A Review of Tempest 2000, One of Gaming’s Greatest Masterpieces, And its Arcade Forbear Tempest

Posted on October 23, 2024 by Brian

I decided to try to review some of my favorite games.  I’m starting with the classic console game I have played the most this year so far, and one of the all-time best.

Title: Tempest 2000
Platform: Atari Jaguar
Release Date: 1994
Developer: Llamasoft
Publisher: Atari Inc. (1984-1996)
Format: Cartridge in cardboard box (A music CD of the soundtrack was also released later on)

Ports: There are many ports of this game. Emulated ports are in the Atari 50 collection for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One/Series, and PS4/PS5.  Older, more heavily altered ports were released back in the ’90s on PC, Saturn, and PlayStation (as Tempest X3).  This review is of the game being played on real hardware on an actual Jaguar.  I have discussed the PlayStation version of Tempest X3 and the Atari 5200 version of the original Tempest before, but not the Jaguar title or the arcade game itself.

Introduction

Tempest 2000 is Jeff Minter’s magnum opus.  This exceptional masterpiece is is one of my favorite games ever. T2K is one of those ‘peak of the mountain’ games, one of those titles that shows how amazing gaming can be at its absolute best.  And that’s the problem, for this review at least: praise is hard! It is, sadly, often easier to criticize than to praise, to write or say reams of reasons why something is bad than to write ones why something is great.  I guess we’ll see how this goes, because there aren’t many things to criticize about T2K.

Tempest, the original arcade game, was released in 1981 in arcades by Atari, and was programmed by Dave Theurer, the same man who also designed the famous megahit Missile Command.  It was a successful game, but not on Missile Command’s level of popularity.  While Tempest 2000’s developer Jeff Minter was not involved at all with its development, Minter was an active game developer at the time.  However, at that point he was making smaller games for home computers, not arcade games.  He may not have worked with Atari until the early ’90s, but Jeff Minter is probably gaming’s longest-termed programmer.  He with an amazing record of consistency for spending the last 45 years almost exclusively making simple-looking, pre-crash-styled arcade-inspired score-focused games.  If you look at a Jeff Minter game from the early ’80s such as Aggressor or Gridrunner and then his most recent releases such as Polybius or Akka Arrh, you will see the most consistent record in gaming.  All four titles are easily recognizable as Jeff Minter productions.  I have loved Minter’s games ever since I first played Llamatron 2112 back in the early ’90s.

A Review of the Original Arcade Game Tempest

At its core, Tempest 2000 is a remake of the 1981 vector-graphcis arcade game Tempest.  So, I should discuss the arcade game first.  Tempest is a space shooter, a popular genre at the time, except instead of shooting enemies on the top of the screen, you shoot from the edge of the screen at enemies coming at you from the center.  It was inspired by Space Invaders turned vertical, crossed with a nightmare of Theurer’s about monsters crawling out of a hole. (Source: https://arcadeblogger.com/2018/01/19/atari-tempest-dave-theurers-masterpiece/)

Learning that makes sense, because I have long seen the nightmarish, horror-esque element of this game and Tempest 2000 as well.  Tempest is kind of a horror game.  It isn’t, but it is.  This is a game designed to make you focus, but also to kind of creep you out and instill a sense of dread in the player, as the monsters just keep coming, and coming, out of the depths… until eventually, you get overrun.  Tempest and T2K are maybe the best horror games ever.

Again, the central gameplay of both titles is the same: you control a little ship, and can move around the outer, and upper, edge of the play area, which is called the ‘web’.  The web is made up of lines going from the middle of the screen to the upper edge where you are, connecting them in a vector shape.  Your ship is pointing towards the center of the screen, aiming towards the middle where the enemies come from.  If the enemies reach the top of the web, they move around the top and once either an enemy touches your ship or you run into one of their shots you die and lose a life.

When you move left or right you flip around the edge, moving between sectors of the top of the web.  You can only move in two directions in this game, so while the game is three dimensional in that enemies move up a 3d angled route towards you, you only need to worry about moving horizontally to shoot them.  For controls, the original arcade game used a spinner-style stick, giving you precise analog control of your movement.  You shoot with one button and use the Superzapper, a superbomb which kills all enemies on screen.  You can use the Superzapper once per level.  Once all enemies in a stage are dead you clear it and move on to the next web.  If you die, you restart the stage from the beginning.

The game has 16 stage layouts, and after you clear stage 16 the web color changes.  There are six colors: blue, red, yellow, cyan, invisible, and lastly green.  After level 99 the levels stop increasing and you just play at that difficulty until you run out of lives, if you were so lucky to get that far.  One interesting feature, though, is that there is a continue function of sorts!  When you get game over, you can continue from the last checkpoint level that you reached.  You can select which level you want to start from from the checkpoint levels you have reached.  The game doesn’t save these permanently, of course, so if powered off the checkpoints and scores will be lost, but still it’s a very interesting feature, as continuing in arcade games like that was not really a thing when this game released in 1981.

When enemies reach the top of the web, you have two options. One is to try to shoot them as they flip onto your section of web.  Yes, you can do this, so letting enemies get to the top is not an instant loss, but timing that shot is tricky.  You can also use the Superzapper of course, if you still have it.  It’s much better to get rid of enemies before they reach the top, but sometimes it won’t be possible as you get farther in and enemy counts increase.  Overall Tempest is a great game, with a creepy vibe and a great balance of challenge and the feeling that if you play well you can get far in the game.

As with most pre-crash games, Tempest has no music and simple presentation, but the graphics were groundbreaking at the time.  The graphics are amazing looking with that color vector display, and the sound effects are fantastic and fit perfectly as well.  The striking look of this game is extremely memorable.  Color vector displays were a rarely seen, expensive technical feat, and this game uses that kind of display and it looks amazing!  Still, as was common at the time there is no background other than black space except for some stars that appear while you fly from one level to the next.  The result focuses you on the action.

It is of course an endless game you play for score . Tempest is intense, though.  Where a game of Donkey Kong or Space Invaders can last many hours, the world record for Tempest at its hardest settings is a video about 20 minutes long.  You will die.  There are several different web designs, but the stage layouts repeat after a few stages and then you’re on the endless loop until Game Over.  And while there are a handful of enemy types, there aren’t all that many of those either.  There is no background either of course, just black space.  Still, the wireframe 3d vector graphics look amazing, and the gameplay is a lot of fun.

However… however, I find it hard to play Tempest because as good as it is, I could be playing Tempest 2000, the game that takes Tempests’ model and improves on it in almost every way.  And when I want to play a Tempest game, that is usually what I do: play Tempest 2000.  Tempest 4000 (for modern consoles) is also quite good, but while Jeff Minter has made multiple Tempest-style games over the past three decades and all are great, none quite match the exceptional genius of his first effort.

Tempest 2000: The Fundamentals and Features

Tempest 2000 is a modernized update of Tempest.  The main mode is called Tempest 2000 mode.  The core gameplay is identical, with you moving around the top edge of weblike stages, shooting in at the enemies moving up the web at you.  You again need to dodge their fire while taking them out before they reach the top.  This time there are interesting varied backgrounds, though, as the game has trippy light synthesizer-style backgrounds and pounding techno music.  There are also new powerups, new enemy types, a lot of new maps, an actual ending when you reach level 100, a harder difficulty unlocked after clearing the game, the ability to continue from every few levels so that you don’t need to start the game over every time you get Game Over, and more.  Outside of the main Tempest 2000 mode the game has several other modes as well.  There is a two player multiplayer versus mode; a port of the original Tempest game but of course with regular graphics instead of vector ones; Tempest Plus, a mode which is basically standard Tempest but with T2K’s visuals; and an options menu with some interesting options in it.

The game saves your settings, which levels you can start from, as you can start from the last odd-numbered level you have beaten if you wish — and the high score table.  The game saves everything necessary.  The Jaguar is the first console where almost every single game supports saving, and it’s a hugely important and wonderful change versus what you see on other classic consoles.  Even in years after the Jag’s release a lot of console games didn’t have saving in some genres — no Sega CD shmup supports high score saving, for example, and even some PlayStation shooters don’t.  But on Jaguar all official games save at least scores and settings.  It hugely helps this kind of game for the game itself to keep track of your scores, no need to write down your best scores or take screenshots or something. And because all Jaguar saving is done to EEPROM flash memory chips and not batteries, the system has no problem with old batteries, unlike most of its contemporaries.  I think that that everything saves is the number one most next-gen thing about the Jaguar as a console; even the games that otherwise look like last-gen ports almost always have saving added. Tempest 2000 takes advantage of it well.

In the single player modes Tempest 2000 plays almost exactly the same as the original Tempest, just improved in every way other than losing that amazing color vector display. T2K has the best graphics possible with its regular pixel-graphics display, but vectors do look amazing in a way no regular display can match.  Ah well.  So, as with the original Tempest, you move around the top of levels, shooting at enemies climbing up at you.  All enemies from the original game return, with some new additions to the roster.  New enemies get introduced once you get farther in the game, as well.  As with the original the web colors change every 16 levels, but this time you don’t only see the same 16 levels over and over, new webs are introduced as you progress.  It’s Tempest, but more.

The Controls and Powerups

The controls are, by default, a small step below the arcade game, because the standard Jaguar controller only has a d-pad on it for movement.  I think the digital controls are just fine, as each press moves you to the next section of the web, but if you want analog controls the game does support them, which is pretty awesome — Jeff Minter made sure to include hidden support for a rotary-stick controller, even though no such controller existed for the system at the time other than a homebrew one hacked together.  I do not have one right now, though I really should get one, but it’s just fantastic that the option exists.  It means that controls are even with the arcade game.

As for buttons, T2K uses three, the three regular Jaguar face buttons, for Shoot, Jump once you have it in a level, and Superzapper.  On the last of those, yes the Superzapper bomb returns to help you out, as beofre usable once per stage.  Also, once again, if you die you restart the current level from the beginning.  Otherwise, Start pauses as you would expect.  The keypad is used for muting the music as usual — a keypad music mute feature is common on Jag games with music — and for shifting the view around, adjusting how the web moves on stages that go slightly over one screen in size, adjusting the screen size, and such. It’s a good use of the keypad for something a game for a newer platform would put on a second stick or somesuch.  You won’t need to touch it during play, thankfully.  The Jaguar controller is surprisingly comfortable, I think; its bad reputation is hightly over-stated.  Using the keypad during play is awkward and not great for anything fast-paced, but for games that only use the dpad and three main face buttons, or for games that just use it for options, I think the Jag controller is just fine.  T2K controls well with the regular controller, I’ve never had any issues with it.  I’m sure that the rotary controller controls are even better, but these are quite good.

