: First Blood Part II

1986:

Jackal

1987:

Black Panther

Street Fighter (the review you're reading)

and coming up:

Adventure Island!

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

>HERE<

Video Game Review #354: Black Panther

Black Panther

Arcade

Nostalgia Factor:

We're moving onto the year 1987. I was five years old at the time and probably just starting to take an interest in video games. One video game I can tell you I never heard of back then was Black Panther for the arcade. I'm not even sure if it was released in the US, or if it was a Japanese exclusive. There's actually not that much info about this game online anywhere. It's shrouded in mystery!

Oh, before we get any further let me just answer what you're thinking: no this has nothing to do with the Black Panther Marvel franchise. This is its very own, and very -urr- unique thing.

Story:

The game doesn't give you much to go on as far as story goes. After the title screen when you insert your quarters and press start, the game shows Earth from orbit and the whole planet seems to be going up in flames. Then you're immediately thrown into action, with no explanation as to what is going on whatsoever.

Since you are mainly fighting robots in this game, I'll venture a guess that you're attempting to quell some kind of robot and/or alien attack on humanity. Seems like a pretty safe bet, right? How mind numbingly deep.

Gameplay:

Taking control of the titular Black Panther, you must run through a series of stages, defeating enemies, jumping over pits and platforms, collecting power ups, and defeating the boss at the end of each level.

This is a game where you are in near perpetual motion. You're almost constantly running to the right, making very infrequent stops. If you take too long to get going, a wave of energy will appear from the left side of the screen and do major damage to your character. As a result, you want to keep moving as much as possible.

You start out with only one way of attacking: with your claws. You can attack while running, although this opens you up to getting hit more frequently. You can attack while standing still, which increases your accuracy and helps keep you from taking damage, but you have to remain stationary and wait for the enemies to come to you. You can also attack while jumping, which seems to be the most accurate attack in the game and also keeps you from taking damage if done properly. As a result, I spent most stages holding down the run button to the right, and repeatedly doing my jump/slash combo along the way. A lot of enemies can only be hit with jump attacks, so if you want to beat this game you'll have to adapt a similar tactic.

Enemies attack you in what I can best describe as formations or groupings. If you can defeat all the enemies in a grouping, they'll drop health items that you can snatch up. Collecting every ounce of health you can find is another key to success in this game. If you manage to exceed the 100 health threshold, your character becomes surrounded by projectiles which you can launch in all directions, causing massive damage to your enemies. And you can do this multiple times. I always felt like a real badass when I'd go on a long combo streak, earn over 100 health, and then reign death and destruction upon my foes. Even better when you can string a series of these together.

As you run to the right, you'll often encounter these glowing electrical orange blobs that get in your way. These blobs can't be defeated, and their only function is to block you and cause damage to your character. You have to constantly avoid these things. They are the most annoying thing about the game, in my opinion. It would be so much better without them. They often pop up before you can react to them. They're inconveniently placed and make jumps very difficult. They block you from getting health items. They make attacking your enemies difficult. If you're trapped up against a wall with one of these things, it'll drain your health and kill you in a matter of seconds. These blobs appear randomly and often, and a real pain in your butt the entire game. So annoying.

Near the end of each level, a bunch of glowing collectibles will fall from the sky. These give you power ups right before you take on the level's boss character. Some of these power ups include extra attack power and the ability to fire lasers ahead of you. Very helpful.

This game is very difficult, and the entire thing must be beaten on one quarter, so be prepared for some frustration. You get three lives, and once you use those lives up you have to start the whole game over again. Jackal, Dragon's Lair, Gradius: why do so many games from this era think that is a good idea?? Please give us a continue option and make beating the game seem like a more attainable goal. I know they want people to keep pumping quarters into the system, but I'm more likely to do that if I feel I actually have a legitimate shot at beating the game. Making it really far and then having to start over again makes me want to stop playing.

Graphics:

This game looks pretty decent. There's bright colors, some imaginative stage design. I like the variety you find in your enemies. The bosses are all pretty slick looking as well. Even though Black Panther doesn't give you much in terms of storyline to go on, the world of the game does a good job selling you on... whatever is happening.

Sound:

I wish I could say that there was really anything from this game that stood out in the audio department. The music has the feel of an early Sega Genesis game to it, like Thunder Force II, but none of the tunes are very catchy or did a good job sticking around in my brain. Sound effects are fine, I guess.