On top of that, some other new powerups have been added.  These powerups all only last for the current level, as everything resets to default no powerups once you get to the next stage.  The way it works is that some enemies drop a powerup which then moves up the screen.  Get in position to grab it as it flies upwards and you get one level of powerup.  The first enemy you kill in a stage will always drop a powerup, and this powerup gives you a more powerful shot.  It’s essential to get this because the gun without it is very weak. Some time later more powerups will drop.  The next few will give you a Jump button and an AI droid ally.  The Jump button uses your third face button and jumps upwards, moving you out of the way of enemies if they reach the top of the web.  They can’t jump to hit you up there, but you could still get hit by shots, and of course you will need to land somewhere clear at the end of your jump so while helpful the jump won’t keep you alive if there are too many enemies on top of the web.  Still, it’s great.  The AI Droid is similar to the one in Llamatron 2112, and moves around on its own a above the web shooting down at enemies.  It cannot be killed and is fantastic if you can get enough powerups to get it.  There is also a rare random-drop powerup which immediately skips the current level, and once you have all other powerups in a stage further powerups give you a 2000 point bonus.

The Bonus Games

There is one more powerup, however.  Lastly powerup-wise, getting enough powerups in a level will give you a green triangle.  You can only get one green triangle per level.  Once you get three green triangles, you go to a bonus stage.  There are several different types of bonus stages, changing as you proceed through the game. The first bonus stage type has you flying through space, trying to fly through gates.  There are no enemies, you just move with the d-pad to get through the gates.  This bonus game is a lot of fun, it’s very calming after the intense action.  However, if you want the best possible scores you will want to avoid actually completing the bonus games, because if you finish a bonus game you warp forward five levels.  You get a point bonus, but the point bonus is a whole lot less points than you would have gotten if you played those levels.

There are three different layouts of each bonus game, though you will never complete all three in a single game because after a few skips you are sure to have progressed far enough to get to the second bonus game type.  That one I find much, much harder — you have to stay on a green track that curves around a tube that you are driving through.  I must admit,  I don’t think I have ever completed a stay on the green track bonus stage, and if I ever did I sure haven’t again.  Still, it’s fun enough.  After that… well, there is a third type of bonus game later on, but play the game to find out what it is.  The bonus games are fun stuff and do a great job of giving you a break from the frenetic action.  I particularly love the first bonus game, flying down a tunnel through those rings is great fun.

The Enemies and Scoring

When you fire, enemies in front of you and their regular shots die.  That latter point is important: your shots and most enemy shots kill eachother.  Some enemy attacks cannot be stopped, however, so you need to stay on your guard.

The enemies you will face include: basic ones which go straight up one path, heading towards the top; ones which do that but also shoot upwards; larger ones that split into multiple regular enemies once shot; ones which move around between paths as they go, trying to get closer to your position; a strong monster which has these two invincible scythelike limbs it shoots out you before going to the top that you must avoid while trying to shoot the main body; small enemies which stay at the bottom and electrify a whole section of the web, killing you instantly if you are in that section after it lights up; spikes, which can be in lanes towards the centerand will kill you if you run into them while traveling through the web after beating the level; and some more that come in to play later.  There are a total of ten enemy types.  The enemy variety is enough to keep things interesting while remaining easy enough to remember and identify each type.

As you kill your foes you get points, and scoring in this game is simple: kill stuff, get points. There is no complex scoring system and that is entirely fine with me, there’s more than enough here to keep anyone hooked.  As you get points you will earn 1-ups, and there is no maximum.  Your life count is displayed as a row of ship images instead of a number, though, so once you get past about eight lives in reserve you won’t know exactly how many you have.  It’s enough, though, to know that once you know how many lives you have left things are starting to go wrong… heh.

The Graphics in General

Tempest 2000’s graphics are exceptional, and are one of the many reasons why I love this game so, so much.  The visualizer-style backgrounds are incredible, first.  And somehow, T2K has some of the best-looking graphics ever.  Even though the game is running at 320×240 regular graphics, not the ultra-sharp lines of the originals’ arcade vector graphics display on its special vector monitor, it looks exceptionally sharp. I don’t know what wizardry was done here but somehow T2K’s lines look straight and not jaggy. 

Of course the game is made of pixels, and some of them are noticeable square ones, but they are used perfectly — the moving square pixels that form the background’s laser-light-visualizer style show are the exact right thing to use for that job.  Minter would go on to use a similar look for the visuals for his VLM, or light synthesizer, for the Atari Jaguar CD, and my opinion is that that is the best-looking visualizer ever.  And that’s not said because of nostalgia, I did not have a Jaguar or Jag CD in the ’90s. It just looks incredible, better overall than more powerful visualizers do.

Tempest 2000 is similar; sure, newer games, including some from Minter himself such as Tempest 4000 for modern consoles, look ‘better’ than this game and run more smoothly, but T2K’s overall visual style just cannot be beat.  The enemy sprites, the web, the creepy fear this game instills on the player, it’s all nearly perfect.  So, the sharp, clear graphics look unbelievably good.  The game does have problems with dropping frames or slowdown when the screen gets full of enemies, I will admit, and I have died because of this for sure, but despite that I do think T2K is one of the most amazing looking games ever.

Everything works together to make the game both look and play great.  The stage layouts are each interestingly different, giving you something new to look at and changing the gameplay; the enemies are varied and stand out and all look nice and are each immediately recognizable even when the game becomes more cluttered with foes because of their distinct designs and colors; and the sound effects of the enemies and your shots fit perfectly with the visuals.  Jeff Minter definitely likes that early ’80s pixel art slash vector graphics look, so Tempest was a perfect game for him to remake, and he did a fantastic job of it.

Overall, despite the occasional slowdown, as I mentioned I think that T2K has some of the best graphics ever.  While playing T2K I often think, is this the best looking game ever?  The look of this game is just exceptional, every element is done fantastically.  When output via RGB, in my case via a Jag to SNES adapter that I use my SNES component cable with, connecting to a Retrotink 4K that I have attached to my 4K TV, T2K is so amazingly great looking that it is kind of hard to believe that it is actually a game from 1994 and not a 4K remaster of the game on my Xbox Series X, or something.  I do not say that to brag about my setup; honestly, most games don’t really look different enough on the Retrotink 4K to definitely justify the high expense.  Tempest 2000 is the one game that has actually made me think that maybe it was worth the money.

An Aside on the Scanlines Option

The game has a few graphics options, too.  Most notably, you can turn on or off an optional scanline-style effect.  So, CRT television screens work by not drawing every line, but by drawing every other line and having the lines blend together due to the nature of the technology.  For a long time, despite this consoles worked by drawing every line they could, progressive scan style, because that was much easier technologically.  Of course the screen would then display the results with scanlines, so your standard 224×240 or 320×240 console would display at the TV’s effective resolution of 640×480 because of the scanlines doubling the output.

However, at some point in the early ’90s developers started adding interlaced scanline output right into the consoles’ hardware, in order to increase output resolutions. By adding interlacing, you can draw 640×480 for a similar amount of graphical power required for 320×240 without interlacing.  The first model of 3DO in Japan actually has a switch to turn on or off the scanlines; all other 3DOs are interlaced-only.  The N64 and PS2 particularly were designed around interlaced output.  The Jaguar, however, was not, and like a classic console displays a usually 320×240 image drawing all the lines.

However, in Tempest 2000, Jeff Minter tried to program a scanline option to increase resolution, but apparently couldn’t get it to entirely work so instead an option was added which calls itself a scanline option but in fact adds a sideways jitter effect to the screen, blurring the graphics.  The results look alright on a CRT, but I think that on a HDTV, with an upscaler, the interlacing option makes the graphics look significantly worse, as the blurry jitter does not look great.

I do think that the ‘interlacing’ mode performs a bit better, though. I am very bad at judging framerates, but I do think that while the jittering looks kind of awful interlacing reduces slowdown.  While Tempest 2000’s graphics are exceptional and are among the best ever, it is true that things can slow down very noticeably in areas dense with enemies, particularly as you get deeper in the game.  I noticed the framerate problems less with interlacing on, though it negatively affects the graphics so much that I cannot recommend using it.

Some information in this section comes from this this thread: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/51325-why-nothing-beyond-320×240-why-no-interlaced-screens/

The Music and Sound

In addition to everything else, Tempest 2000 has an exceptional soundtrack as well. With an intense euro-style techno score, Tempest 2000 has what is easily one of my favorite game soundtracks ever.  I do like the music CD version of the songs maybe slightly better than the versions on the actual cart, but the music on the cart is shockingly great!  This may be music on a cartridge but it’s some of the best cart chiptunes I’ve ever heard, and it has great variety and dynamism too, as the music changes depending on which level you are on and what’s going on.  There are even vocals in some songs.  On that note, there are also a lot of vocal sound effects in this game too.  Quite unlike your usual budget bargain-basement Atari Jaguar game, and that’s how most exclusives on this console feel, Tempest 2000 feels like a top-flight production for its time, and the audio is very much a part of that.  Every song is just so fantastic! I love techno music and game soundtracks and this is one of the best ever at both.

Strategy

I would say that I am decent at T2K. I’m not amazing at it, but I’m not bad either. My best score is a bit over a million points, which I think is an above average score.  I will admit that my best score on real hardware is a bit lower than on emulator, because in emulator it runs fully smoothly, but despite this I have more fun playing on real hardware so that is what I play now.  My best on real hardware is about 650,000; decent, but I know I can do better.  So what is the best way to play this game? It’s best to keep moving and focus on getting rid of the most dangerous foes.  Always make sure to get out of lanes that are about to electrify, kill those large enemies, and try to keep the web clear if possible and focus on timing your shots correctly to take out enemies on top of the web before they get you if you can’t do that.

It’s fun to just hold left or right and fire and shoot stuff, but this won’t get you very far once you get past the first set of levels.  You need to pay attention and move carefully, though you don’t want to just stay in one place either, that will lead to a quick death.  Balancing this can be difficult given how fast-paced the game is, but quickly scanning the bottom of the web for what foes are coming at you while also avoiding whatever is on top is vital for survival. T2K is the perfect game to get ‘in the zone’ with.  Focus, move to defeat the most important threat at each moment, and stay in the zone, staring at the monster-filled abyss in front of you.  Yeah, again, there’s something about Tempest that is disturbing to look at, but there is also beauty to it.  Hours feel like minutes when you’re in the zone in Tempest.

Conclusion

What more is there to say? Well, I didn’t mention the multiplayer mode, but honestly I’ve never played it.  It’s just a two player versus mode though so it’s definitely not the main attraction.  Beyond that though, Tempest 2000 for Atari Jaguar is the greatest shooting game ever made.  One of gamings’ great masterpieces, T2K is unmatched in its field.  The stunning visuals, the sense of tension this game evokes, the feeling of getting into the zone, the amazing soundtrack, the pretty much flawless controls, the interesting and varied level webs you will face, the varied enemies and how as you proceed new foes are added at just the right moments, everything here is peak.  Tempest 2000 is an A+ classic and is flat-out one of the best games ever made.  This is a top 5 all time console game without question and the only non-Nintendo game that high on my best console games list.

So that’s my review.  I think I spent too much time saying ‘this game is great’ and not enough saying why, maybe I will continue working on improving this.  But that’s it for now.  Also please correct me if I got any facts wrong, which I may have.

 

Posted in Atari Jaguar, Classic Games, Full Reviews, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

How to Unlock Level Select in Eliminate Down (Sega Genesis)

Posted on September 1, 2024 by Brian

Sorry about the long break, the past month was absolutely awful for multiple reasons.  With everything going on I forgot to pay the hosting bill, then I did pay it but the site had multiple technical problems keeping me from accessing the site and posting for a while.  The problems have been fixed now, thankfully.  For anyone who ran into that SSL security error, it’s fixed now.  So here’s one article I’ve wanted to post for a few days now but couldn’t until today since the issues are finally fixed, and expect another one soon, I’ve got more Guild Wars images to post.  Anyway, on to this little article.

Eliminate Down is one of the Genesis’ best shmups.  The game was originally only released in Japan, but finally got a licensed modern homebrew release from Limited Run this year.  I got it and it has a very cool holo-cover.  The game itself is identical to the original, so this applies to either an original or modern re-release copy of the game.  Either way the game is absolutely amazing, with some of the best gameplay and music in any shmup that generation… and it has something that my searching has not managed to find any mention of online, a hidden level select option that you can unlock.  It’s not a full level select as far as I’ve seen, but it’s a lot better than nothing, particularly in a game which has limited continues as this one does.

So, if you go into the config menu, notice how there is a one-line gap in between Mini Game and Exit.  This is where the level select will appear, if you’re good enough.  What you need to do is play the Mini Game and do well at it.

The Mini Game is a twitch reaction test thing.  On the screen there is a grid of boxes with your ship’s image on them, and a cursor selecting one of the boxes near the center.  The boxes will randomly flip over and then back.  Each run starts out slowly, with one box at a time flipping, before speeding up as things go until lots of them are flipping at once by the end.  Each Mini Game run is 60 seconds long, and goes similarly each time though with new random box locations so you can’t memorize it, you just need to get better at reacting quickly.

At first, how to play the Mini Game may not be apparent.  You’ll hit the but ton while a ship is flipping and nothing will happen, then other times you’ll get the explosion marker and get a point.  What’s going on?  Well, the trick is that you have to hit the fire button while the tile in question is flipping BACK to get the point, not while it is flipping forward.   Yes, you have to hit the button in the SECOND half of the animation to score, you won’t get anything if you hit it while it’s flipping over, only back.  Once the animation has finished you have missed your window, so the timing is tight.

With some practice, though, I found myself getting better at the Mini Game.  It’s kind of fun.  If you score at least 30 points in the Mini Game, you get a little musical number and the configuration menu adds a new option in the missing slot, allowing you to start from levels 1, 2, or 3 with each new game.

if you score at least 40 points, there is a longer music piece after the minigame completes, and levels 4 and 5 are added to the round select list in addition to 1, 2, and 3.

You’d think that there would be a third unlock to start from levels 6 and 7, but if there is I haven’t gotten a good enough score for it.  The most I’ve done so far is 52 points, but sadly getting a score over 50 did not unlock anything new.  I’m not sure if a score of 60 is possible, that would be insanely difficult; 50 was pretty tough.  I got it but didn’t unlock anything new, ah well.

So, in Eliminate Down, get a score of at least 40 in the Mini Game and you can start from up to level 5.  Given that this game has 8 levels, limited continues, and no save system, this lets you start from the halfway point of the game.  This is a lot better than having to start it over every time, that’s for sure.  Enjoy!

Posted in Articles, Classic Games, Genesis, Strategies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Guild Wars Memories and Screenshots, Part 14: 2008

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Brian

Yes, Guild Wars returns!  This article will have the twenty screenshots I took in 2008.  As I mentioned in the last two articles, I wasn’t playing GW much anymore but did launch the game once in a while to appreciate the graphics on the much more powerful computer I had gotten and maybe get a bit farther.  I’ll just post all of them even though some are quite similar.  That definitely won’t happen next time, maybe I’ll just have to skip that batch, it’s a mess… but this one has some really nice scenery in it.  It’s just amazing how beautiful Guild Wars’ graphics are and how well they hold up.

1

I wonder why I took this screenshot, by accident? It’s my only screenshot from January and it’s literally empty, either nobody is there or there was a graphical glitch that has caused the characters and skills to vanish — note how the skillbar icons are also missing. Huh. Yes I’m posting it anyway. Why not?

2

This is the first of three shots of this area. This underground area has some seriously impressive art design, with the lighting and giant tapestries, as well as the rest of the environment!  It looks like I’m fighting with the Henchmen and Heroes.  This is a Hero here in the foreground, and a bunch of enemies in the distance.

3

This is the same scene, but it’s a few moments later in the fight now. Cynn, Gwen, and Mhenlo are on screen now as Cynn casts a spell.  Gwen’s a Hero and the other two are Henchies (and main story characters).

4

And now it’s the Assassin hero on screen, while those enemies in the background are now all dead.  The battle has been won.

5

This ceiling is ridiculously good looking, with those V-shaped openings revealing the sky above.  Guild Wars is still a somewhat amazing-looking game even all these years later.  You can’t say that about most 3d games released back in the mid ’00s.

6

What a nice, if absurdly giant, fireplace…

7

And now we have a foggy cavern. How nice, if ominous, what could be lurking here?

8

Ah, it’s Sorrow’s Furnace! It’s embarrassing that I have never managed to beat the boss of this super cool dungeon that they added to the game in later ’05 post-release, but I’m sure I will go back to trying.

9

This is the next bit of the Sorrow’s Furnace cutscene from the last shot. The art design here is just so interesting, with that metal thing from the last shot attached through that high hole in the ceiling by this long chain.

10

And now this piece of the furnace is resetting back up into the fiery ceiling area.

11

Is this the Sorrow’s Furnace boss? If so I’m about to lose again, it’s so hard without a human party with those different spots you need to go to during the fight! It’s possible solo with Heroes and the separate control of them you have, but it’s quite tough to multitask well enough and I’ve never managed it.  Also, yeah, the contrast here between the dark environment and bright red lava is great, good design style.

12

More dark cavern with bright lava. Sorrow’s Furnace is a pretty great looking area, even though it released only a few months after the base game it really stepped up the art design over a lot of what the original game had.

13

And now I’m in an area with giant spider webs.  I admit I forget where exactly this is in Sorrow’s Furnace, but I think this terrain was on the edges of the zone, outside of the main area.  Regardless, it sure does look impressive, with the green tint to the area and whatever that is on the wall in the background!

14

The ‘interiors only’ trend continues with this, another interior in Sorrow’s Furnace. This time it’s not only some amazing scenery, though, but we’ve also got a battle going on between me and my Hero/Henchie party taking on some Charr.

15

By the way, my party is 3 Heroes and 4 Henchmen because at this point that was the limit. At some point you were allowed to purchase, for real money, the ability to use up to a full party’s worth of Heroes instead of having to use Henchmen. I’m not sure if that option was available for purchase in 2008 or not but if it was I hadn’t bought it yet, so I was limited to three. Heroes are much better than Henchies with how you can customize their skillbars and give them direct movement commands, so going for an all-Heroes party is the best approach for anyone who has enough skills unlocked on their account to be able to fill out a whole party of Heroes’ skillbars with good skills. You have to have the skill unlocked on your account for your Heroes to use it, you see, unlike Henchmen which each come with a preset skillbar they will always use.

26

Creepy…

27

No, no, these two screenshots are different, it’s totally worth posting both… :/  Still looks really cool, though!

18

It’s dark out, maybe too dark to see. Heh.

 

19

And now I’m back in the snowy lands, looking at a wall of ice. Nice. Winter is the best!

20

Ah yes, this area. It’s such a great looking zone, I love it. Any real person would need clothing though, that scarpattern ‘armor’ of my characters’ wouldn’t get you far… heh.

 

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Guild Wars Memories and Screenshots, Part 13: April – November 2007

Posted on May 30, 2024 by Brian

Introduction

Yes, this series is back, though it surely won’t be as interesting as before due to my interest in the game being highest in its first few years.  This article will be short, with 19 screenshots, but the shots are much higher resolution and detail now as I got a new PC.  The next update, covering my shots from 2008, should have about the same number of images as this one does.  Expect that article soon.

In early 2007, I got a new computer.  No longer was I using a rapidly-aging Pentium 4 with WinME, instead I had a brand new Core 2 Duo machine with the then-new Windows Vista OS. Despite this, I found myself playing computer games less and less.  By 2007 I had mostly abandoned modern games in favor of my growing retro game collection, and that’s  very much where my attention focused.  I remember wondering if the new PC would revive my interest in modern games, but for the most part it did not.  That wouldn’t happen until 2017.

As an aside, while I still have the WinME machine and it still works, though, sadly the Vista computer stopped working several years ago and I haven’t been able to figure out how to fix it.  At first I thought it was the motherboard, but replacing that did nothing.  So maybe I managed to break something in the power supply?  Argh.  Oh well.  I miss Windows Vista and its nice transparent windows, it’s so much more interesting to look at than Windows 10 is on this machine I have now, but… oh well.  If only one of the two older machines could work, it’s far better for the WinME machine to work than the Vista one since a lot of games do not run well on a modern machine but do on that one, while there are very few games that don’t work on Win10 but do on Vista.  Still, I’m one of the few people who really liked Vista, so I miss the PC that these screens come from working… ah well.