I like the little samurai-sounding jingle that plays after you lose a life and then come back with your next one. That's cool. Unfortunately due to this game's difficulty I heard it more times than I would have liked to.

Best ending text ever

Overall:

I really wanted to like this game. The concept of playing as a black panther and destroying robots in an apocalyptic future is a pretty interesting one, in my opinion. Unfortunately the execution of this game is just plain not good.

The enemies are unpredictable. There's too many annoyances like those orange blobs of light that block you from proceeding. There are a lot of cheap deaths. You have to take leaps of faith quite often because you can't see very far ahead of you, and often these leaps lead to death. The whole idea of the game is to keep you running to the right, but doing so often leads you headfirst into unavoidable enemies that can drain your health in a heartbeat.

It's very repetitive as well. You run to the right, clawing at enemies, and jumping over obstacles. The next stage you do the same thing. And the next stage. And the next. Maybe if there was some kind of continue function, and I didn't have to start over from the beginning each time I lost all my lives, I would have liked this game a lot more. Having to replay the same sections of game over and over and over and over again gets real tiring, real quick.

The game does some things right. It looks good. It's got a decent concept. I enjoyed the design of the boss characters. Some of the power ups you can get add a certain level of fun to the game. When you get into a nice combat groove and you can keep stringing 100 bonuses together repeatedly, that can be pretty entertaining as well.

Overall, however, I just didn't have a great time with this game. I remember not being able to finish it the first night I played it, and it took me several days to come back and try again because the game felt like such a chore to fire up. That feeling never really went away. It's like doing homework or something. I played through this game and beat it because I felt obligated to do so for the purposes of this blog, but I didn't really enjoy it. And I have no desire to return to this game ever again.

Sorry Black Panther. I wish I had better things to say about you.

THE GRADE:

1982 reviews:

1983:

1984:

1985:

Rambo: First Blood Part II

1986:

Jackal

1987:

Black Panther (the review you're reading)

and coming next:

the original Street Fighter!

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

>HERE<

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Video Game Review #353: Jackal

Jackal

Arcade

Nostalgia Factor:

I’ve played and reviewed Jackal for the NES (you can read the review HERE if you are so inclined), but until now I had never played the arcade version of the game. I’m always interested to see how the NES and arcade versions of various games stack up against one another, so I decided to give Jackal a shot. My 1986 game reviews continue (and end) with this game. I’ve decided to speed up the process a little bit, so instead of three games for 1986 I’m only playing two – Rambo for the Master System (my previous review) and this game.

Read on for my thoughts on Jackal!

Story:

This game doesn’t give you anything at all as far as story goes. You’re simply dropped off in the middle of a war zone with little to no fanfare whatsoever. You’re driving a tank, and it is your job to rescue prisoners of war and blow shit up. I guess this game shares a lot of similarities with Rambo, the last game I reviewed. I didn’t even plan that at all!

Gameplay:

At its core, Jackal is very similar to its NES counterpart. You control a tank. Or maybe it’s a Jeep. I don’t know. You can use your machine gun attack to ONLY fire upwards on the screen. You’re going to be using your rockets and missiles a lot more, as they can be aimed in any direction you’d like. Your goal is to move upwards on the screen, which scrolls with you as you move. Mainly you are going to be destroying enemies with your weapons, but you’re also going to be destroying enemy buildings as well. Some of these buildings only give you a points bonus, while others contain P.O.W.s that you can rescue. You can fit up to eight of them in your tank. You have to try and transport all eight of these prisoners to the nearest helipad, where a waiting helicopter whisks them off to safety. If you can manage to unload all eight prisoners in one trip to the helipad, you get an upgrade to your weapons.

Fully upgrading your missiles is an absolute key if you want to have any shot at all at beating this game. Your default missiles, which are really just grenades, only travel a few car lengths in front of you before they explode. They move very slowly, and their blast radius is very small. They can go through walls, however, so they aren’t completely useless. Further upgrades improve the speed and distance of your missiles. What you want to aim for is to get the upgrade that expands your blast radius. When your missile explodes, it sends a shock wave to the left and the right that kills a wide range of enemies. Your final upgrade sends out a blast radius in all directions, which is terrific for clearing difficult areas of enemies with the least amount of resistance possible. One hit kills you in this game, so be very careful. You lose one of your weapon upgrades each time you die, which isn’t ideal.