But anyway, getting back to Guild Wars, as the article title suggests I wasn’t exactly playing much Guild Wars in 2007 or 2008.  I never would go back to playing hundreds of hours of the game, instead just playing the game a bit here and there instead of playing GW1 all day as I did sometimes particularly in 2004-2005.  And so, the 700-something hours I was at in April 2007 would take a long, long time to get to a thousand.  In fact, checking today, I’m at 1013 hours.  Yeah, barely more than than I had in early ’07.  Oh well.  On the one hand this means that there is a huge amount of content in Guild Wars that I’ve never experienced, including finishing most of the dungeons, playing most of the harder free content they added in the runup to Guild Wars 2, and more, but on the other hand, it means there’ still something to do in the game, you know?

And there are reasons why I  stopped playing.  One is that I particularly loved the random player groups in this game, and after ’06 that element of the game mostly faded away.  These screenshots start in April 2007, right when random player groups were dying off.  One part of that probably was declining interest in the game — most of the people I was playing with at college lost interest within a year or two, for instance — but also it was because of the addition of Heroes, those much more customizable and controllable AI allies Nightfall added.   As I said in a previous part in this series the late 2006 addition of Heroes in the Nightfall expansion was fantastic for solo players and the long-term playablity of the game once the playerbase was too low to rely on other people always being around, but it mostly killed off random player groups so I’ve always had mixed feelings about the change.  I liked the game better before Heroes than I have since, that much I know.

So yeah, to repeat from previous articles, I love the base game of course and really liked the first expansion to Guild Wars, but I wasn’t as much of a fan of the second expansion, late ’06’s Nightfall.  It took me something like ten years to finally finish the Nightfall campaign.  It’s actually pretty good, I should have played the rest of it sooner.  Maybe if player groups had survived 2006 I would have, but they didn’t.  But we’ll get to my finishing Nightfall much later.

Making the whole situation worse, I’m not one to be in a large guild or often be able to play the game with friends after the mid ’00s, so from this point on I was playing mostly solo or in the Random Arenas only.  The problem is, a lot of the later content that ANet added to the game after 2007 is very difficult for the solo player.  With good builds for you and your Heroes, people can beat that stuff solo.  I always preferred to just play the game with whatever build I’ve come up with myself and like and not look up good builds, though, so my attempts at the harder added content mostly ended up in frustration and with me giving up.   I probably should have spent more time looking up good Hero builds, but I didn’t do that enough for them to be good enough to get me through the harder content, and without any other humans to group with like 99+% of the time after 2006, I often found it too hard to proceed.  It’s nice that they added more content after the last of the too-few expansions, but most of it is aimed at the dedicated, very good players with humans to play with and such.  I’m neither of those things.  I love games a lot but never have been great at many of them.  Oh well.

Despite that, though, and despite that I haven’t really played Guild Wars at all in several years now, I deeply love this game and know I will get back into it sometime, like how I’ve really gotten back into Starcraft for the past month or two.  And so, here it is, my mostly-forgettable screenshots from 2007.  Though maybe that’s wrong; I really like the last two, they look great…

My Guild Wars Screenshots, April to November 2007

1

Here I’m talking with some random group party member about how much we’ve played the game.  As mentioned, between declining interest and Heroes random groups were dying by this point but you could still find one once in a while.

2

The map, showing my progress in the city.  Yes, I was continuing to play through Factions again instead of playing Nightfall, even though I’d finished Factions before and very definitely not Nightfall.  It was probably the right decision, Factions is a great campaign…

3

733 hours played since launch? That’s not much higher than my last hours count.  As I said it’s only at 1013 hours today.  But yeah, I’m back to playing as my main, Talindra, some.  That skillbar’s very similar now to how it is in this 2007 screenshot, and my character’s costume, the 15k scarpattern set, is unchanged.

4

Here is a shot of the first panel of my inventory.  Look, it’s a birthday gift!  ANet gave characters one each year.  Now you just get a birthday voucher, which is still nice I guess.

5

This is very similar to the last shot, but note the sellers in chat. For some reason the Nightfall main city, Kamadan, quickly became the main community hub in Guild Wars, a position it still retains.  I honestly have no idea why.

6

Looking at how weird it is that some things disappear underwater while others don’t is endlessly entertaining.   Why does hair disappear, for instance?  How strange.  Anyway, this is the Random Arena hub area.  Player populations have clearly declined, given how it hasn’t found a match.

7

Well, it finally found a match, and here we are fighting in the Random Arenas.  I hope the match went well…

8

Bah, that run must not have gone long.  It looks like we won that last match but not many, if any, more.

9

I’m probably looking at my Ranger’s two year birthday present now, and maybe exploring Seared Ascalon some as well.

10

A timed mission? I’ve always hated timed modes in games unless the timer isn’t tight. I don’t think this one was bad, though.  The graphics sure do look a LOT better on this computer though, don’t they?  The post-processing effects and such add so much.  Guild Wars’ exceptional art design has held up extremely well, this still looks great.

11

Run…

12

Here we get to some of the best-looking GW1 screenshots I’ve taken.  The ‘disable the interface for this shot’ command results in some impressive stuff at times. This winter forest scene looks beautiful.

13

And for another of the best shots in this update, an image of the sky and the crescent moon.  Guild Wars really does have some of the best art design ever.

14

Winter is my favorite season.   I’ve never been in an ice structure or cave like this but I’m sure it would be quite beautiful. The one in Guild Wars sure are.

15

Don’t get too distracted by the scenery, watch out for those ice golems… they’re not hard, sure, but still, in this game you can never be too careful.

16

It’s a new environment in this ice area, with a lot of squared-off somewhat diamond-like ice blocks.  Impressive stuff.

17

Some of my AI party members, running through the snow.

18

The rest of the shots I have from 2007 are from this tournament from a quest. You fight the tourney here against a bunch of your Henchman allies, including some members of the main four heroes. I took screenshots of a bunch of the text lines because I thought it was interesting to see their thoughts about the tourney.  Each character says something before and after your match against them.  I won’t post most of them for now, though; play the game yourself instead of being spoiled!

19

I’ve got to post this one, though. A Joe & Mac reference, really? Heh, that’s random… amusing, however!

And with that, my screenshots from 2007 end.  I would not play the game much in 2008 if my screenshots are to believed; I’ve got just one shot from January and only 18 for the rest of the year combined.  I hope some are as good as some of these are.

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Happy 20th Birthday, Guild Wars! A Return of Guild Wars Memories and Screenshots, Part 1.5: E3 for Everyone Character Creator Screens

Posted on May 10, 2024 by Brian

Introduction and Update: A Few Thoughts on the Anniversary

Yes, 20 years ago today E3 2004 week began, and with it started Guild Wars’ first public test, the amazing E3 for Everyone event that got me excited for, and addicted to, this incredible game.  My memories of E3 for Everyone are strong, but time sure flies, huh… nothing we can do about that, though.  Anyway, most people would say that Guild Wars released in May 2005, but while that was its formal release, I’ve always thought of it as pretty much ‘releasing’ a year before that, when the regular public tests began.

It’s actually kind of funny, recently I was looking back at some old posts of mine, and I found a thread from April 2004 where I was defending World of Warcraft’s art style and sounded interested about its gameplay even though I wasn’t into MMOs.  While reading that thread, I couldn’t help but think, less than one month later my world would change because of this game, Guild Wars.  I mean, of course I was interested in WoW, Blizzard was my favorite developer and it was their next game.  But, once I’d played Guild Wars, my interest level in WoW went down significantly and never recovered.  As I said in my sidesstory article in this series about WoW and PSO, I did try WoW a bit, but quickly lost interest and mostly ignored the game because of how much less interesting it was to me than Guild Wars.  Guild Wars 1 looks better than WoW did then, plays better, and just plain is better.  Almost everything about it is amazing and fits what I want from a game better than anything else in the online RPG genre, from the lack of required grind to the lack of a monthly fee to the strategy of putting together an 8-skill build.

I do still love Blizzard, and have gotten back into their games over the past year, particularly the game that still is easily the best game ever made, Starcraft Remaster (expect a Starcraft article on this site in the not too distant future!), and also Diablo II Remaster and Diablo IV, a game I am still playing a whole lot of — I got back in on Season 3.  But World of Warcraft?  Sorry, it’s the Pokemon of Blizzard to me, an extremely popular thing by one of my favorite game companies that I don’t like much if at all.  That is partially because of what WoW is, a game in a genre that just is not for me due to being too open-ended and aimless, but also because of how exceptional Guild Wars is.

So yeah, Guild Wars is 20 now as a publicly playable game.  I’ve been thinking about the upcoming anniversary all year, and decided that I would restart Guild Wars Memories and Screenshots to commemorate the event.  This won’t be just one article, thankfully to everyone probably because THIS update is unlikely to interest much of anyone, but at least several.  As I said when I suspended the series there were several reasons I did that.   One were the sexual harassment allegations towards the games’ composer.  They are credible, and I think it was right to suspend this series for a while after that, but that isn’t why it took so long to return; he had already been fired from Arena.net before that and he has not gotten work in the industry again since.  ANet even replaced his Guild Wars 2 compositions.  Guild Wars 1 is still one of the best ever and the music is only one part of it.

So no, that wasn’t the main reason.  The most important was that I was past the time period where I played the game a lot, and past the pre-release tests, so what I’ve got from 2007 and beyond is in most ways much less interesting from the updates I did previously.  Of the time I’ve played Guild Wars, the vast majority was the thousand-or-so hours I played between 2004 and 2006.  Since then? It’s a game I go back to every once in a while, since it is one of the best games I’ve ever played and still is quite amazing in a lot of ways, but those times are sporadic and what I did in the game ossified down to mostly just solo content, mostly with my main Necromancer character, mostly with the same skillbar.  Considering that anyone who plays the game today can see this same content but with better graphics, random screenshots of this or that are, I think, not nearly as interesting for the most part as the pre-release content is.  Even so, I took some here and there and have always meant to get back to posting them.  I will do that, but first…

First, I decided to go back to my pre-release screenshots and post some more of those, because that is what is the most historically important.  I mentioned back in the first E3 for Everyone that I took an oddly large number of screenshots in the character creator.  Here are most of them.  Thank you?  After them are a handful of shots I didn’t think were interesting enough to post before.  One, at least, is actually reasonably interesting.  The others aren’t really but I’m posting them anyway to celebrate the anniversary.  I really should play Guild Wars again; it’s been a little while, I have to admit.  There are too many games… but I will get back to it, I always do.  Guild Wars has a permanent place in my top ten best games ever for a reason.  And that all started twenty years ago today with the E3 for Everyone public test.  Celebrating that important anniversary of this game I love with a bunch of boring screenshots is questionable indeed, but it’s what I’m doing, because I do have some more from E3 for Everyone and I’d like to get them out there.

Guild Wars E3 for Everyone Character Creator Screenshots

The first twelve screenshots show all six classes in both genders, looking as they did at the start in E3 for Everyone.  Please note that the secondary class has no effect on the look of the characters, only the primary class determines that.  Also, yes, Guild Wars has somewhat limited customization.  All you can do is choose between a few skin colors, hair styles, colors, and faces, and change your body scale on a slider.  Characters of the same class won’t all look the same, but will look similar.  I posted some of theswe before, but am posting the character creator shots all here again for completion.

One Shot of Each Class

First, the female characters.

The female Elementalist has the skimpiest outfit and most sexualized look of the classes.

Mesmers have a somewhat Victorian-ish style, and you see that here but with the front of the dress cut away either for looks or supposedly for easier movement.

This outfit isn’t the female Necromancer’s best, but it’s a good one which fits the class well.

The embroidered patterns on Monk clothing look cool. GW still impresses visually after 20 years…

My first choice of class was this one, the female Ranger. It’s a good design though certainly not her best outfit in the base game.

Breast plate! It’s not realistic, actual armor like that would not function. I get why games design this, it’s for looks and games don’t need to be realistic, but it looks silly if you know anything about armor.

Now the male characters.  These will be the only shots of male characters in this article.  Sorry about that.  Complain to the me of 20 years ago… heh.

The male Ranger has a good design.

The male Warrior, surely the most common character class choice in E3 for Everyone.  He’s even bald by default, fitting with the ‘bald soldier guy’ theme of ’00s games… heh.

The male Monk is somewhat iconic of the game.

The way the male Necromancer’s head sits on his body from this angle is kind of funny looking…

The male Mesmer here fits with the ‘somewhat Victorian-ish’ theme of the class well.

The male Elementalist is pretty plain looking, much less flashy and sexualized than the female.

(Female) Characters: Changing Some Options

Next, I’ve got some shots of what happens when you change some of the as-I-said-few customization options on a few characters.

Female Warrior, from behind and made much taller, look at that height slider. You can rotate the character in the creator but not turn them up or down.

Changed hair color and hair style.

Changed skin color

This is the palest skin color.

Brown skin

And here is the darkest color.

It looks similar, but this is a different female Ranger hairstyle from the first one.

This is actually the same as the first female Ranger hairstyle, it just looks different thanks to a color change. It’s surprising how much variation having only a few customization options can get you.

Monk side view, showing this ‘one side shaved, long on other side’ hairstyle.

And the front view.

While similar to the first Necromancer hairstyle, this one doesn’t have the things dangling from her hair.

This might be the first female Mesmer hairstyle. From behind that dress sure fits the class’ theme.

Again this looks similar-ish to the first hairstyle, but isn’t that one.  The reverse probably looks more different.

The reverse of the female Elementalist, with a different hair style and color.

The shots in between the last one and this just cycle through several of the skin color options and rotate the camera again.  I’ll skip those (there are seven more! Why?  I did not play as this class in this test…). This one with the blue hair and greyer skin is different, though.  This is the same hair style as the last shot, just from the front.

And that’s all that’s at all worth posting from the character creator.

Other E3 for Everyone Shots Previously Not Posted

While I did not take a lot of screenshots during E3 for Everyone, there are a couple more shots I didn’t post before that are of at least a little interest.

This is from the Stormcaller (Nolani Academy) mission lobby area, now after the mission timer started, it’s about to begin. I posted the shots before this in the original article, but skipped this one. I’m posting it now because these characters are kind of amusing looking.

Just before I Firestormed the Gargoyles, one of them threw this fire burst at me. If you go to the original article you’ll notice I took some damage in between this shot and that one.

… This has got to be one of the least interesting screenshots I’ve ever taken… no wonder I skipped it before.

And that’s it.  Literally the only other E3 for Everyone shots I have are the rest of the nearly identical character creator shots, a second one of the main menu just a moment after the first one from the original, and the shot a moment before I brought up the interface, in that same hallway at the start of Stormcaller but without the interface on screen.  So yeah, that’s really it for E3 for Everyone.  I will conclude with that other menu shot; I like it slightly less than the other one as the redness in the upper left part of the sky is less noticeable.

The week of E3 for Everyone was one of the most surprisingly fun weeks I think I’ve ever had in gaming…

 

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RIP, Wii/3DS Online, and particularly Splatoon 1 and Mario Maker 1…

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Brian

This is not going to be a long article, but I need to discuss this topic.

So, tomorrow’s the day, Nintendo turns off Wii and 3DS online servers next morning.  I may have played a lot more Mario Maker 2 than Mario Maker 1, but even so I’m quite sad about this.  I know that with purchasing disabled online play being turned off as well was inevitable as few companies would spend money on servers forever for no return, but even so, it’s awful and should remind everyone yet again about how horrible for preservation our now ‘physical media is mostly dead’ world is.  Sadly, only hackers can save us from companies shutting off servers the moment a game or platform becomes un-economical, and not all games or services get such work.  I’d rather companies keep the official servers on forever, that is the best way.  That isn’t going to happen, though, so all we can do is rely on other means to save exceptionally amazing games like Mario Maker 1 from the deletion of almost all of its content.

The thing is, though, I do not like having to install hacks or such and still haven’t put custom firmware on my 3DS or Wii U, though I should soon now that it’s been fully shut down and Nintendo has left us 3DS and Wii U fans no choice.  And yes, I do still love these systems, and still use my 3DS almost every day.  I love DS and 3DS puzzle games that control with the stylus!   I just do not like touch controls designed for a finger anywhere remotely near as much as those designed for a stylus due to how much more precise styli are.  There’s a reason why we write with pens and pencils, and don’t dip our fingers in ink: increased precision is much much better.  It’s the same with games.  I understand the reason for having a cellphone with a touchscreen for using basic internet functions, but for the precision you need in a game there is no contest at all between 3DS or Wii U touch, with their respective styli, and the finger touch design of the Switch or Vita.  But anyway, I know I’ve said this before, and most people either don’t care or don’t agree.  That is truly unfortunate.

I don’t think there is much else to say about this topic, though, really, I’ve said it all before.  It is awful and will continue to happen more and more often as most media is now digital-only and thus can be deleted from existence much more easily than it could before.   All it takes is a company who wants to cut costs or get a tax writeoff and presto, that thing you liked is gone forever now unless pirates saved it!  Only consume new products, not anything old, that doesn’t make companies as much money.  Capitalism is a fine system, overall better than any other economic system humans have invented (particularly with some socialist elements mixed in), but this problem needs to be solved: we must stop the destruction of media.

Fortunately this time all of the Mario Maker 1 levels that are about to be deleted by Nintendo HAVE been backed up by the community, but other times, such as that new Road Runner movie that WB decided to delete out of existence without releasing, things just vanish forever without any kind of reason.  I know that the videogame market isn’t growing as fast as it was previously, while costs and development times continue to spiral out of control, so companies are trying to protect what profits they have, but some solution that allows for the continued existence of media must be found; we are going to lose too much of value otherwise.

Shutting down online play is one thing, and it’s sad; I deeply love Splatoon 1, it is my most-played Wii U game by a good margin.  Sure, the game got partially ruined by hackers, but it’s an amazing experience regardless and it is one that its sequels do not come close to; I still greatly prefer Splatoon 1 over 2 or 3.   That Splatoon 1 disc I have will be rendered mostly useless without online and most of its content will become inaccessible, as there is no botmatch mode.  But at least that content exists ON that disc.  Deleting millions of Mario Maker levels is something worse because they only exist on Nintendo’s servers.  Sure, many of those levels are awful, but many others are great.  A lot of truly amazing, fantastic levels were made for that game, levels which advanced the platforming genre in interesting ways.  That Nintendo is getting rid of all of it without any kind of official way to back it up provided is horrible.  Because we can’t assume that future consoles will all be hacked; some surely won’t be.  Anything deleted from those platforms will vanish entirely.  This day is another reminder of the great challenges game preservation now faces.   I hope that somehow preservation wins.

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The Worst Game I Own For Each Platform I Have

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Brian

Uh, yeah, it’s been too long.  I haven’t been playing retro games much, honestly, other than Starcraft: Brood War, by far the best game ever made, which I got back into last week.  I should write something about that game sometime, though given how terrible I am at it it wouldn’t be the most insightful.

I have written this, though.  It’s an article about the worst game I own for each console I have, kind of the opposite of my ‘favorite games’ lists.  However, I didn’t go back and play all of these games before writing this, so a lot of this is based on my memories of playing these games years ago and the score I’ve given them.  Sorry about that.  I hope that at least some of the list is interesting despite that.  I know that my tastes do not always align with that which is popular, which is fine with me.  Everybody is different.

The Worst Game I Own For Each Platform I Have

3DO – Shadow: War of Succession. This absolutely terrible barely playable disaster is maybe the worst game I own. This is a fighting game and it’s as bad as games can be to the point where it’s honestly surprising that it actually got published. Shadow is a Mortal Kombat clone, which was popular at the time, but it has the absolute worst controls, moves, and gameplay of any MK knockoff I have ever seen, and it’s not close.

Apple II – I don’t have any bad Apple II games but uh… Fight Night, because I dislike the genre, I guess. It’s a boxing game and probably a good one given that it’s well thought of, but I’m just not interested in the genre at all.

Apple II GS – Another system I don’t have any bad games for. The weakest is The Hunt for Red October. It’s average.

Atari 2600, 2600 – Freeway. This is a boring Frogger knockoff where you can’t move left or right, only forward or back. Lame. This awful game is one of Activision’s worst ever. The idea was to make a multiplayer-focused game but not being able to move left or right just makes this game miserably dull.

Atari 5200, 5200 – I don’t have any bad 5200 games, but the least good one I’ve got is James Bond 007, which is below average. This side-scrolling vehicular action game tries to do interesting things, but fails at pretty much all of them. It’s a pretty big disappointment with confusing objectives and iffy-at-best controls and design.

Atari 7800, 7800 – RealSports Baseball. This is an awful baseball game, which is sad given that the 5200 game of the same name was pretty good. They are similar but in a lot of ways this one is a huge downgrade. The speech samples and more are gone from this one.

Atari Jaguar CD, JCD – Space Ace. This may be a classic, but I’ve always hated Dragon’s Lair, and this game seems even harder and worse than that one is. Sorry, I can’t stand this game at all, it’s awful.

Atari Jaguar, JAG – Kasumi Ninja wins here for me, easily. The insanely awful jumping — this is a fighting game where you cannot control your jump in the air like NES Castlevania or something — alone justifies giving this game in a very low F tier score. The rest of the game isn’t much better. This is the worst Jag game I have by a good margin. I’m honestly shocked that you don’t see the insanely weird jumping system this game uses mentioned more when people talk about this game because it’s probably the most unique, and worst, thing about the game.

Bandai WonderSwan Color, WSC – There are a lot of very boring anime RPGs and adventure games for this platform, so should I just call it a tie between most of those for worst WSC game? This platofrm’s library is one of the least interesting around, for me! But of the very few WSC games I’ve actually cared enough about to play, I guess One Piece Grand Battle: Swan Collosseum is the weakest. It’s a very mediocre, below average fighting game. NGPC fighting games absolutely crush this subpar effort with its bad controls and gameplay. This game isn’t an F-tier game but I don’t like playing it.

Bandai WonderSwan, WS – Rockman & Forte: Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha is the worst Wonderswan game I’ve played. I am sure there are worse Wonderswan games — some of those anime RPGs surely aren’t any good — but I haven’t played those games so I can’t rate them. This game is infamously mediocre, and indeed it is; it’s not a total failure, but it is a bad game with poor controls, level designs, and more. You really can tell that this game had little involvement from Capcom, which indeed it did not. Bandai got one of the developers of some of the Game Boy Megaman games to make this game, but this game is dramatically worse than any but the second of the GB Megamans. And as bad as it is at least MMII for GB controls well, so it’s better than this game by a good margin. Rockman & Forte for Wonderswan is as poor as its reputation suggests. Still, though, it’s a playable game that series fans (like me) probably should try anyway. Just expect it to be one of the worst Megaman games ever — it is.

Colecovision, CVIS – Facemaker is an okay little kids’ game, but it’s the worst “game” I have for Colecovision because it’s so, SO basic. You just make a silly face basically by selecting from premade upper, middle, and lower part options. If you do not count this as a game, and it really isn’t one, it’s edutainment, then Super Action Baseball probably gets the ‘honors’ here. That game is a well below average, forgettable game not worth playing at all today. The special 4 button controllers it needs really aren’t worth such a mediocre, multiplayer-only baseball game. Play RealSports Baseball for Atari 5200 instead, it’s much better.

Commodore 128 – There are C128 games? I have a 128, but like most people with one I don’t have any C128 games. The only releases from its lifetime were text adventures you can get on many other formats. Is this the worst library ever in a popular, well-selling machine? Probably.

Commodore 64 – There are a lot of bad C64 games, but I haven’t played most of them; I don’t use my C128 much. Of the few C64 games I have and have played, um… I don’t know. It’d be something average but not bad like Radar Ratrace, Speed / Bingo Math if you count that as a game, Keypunch Software’s Adventure Pak, or something like that… I need to play some actual bad C64 games I guess, there are lots of them… though probably fewer here than in Europe, they got a lot more C64 games than we did.

Commodore VIC-20 – As with the C64, the worst I’ve played for this system is something slightly below average. I’m going with The Sky is Falling, a mediocre title for sure but not awful.

Dreamcast, DC – Rippin’ Riders Snowboarding wins here by a wide margin. This is a game that, objectively, is probably merely below average, but subjectively I absolutely hate. This is one of the least pleasant to play games I’ve ever played, it’s absolutely terrible. Perhaps the worst thing about the game is the announcer that constantly insults you, but the course designs and gameplay are barely any better. This game is from the CoolBoarders (PS1) developers, and I don’t think they ever figured out what snowboarding is, their games aren’t anything like it at all.

Game Boy Advance, GBA – Cruis’n Velocity is a quite terrible early polygonal 3d racer for the system. It’s nothing like past Cruis’n games and is pretty terrible in every way.

Game Boy Color, GBC – M&M’s Mini Madness is my pick here. How this platformer is so awful I don’t know, isn’t that an easy thing to do a tolerably okay job at? But this is not tolerably okay at all, it’s terrible.

Game Boy, GB – While there are surely worse GB games, my pick here is somewhat based on nostalgia. The worst game I bought for Game Boy in the ’90s was Toy Story, and that is still my choice for worst Game Boy game. Objecively are there worse games, surely. But for me there aren’t. With an excruciatingly slow framerate, awful controls, and confusing objectives, this game is terrible. Some people have fond memories for this title, particularly on console, but I’m sorry I have nothing but bad memories of this awful disaster of a game.

Game Gear, GG – If you count it, and you shouldn’t because it isn’t a game, House of Tarot wins this easily. This title is a tarot card reading title only released in Japan. Yeah, it’s a horoscope program. In Japanese, on Game Gear. You don’t get much worse. If you want an actual game though, it’s close but maybe I’ll go with World Series Baseball? It’s just such a terrible baseball game, the fielder movement is ridiculous — the first, second, and third basemen are glued to their bases, while you move everyone else together. What. I also need to mention Taz-Mania though, the game is just about as bad and has what is almost certainly the worst soundtrack of any title released in the US on any platform.

Gamecube, GC – Genre fans may get something out of it, but for me it’s an easy pick here: Whirl Tour. This skateboarding game does basically nothing to teach you how to play. YOu already know how to play Tony Hawk, right? You’d better before playing this game. This game is pretty bad all around on top of that too, so no, I don’t know how to play and don’t want to learn. This is a learning curve not worth attempting.

Mattel Intellivision, INTV – Sharp Shot is a bad minigame collection consisting of three very basic games. It’s aimed to be for young children, but even they will probably be bored in ten minutes. Even so, this game isn’t utterly dire; it’s merely bad, not a total failure. You might be mildly entertained during some of those ten minutes.

NEC PC-FX, PCFX – The video quality may be great, but as a game I hate Battle Heat about as much as you can dislike something. The ‘FMV fighting game’ concept does not in any way work, as you see with games like this or Supreme Warrior. What you end up with is an extremely frustrating game that requires extensive memorization, as the only way to not lose is to know exactly what move to use at each moment. The video might be nice but the gameplay is abysmal. But hey, at least it’s a game, unlike most of the visual novel-focused titles on this disappointing console… I may love books, but visual novels have never interested me at all.

Neo Geo Pocket & NGP Color – Almost all of the NGP and NGPC games that I have are good, but the NGPC version of Pac-Man is sadly disappointing. The core of this arcade classic is here, but either you play with unpleasantly tiny graphics or the game zooms in so you can’t see where the ghosts are. This is an unsolvable issue of the screen resolution of a ’90s handheld, but it is an issue that kind of ruins Pac-Man.

NES – My pick for worst NES game that I own is the quite subpar beat ’em up/action game Phantom Fighter. Some people like this game. That’s fine, I can see why someone would, but I am not one of those people. This game has awful controls and is incredibly repetitive and basic! The game is just so boring, I don’t have any fun at all and don’t find playing it rewarding. I know there are even worse NES games out there than this, infamous titles I mostly do not own, but this one should be in the running for being on the list of bad NES games at least. I have to mention another game too, and it’s one everyone agrees is bad. Transformers: Mystery of Comvoy for Famicom is every bit as bad or worse than Phantom Fighter, and it’s a lot more infamous too. This game deserves every bit of its terrible reputation. Controls, gameplay, level design, enemies, the off-the-charts difficulty… everything here is awful. This is kind of the amusing kind of bad, though, the kind of bad game you walk away from thinking ‘yeah, playing bad games is fun’. And in a weird way it can be.

New 3DS, N3DS – The New 3DS doesn’t have any retail exclusives, but there are digital exclusives. A lot of those are pretty mediocre indie titles. On my list though, I’ve got the lowest scores by two* games which I gave failing ratings to: Stack ’em High and 3D Retro Dungeon Puzzle Challenge. The latter is a little mini first person dungeon game, which may sound good but it isn’t. The game has almost no content, and all levels except for the last are exceptionally easy. The last of the dozen or so stages does present a challenge, but when it’s the only one that does at all and teh actual gameplay is extremely basic FPS-ish stuff there’s no reason to actually keep trying to beat it.

As for Stack ’em High, it’s a competently made but very annoying dexterity puzzle style game. Various objects drop from the sky and you need to try to stack them up without too many falling off of the little platforms they are falling onto. It’s a solid idea that some games do well, but I just thought that this one is way too frustrating for its own good. You will lose, over and over, and it won’t feel fair; no matter how good your stacking is, they’ll fall off every time. Avoid this poorly executed failure.

Nintendo 3DS, 3DS – The worst game I’ve got for the 3DS is actually a physical cart release, and not one of the hundreds of digital 3DS games I reviewed in my 3DS digital download game opinion summaries series: Dream Trigger 3D. This game is an absolutely awful rail shooter-ish game and the neat 3d effect in no way saves it. This is a really really bad game, avoid it. As for downloadable games, the worst two I played are Space Defender – Battle Infinity and Bricks Pinball VI, which are both F-tier games mostly for bad controls. Both have solid classic arcade style game concepts, but with controls as poor as they have you won’t want to play them.

Nintendo 64, N64 – Sadly, Elmo’s Number Journey and Elmo’s Letter Adventure are probably the worst games on the N64. It’s not that I’mn too old for kids’ educational games; I can enjoy those if they’re good. The problem here is that these titles are exceptionally short, with maybe a half hour of content each, and are barely educational. Literally all you do in each game is walk around and touch dozens of a specified letter or number. The game says ‘touch 20 R’s!’ so in that level you touch all the R’s, avoiding other letters. And that’s the whole game. I know this is for young players, but seriously, this is far too basic a concept to work. There’s no math here, no reading beyond letter recognition, nothing but literally just “hit button by specified object for a few minutes then win”. It’s really bad.

If you don’t want to count those two as games, next worst on my list is War Gods. I guess some people don’t totally hate thgis game, but I do. War Gods was Midway’s first attempt at a 3d fighting game and I’d say that it’s probably the worst Midway game I have ever played. It’s kind of humorously incompetent, but absolutely nothing about it, not the poor graphics, lame characters, or anything, makes me ever want to play it, and nor should you. Sure, the game functions so it’s not as bad as say Shadow: War of Succession for 3DO, but the fun factor is about as low as it gets.

Nintendo DS, DS – L.O.L. and Legend of Kay are at the bottom of my list for the DS. The former is barely really a game, it is a messaging chat program thing, except not online of course. This “game” is local multiplayer only, it has no single player. With this cart you can text chat with other people nearby on your DS, if they also have this thing. Except… the DS has a built-in app for doing that! This is just that except with a few more features and a few awful multiplayer-only minigames, but given that text chat between DSes sounds like about the most useless thing ever to anyone not living in 2004, this cart isn’t worth the plastic it is made with. Avoid at all costs.

As for Legend of Kay, for those who remember the pretty decent console game, this Nintendo DS title is entirely different. The developers of the handheld Legend of Kay game made the strange decision to make this handheld adaptation of a third person action-adventure game into an overhead stealth game where you cannot attack enemies, at all, ever. Like, the perspective change makes sense. The genre change, though… why? I don’t get it. This is NOT a good stealth game, either, it’s probably the least fun one I have ever played! I have no idea why this game was made the way it is, but it’s unfortunate that it was. If it was actually a decent stealth game maybe it could have worked, but while it’s been some time since I played Legend of Kay I sure remember that not being the case.

Nintendo DSi, DSi – I do not have any of the couple of retail Nintendo DS games, but for its digital library, of the relatively few I have played Wizard Defenders disappointed me the most. This game is certainly not the worst DSi game, I’m sure there are some truly terrible little games released digitally for the platform. It’s just the worst of the relative handful I have actually played. This game is a blockdropping-style puzzle game with wizards of various colors as the ‘blocks’. It has some good ideas and almost could have been good, but ultimately it just isn’t, at all. If you like being frustrated and annoyed at unfair, random puzzle games which will make you lose without seeming to make any mistakes, go ahead and try Wizard Defenders. I do not find that my idea of fun so this failure is the worst DSi game I’ve played. That the concept seems interesting but the game isn’t that great surely is part of why the score ends up being that low.

Nintendo Switch, NS – The worst Nintendo Switch game that I have actually played is probably a digital-only release, Hover Racer. I like futuristic racing games a lot, but this exceptionally low-budget affair is so simple and boring that it barely even feels like a real game. The game has a decent if very simple look, but the gameplay is about as simple as you will find as you drive along the games’ narrow, simplistic floating roads, trying to finish in first. Slowly drive, that is, because there isn’t much sense of speed here to be found. It’s obvious that this was a game probably made by one or two people, and that’s fine, but it’s just too bland and basic to really be worth much playtime, unfortunately.

For physical releases, the easy pick is the one Pokemon game I have, Brilliant Diamond. I gave this game a try for some reason but I’m not sure why I did, it did not change my opinion of the Pokemon games one bit. I do keep thinking of trying the new ones since they change the classic formula, but the older ones like this thing? As with all Pokemon games before, what, Black or something the story is so simplistic that it barely even deserves to be called a story, and the gameplay is the same ‘do you know the rock-paper-scissors-ish unit counters’ turnbased RPG game that Pokemon has always been and I have never had even the slightest interest in trying to learn. If I hate any Switch game this one is it, it’s just so unbelievably boring! I know this is probably the most popular franchise of the last 30 years but sorry, that won’t make me like them any more than I ever have. With that said though, the Pokemon Ranger games on the DS were pretty good, I liked that spinoff, and there are some good Pokemon puzzle games. I don’t hate everything Pokemon just because it has the franchise on it. I just don’t like the gameplay much, don’t care about “catching them all” in any way, don’t find “collect all the creatures” an interesting gameplay hook, and find the barely-extant plot a zero out of anything as far as story goes.

Nokia N-Gage, NNG – It’s a tough one with this platform, on this thing just about everything is terrible with its awful phone screen and ludicrous button layout! But of the whole five N-Gate carts that I have, the worst is Sonic N. It’s a port of the well below average (I would say) GBA game Sonic Advance, except it’s significantly worse on the N-Gage since with its vertically-oriented screen you can barely see anything in front of you. If you enjoy fast-paced platforming where you can’t see anything in front of you, try this game. Otherwise stay far away.

Odyssey 2, O2 – I like the Odyssey 2, it’s a weird but good old console. Of its library, though, I have Thunderball! scored the lowest. It’s a pinball game, which is fine, except the physics are extremely poor and the screen layout very simple. Most early pinball games are like this, but this is one of the weaker ones of them. The physics and layout are just too basic to hold my interest at all. Thunderball!’s sadly pretty bad.

PC (1981-1990) – I don’t actually own all that many retail PC games from the ’80s; we got our first PC in ’92. I played a lot of shareware and freeware games from the ’80s, but didn’t buy most of those so those aren’t on this list.  There are a lot of ’80s PC games I don’t find interesting; I think computer games got a lot better in the ’90s.  The problem is, I have never played most of those games enough to be able to rate them.  So what’s the worst ’80s computer game?  I don’t know.  That freeware racing game motorman.com sure wasn’t any good; it’s one of those ‘drive along and jump over buses on your motorcycle’ games,  but… you don’t need ot jump over the buses.  You can just land on them and will pass right through.  All you need to do is just learn how to land and the game is over in minutes.  As for retail games, though, looking at my list, the lowest score for an ’80s game is a game that is actually pretty good if you like the genre, the highly regarded RPG classic Dragon Wars. I scored it relatively low because I got it in a collection in the late ’90s, and didn’t like that you need to draw a map on paper instead of the game including a map in the game (this was sadly common in ’80s first person RPGs) and that you need to go read paragraphs in the manual sometimes in order to save space in the game or something.

PC (1991-2000) – My pick for this, the best decade of PC gaming by far, is Beast Wars: Transformers. This PC/PS1 third person action game is one I first played a demo of back when it first released, and I thought that demo was was probably the worst retail game I’d ever played. That first impression stuck, which is why it’s scored the lowest here. I’m sure some people have fond memories of this title, but I think it’s one of the worst games I’ve ever played. The graphics are extremely bland, gameplay is exceptionally basic ‘walk around and shoot everything with your lame laser weapon and stuff’, voice samples really annoying — I can still remember some of them, and not in a good way! Yeah, this game’s just awful, awful junk. The game was obviously designed for the PS1 first and this PC version is an afterthought, the bad graphics show that pretty clearly, but it’s the core gameplay that is the main reason it’s on my list here. The runners-up, which are only barely worse, include VR Sports Powerboat Racing (I know, some people like this game. I stand by my opinion that is is atrocious.) and Test Drive Off-Road, the worst retail PC game I actually owned in the ’90s. TDOR is another PS1-first game that’s an unfun disaster of zero-fun design.

PC (2001-2009) – For this decade of the PC’s decline and fall, what choice is better than a game based on the Star Wars universe’s decline and fall to the Sith, Star Wars: The Clone Wars — Republic Heroes? This game tries to be kind of like the TT Games Lego games, except without the Lego license. The results sadly is a significantly worse game than those decent-but-unspectacular beat ’em up-styled games. And yes, I’m sorry, but I’m not a big fan of the TT Lego games. They’re okay I guess but I have never found them very interesting. Anyway, this one’s worse. Republic Heroes is a boring, by-the-numbers beat ’em up-ish action game. You play as several of the characters from the show, including Anakin and Ahsoka, and walk along defeating enemies and sometimes jumping between platforms. That sounds fine, but I thought the game was about the most boring one of these I’ve played in decades, which is the main reason I am mentioning it here. Additionally, this game does NOT have drop-in or drop-out multiplayer, and you can’t choose your character either. Instead, at the start player 1 is Anakin and player 2 is Ahsoka. Want to have things the other way around, or play as one player as someone else? Sorry, you can’t. It’s pretty lame. This game is awful and one of the worst retail PC games I’ve played.

PC (2010-2020) – For physical games, the lowest score I see on my list is a game I gave a solid above average score to, TES V: Skyrim. I just don’t have many physical PC games from after the ’00s, they died out sadly quickly in favor of digital. Bethesda games aren’t my thing but they’re fine, Skyrim included. For digital games, though, I’ve got plenty of actual bad game options. The worst on my list is one that a lot of people love but I absolutely hated, as I said in my summary about the game on the site: Terraria. Why do people love this, again? It’s the worst of Minecraft and side-scrolling platformers smushed into one. I have absolutely no interest in Minecraft since I hate crafting and don’t like its visual look or aimless, objective-free design, and this game is very much that but maybe even worse, with boring generic sprite graphics and absolutely nothing to make me interested in playing it at all ever. I find this honestly one of the worst I’ve ever played. It well deserves its place on this list.

PC (2021-present) – Honestly, I don’t have enough PC games released in 2021 or later to be able to say anything here. Looking at my list… uh, sorry, I haven’t played enough recent PC games to say much. And when I do play PC games it’s mostly good ones.  The few 2021-or-newer PC games on my list have high scores.

Philips CD-i, CDI – The worst CD-i game I’ve played is simple: Dark Castle. Yes, it’s every bit as unplayably awful as you probably have heard. This games’ controls make some shreds of sense on a computer with keyboard and mouse, which it was originally designed for, but on a console where you either use a d-pad, mouse (but NOT keyboard), or awful remote wand thing, it doesn’t work at all. You need to somehow move and aim your arm at the same time, and you really can’t without multiple sticks or keyboard and mouse, and this console doesn’t have that. The game was not adjusted much to account for this and the result is that an already not very good computer game became one of the most infamously terrible console games of its era for both Genesis and CD-i. Just try to control this game… it won’t go well. The graphics are somewhat bland and gameplay not all that great as you slowly move around the screen and try and try to not die quite as quickly this time, but it’s those controls that really make this game terrible.

PlayStation 2, PS2 – If we’re going purely by personal bias and not by actual game quality, my pick here is Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. This game is an F-tier game, but it’s certainly not the worst game ever objectively; it’s just yet another bland, easy, and mediocre God of War knockoff. I mostly hate this game for being a Gauntlet game, a game in one of my favorite classic franchises, that plays so little like Gauntlet and instead takes its main inspiration from a game I strongly dislike, God of War. Ugh. It’s the wrost for being a boringly easy and bland game that plays nothing like how it should: Gauntlet.

But if you ignore that because it’s not actually the worst, then my pick is Space Channel 5: Special Edition. I know, this is another popular game, but I’m sorry, I found it completely impossible. In this music game you somehow need to know which button to push at which time even though the game doesn’t tell you what to actually do. It makes absolutely no sense and while people have attempted to explain this game to me before, I’m sorry but it’s one of the worst I’ve ever played. Shouldn’t the bare minimum for a music game be, like, TELLING YOU WHAT TO PRESS AND WHEN? This game doesn’t do that, then punishes you for failing to have correctly guessed what buttons it didn’t tell you when to press. It’s just absurd design. No.

If you want something else, that most people would agree is bad, the next worst PS2 game I have is Legion: The Legend of Excalibur. I really don’t remember much about this game other than it’s yet another generic, forgettable third person action/beat ’em up game, but worse than almost all of them. Todd McFarlane’s Evil Prophecy is a similarly awful beat ’em up for PS2 as well.

PlayStation 3, PS3 – For PS3, the worst game I’ve played is Twisted Metal (2012). The gameplay is mediocre and forgettably average-at-best car combat — I have never enjoyed playing Twisted Metal games at all and this one did not change my mind about that at all, I’ve always thought they are poor to bad — but the main reason it’s on this list is for the game’s theming. This game is exceptionally obnoxiously hateful. The main character, the iconic clown guy face of the franchise, is an evil clown who is a serial killer. Does he suffer for his crimes? No, of course not. The other characters are no better. Twisted Metal is all about being edgy and blowing through the borders of good taste, and while I’m okay with dark themes where they are appropriate, how is a mediocre car combat game an acceptable place to have such excessively over-the-top hateful themes? It’s not okay. I don’t want to actually act out, as the protagonist, that kind of story. I will never play this game again.

PlayStation 4, PS4 – Of the relatively few PS4 games I’ve played, the worst probably is the below average digital-only title The Five Covens. It’s a not very good 3d platformer with some fun wizard theming but bad controls and subpar gameplay and stages. Skip it. For disc games I haven’t played many games for the PS4 and haven’t played any bad ones. I’ve got Bloodborne scored lowest of them, but that’s only because I don’t enjoy Dark Souls games much. It’s clearly well made. If I had to play a Playstation Dark Souls game though I’d rather play Demon’s Souls… I do like medieval settings better than pseudo-Victorian ones.

PlayStation Portable, PSP – For the PSP, the lowest-rated games I’ve played are Rush and Generation of Chaos. The former is another one of those “I know it’s not ACTUALLY terrible, I just hate it for being not at all what I wanted from one of my favorite franchises” titles. Rush is a port of LA Rush for PS2/Xbox, a generic and forgettable tuner racing game from the tune racing boom that uses the name of the exceptional San Francisco Rush racing game series, my overall favorite racing game series ever. And then they made THIS, a mediocre tuner game with barely any cool big jumps and average tuner-car driving. It’s boring and below average for sure, but terrible? Probably not, unless you hate it for misusing its license as I do.

As for the other game, Generation of Chaos is the first game of a franchise of confusing and hard to get grips with strategy games from Neverland. That studio made some good games and some bad ones, but after trying to figure out this game I eventually decided that it wasn’t me, it was the game. It plays a bit like the Saturn classic Dragonforce, just worse, as you control units that act as groups of soldiers in little animated battles. This game feels low budget and has a lot of issues, though the confusing design is first among them. The game is very poorly explained and neither the game itself or its manual are of much use. Even if you figure it out, though, I somehow doubt that it’d be worth it. There are probably worse PSP games out there than this one but it’s certainly not a GOOD one.

I have to mention third place; it’s another somewhat popular game I can’t stand, the PS1 “classic” MediEvil. Why PS1 fans tried to convince themselves that this awful game was anything other than terrible I’ve never understood but I do not share that opinion. Gameplay, graphics, controls, design, it’s all bad on either PS1 or PSP.

PlayStation Vita, PSV – Of the PSV games I’ve played, two have failing grades: ModNation Racers: Road Trip and Tearaway. The former is a generic and mediocre racing game held back by issues such as excessively long load times and extremely generic Mario Kart-but-worse gameplay. The latter is the bigger disappointment, as the platformer Tearaway had some hype but I didn’t find it fun at all. This game got good reviews… why? I’m sorry, but it’s awful. It has your usual terrible Media Molecule controls and awful physics that ruin all of their games, but this one is worse than most of their games as it doesn’t even have the “but you can make your own levels!” hook of their other games… skip. Do not buy. I wish Media Molecule understood how to make a platformer that feels good to play control-wise, but they do not. At all.

PlayStation, PSX, PS1 – I’ve got a lot of options for this console, there are quite a few utterly abysmal games for this bad game-laden console. The worst on my list, though, is Largo Winch. It’s one of the least fun stealth games ever made. It’s so bad that it just barely edges out a bunch of other atrocious games, including Die Hard Trilogy (this game is one of the top games on my ‘why do people say this utterly atrocious disaster of a game is decent?’ list), the awful 3d platformer Psybadek with its horrible floaty controls, Robotron X and its far too close in camera to be at all playable, and RushDown, the utterly dull and boring extreme sports racing game that manages to be even worse than one of my most disliked series of that era, the 1/2/3Xtreme trilogy. (Where’s MediEvil? I don’t have the first one for PS1, but even if I did it’s nowhere near as abysmal as these games are. That game gets a higher F score than these by several points.)

Saturn, SS – For the Saturn, the pick is easy: TNN Motorsports Hardcore 4×4. This multiplatform racing game is a mediocre effort on both PS1 and Saturn, but the Saturn version is dramatically worse thanks to one of the least playable framerates I’ve seen in a game this side of a polygonal 3d game on the Super Nintendo. Heh… sorry Race Drivin’ for SNES. This is about as slow as that or worse, and is much less playable. This is another one of those games where I’m confused about how it actually released in this state. I know that with time you can get used to low framerates, but this is SO SO low that I have trouble imagining that anyone actually could enjoy playing this game. Even if you could its ‘drive 4-wheeler trucks down narrow canyons in boring races’ design isn’t any good, but the framerate takes it from merely poor to all-time terrible.

The top honorable mention for me on Saturn is another all-time terrible game, the reviled fighting game Criticom. Criticom’s no match for Shadow: War of Succession for bad fighting games, nothing is, but short of that this game is one of the worst ever. Criticom is a legendarily terrible early 3d fighter with some of the worst design you’ll ever see. The developer would go on to make Dark Rift for N64, another one of my ‘why do people say this terrible game is okay?’ list titles. It’s slightly better than Criticom but not by much.

Sega Genesis, Gen – Mallet Legends Whac-A-Critter is an unlicensed Whack-A-Mole game for hte Genesis. The company actually released a little whack-a-mole controller for the game, which surely makes it a bit less horrendously unplayably terrible, but with controller this game is absolutely dire and I doubt that the special controller helps all that much. You press the d-pad in a direction with the button to hit the nine available spots. That’s fine, but the game is absurdly, brokenly hard far beyond any sanity. This game is unlicensed for very good reasons, did it get any play testing? Even when it’s not hard the concept is so basic that it’s not a very good home console game, but the broken difficulty finishes off any chance of it being decent.

Sega CD – If I had the Sega CD version Supreme Warrior would “win” here, but I only have the 32XCD version of that game so instead Midnight Raiders takes it. It’s a bad ‘move the sight around the screen and shoot the enemies’ FMV game. Memorize when to shoot where or die. Or quit and don’t play games like this, that would be a better idea. There are a lot of really awful FMV games on the Sega CD, including Midnight Raiders, Tomcat Alley, Night Trap (though this is another one I only have the 32XCD version of and not the Sega CD versions), and Double Switch. Yes, I do consider all four of those to be VERY VERY VERY bad games. I’ll say why for Night Trap in the 32X section, but its sequel Double Switch is basically the same thing but with a new setting. It’s just as awful as the first one.

32X (cartridge games) – Cosmic Carnage. This is a decent game which gets a passing grade for sure. It’s below average but is far from terrible, and has some pretty interesting ideas. This is a 2d fighting game and its neat concepts include being able to equip different armor types onto your characters and some cool scaling effects on some of your moves as your limbs spin around in 3d as you swing. It’s a decently amusing time, but the mechanics are poor so here it is on this list, undeservedly. The actual worst 32X games are the two FMV games below.

Sega CD 32X – Supreme Warrior easily wins here. This FMV fighting game may have very nice video quality in this 32XCD release, but unfortunately the gameplay is the same. This is a first person FMV fighting game, and you play by memorizing which move to use against each enemy in each specific video clip they play against you. If you don’t know the right move, you get hit. It’s a nearly impossibly hard game unless you spend a LOT of time memorizing video clip inputs, and I can’t possibly imagine that time being worthwhile in any way. This is seriously one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Night Trap may be a highly memorable “classic”, and again this version has nice video qualiyt, but its core design is about going to empty rooms, memorizing exactly when to be in those rooms, and hitting the correct button at exactly the right time each time in order to defeat the enemies. Meanwhile, on other monitors videos play telling the story, but don’t try to watch them much! You’ll miss the enemies if you do. It makes no sense to make a game like this, and why some people (hopefully ironically?) claim to like it makes even less sense. It’s a really, really, REALLY bad game, one of the worst.

Sega Master System, SMS – This might be a popular pick, but … F-16 Fighting Falcon is definitely not very good. The graphics are basically the visuals of a SG-1000 game, and the gameplay is incredibly dated, and was pretty much from day one given the limited visuals. The actual loser for the SMS though is probably the Sports Pad controller, which is the worst, least responsive trackball that I have ever used.

Super Nintendo, SNES – This may be another controversial pick, but for me the adventure game Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures takes the crown here for worst SNES game I’ve played. In this game you control a cursor as you watch Pac-Man go around the screen and do stuff. You cannot control him, only interact with things on screen to make things happen that hopefully he will react to in the way you need to solve the current puzzle. It’s a concept, but it’s a bad concept because the little guy will rarely do what you want. If you could just control the character this would be a totally okay puzzle adventure game, but having to basically play this second or third person as you try to