Unlike the NES game, there are no boss fights to be found here. Instead, the game is essentially one long level. You have to beat this level (and the entire game) on ONE quarter. That’s right, there is no continue function. If you lose all your lives, you have to start over from the very beginning of the game again. This is very annoying. To make matters worse, save states don’t work when you are emulating this title. I tried several different roms and got the same result. Couldn’t even save on my RetroPie either! This makes the game virtually impossible if you are playing single player mode. There is a “hack” or workaround for this problem, and that involves hooking up a second controller and pressing the start button to jump in with a second player right as your first player is about to die. For some reason, you can do this as many times as you want to as you make your way through the game. Why you get unlimited continues in two-player mode but none in single player mode is beyond me. It’s all kind of a moot point, though, because once you reach a certain point of the game you can’t jump in with a second player anymore, and you have to try and beat the game with whatever lives and weapons you still have remaining. This makes Jackal an absolutely brutal challenge to complete, but I suffered through this game night after night until I finally made it happen.

I say “suffered through” but I actually had a really good time with Jackal. Unlike the NES game, which has virtually no replay value whatsoever, the arcade version of the game kept me coming back and back and back for more. You could say that this was only the case because of its broken continue system and brutally unfair difficulty level, but I still managed to have a good time with this game. I still think the NES version is the more fun game, but like I said I still had a good time.

What makes Jackal so difficult? The enemies. There’s so many of them. They respawn, they act wildly and unpredictably, they fire an endless number of projectiles your way (the phrase bullet hell comes to mind) and worst of all: they have this habit of just suddenly appearing on the edge of the screen and killing you before you have a chance to react to them. Let’s say I’m rolling forward in my tank/Jeep thingamabobber and I see that there’s something in the water up ahead that is launching missiles at me. I’ll back up in my vehicle to give myself some room to breathe, when a tank suddenly appears off the bottom of the screen and kills me instantly. This kind of thing will happen to you A LOT as you play this game, and it will piss you off each and every time. What makes this so bad is that it takes away one of your missile upgrades. You also can’t continue in this game, so that’s one very very precious life that you’ve just lost.

Another annoying thing about this game is how when you destroy an enemy vehicle, its explosion animation will kill you. It took me quite a while to adjust to this. I am used to playing games where I can just blow something up and keep moving along. In this game, you have to sit there for several seconds, wait for the explosion animation to end, and then continue on your way. If an enemy appears from the edge of the screen behind you when you’re sitting there waiting – good luck to you. I can’t tell you how many times I just rolled right into an enemy explosion (out of force of habit from other video games) only to be like GOD DAMN IT when the explosion killed me. Very, very annoying.

Graphics:

This version of Jackal is definitely a step up from the NES version in terms of graphics. Even though the game is one big level, the makers of the game did a nice job breaking up that long level into several very distinct looking sectors. You’ve got a beach area, a military base, a mountain range, some nice big rivers and bodies of water that you drive by. The animations are nice. The game is very colorful and full of life. Very impressive by 1986’s standards.

Sound:

I actually have to give the NES version the edge when it comes to soundtrack. It just has a very classic retro feel to it. I still remember the little jingle that plays at the end of each level. This game has a good soundtrack too, but in my opinion it is not anywhere as memorable. The sounds of weapons and explosions are nice, but again – nothing too memorable.

Overall:

There are a lot of really good reasons why I shouldn’t like this game. There are no continues. You have to beat it on one quarter (or use the two-player cheat). Enemies are cheap, acting unpredictably and often appearing on the edge of the screen to send you to an unceremonious and frustrating death. They will randomly respawn, too, with little to no rhyme or reason whatsoever. When you destroy an enemy, its explosion animation will kill you. And also, save states don’t work. WHY???

I can’t really hold the save state thing against the game, but I think my other criticisms are pretty valid. That said, I still really liked this game.

The more it challenged me and the more it killed me, the more obsessed I became with beating this game. There’s no time limit. You can move as slowly and as cautiously as you’d like. Every single attempt when I’d fall short, I’d learn something new that I’d incorporate into my next playthrough. The game looks good. It sounds good. It’s fun to play. I like the concept. I like how you can level up your weapons. I like a lot about the game.

I’d say that so far it is one of the better games I’ve played in recent memory, right up there with Rambo. No, it's not as good as the NES version of the game, but it is different enough to allow me to forgive that.

With that, we close the door on 1986. Four year old Dan waves goodbye as we move onto 1987. I’ve already played three games from 87 already, it’s just a matter of me finding the time to write those reviews. Hope you’re enjoying my little project so far. I know I am!

THE GRADE:

1982 reviews:

1983:

1984:

1985:

Rambo: First Blood Part II

1986:

and the one you're reading:

Jackal

Up next: 1987's

Black Panther

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

>HERE<

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Video Game Review #352: Rambo: First Blood Part II

Rambo: First Blood Part II

Sega Master System

Nostalgia Factor:

I'm really happy I've put my foot down and I've only been reviewing games I've never played before. Sometimes it feels like nostalgia gets in the way of whether or not a game is any good. If I have never played it before I can judge it on its own merits.

Up next is 1986's Rambo: First Blood Part II for the Sega Master System. I've heard good things about this game and I have definitely never played it before, so this was an easy choice for me to check out.

Story:

There are no in-game story sequences and I don't have access to this game's manual, so I can't tell you anything about its story. But does it really matter? You play as Rambo and you're here to cause some chaos.

The levels range from jungles where you fight against camouflaged assailants to the city where you fight against police officers. There's some attempt to tie into the movies here, but I don't remember Rambo destroying a series of computers and a big blue face in any of the movies. That's the final boss of this game.

Gameplay:

I was a bit apprehensive the first time I played this. I thought Rambo moved too slowly. Your aiming was inaccurate, and you couldn't fire at a very rapid pace. You had to take weird angles to be able to shoot anyone or blow up any huts. I got shot all the time, and would use up all my lives very quickly. You only get three lives to start this game, and there are no continues. Die three times, and you have to start the entire game over again.

I almost gave up on Rambo but I am glad I stuck with it. I decided to cheat and use save states (for the fourth review in a row! I'm sorry for being such a dirty cheater!). But it turned out to be worth it. I ended up making it deep into the game, eventually beating it. I was able to see new levels and fight through new characters and areas I would have never been able to see otherwise. I ended up having a great time with the game, and every now and then I still come back to it and try to do it with no save states. I usually can't make it through the second level.

As far as gameplay goes, Rambo is a shooter similar to titles like Guerilla War or Gun.Smoke. You move your character around the screen as it scrolls upwards. You shoot at enemies as they shoot at you. The game becomes bullet hell at times, so be prepared to be dodging enemy fire left and right. If you get hit once you die and lose a life.

You can earn power ups as you play by throwing grenades at huts or little buildings, which blow them open and free a prisoner from inside. They'll toss you a power up, like more grenades or grenade upgrades. Managing grenades is key to doing well as you play this game. If you can build them up, they become more powerful and send out a wider encompassing blast that destroys your enemy immediately. These can be used to clear out dangerous areas pretty easily, so I'd advise you to use that to your advantage.

Other power ups are dropped randomly by enemies, like the ability to shoot a farther-reaching gun or items that clear the screen of enemies in a flash.

At the end of each stage you make it to a wall, where you have to defeat a barrage of enemies coming at you from all directions. Stay alive long enough and the wall starts to flash, at which point it can be destroyed.

There are 5 (or 6?) stages in total. I forget. And I'm not going to look it up because I'm lazy as shit. But at the end of the game you fight against a set of computer consoles and a big blue face. WHAT IS HAPPENING?

We never get an explanation.

Graphics:

At first glance, this game doesn't look like much. When I first started playing this I was wholly unimpressed. It wasn't until I really started playing attention and making it deeper into the game that I began to appreciate its graphics. I like the bright colors and the well defined characters and enemies. The levels all have a lot of personality. The whole game has a classic charm to it that I just can't deny.

Sound:

This game has some pretty good, catchy music to it. It seems to fit the tone of the game quite well. There's one particular tune, the one that plays when you're fighting the wall at the end of each stage, that I think is really great.

The sound effects are unremarkable, but like the music they fit the tone of the game perfectly.

Overall:

This game was a pleasant surprise! I've heard people say that it is good before, but for some reason I didn't expect to like it coming in. At first I thought my suspicions were true, but the more I played the game the more I began to like it. Yes I was only able to beat this game using save states, but I can easily see myself taking the time when I was a kid to master this game and beat it. If I had this game growing up, I would have loved it.

As it stands, this is one of the better games I've played since I started going back and playing all these old games. I can definitely recommend this to anyone interested. There's even a two player mode. Hey, maybe I can check this out with my toddler someday when he is old enough! That's a great thought. I hope it happens.

THE GRADE:

1982 reviews:

1983:

1984:

1985: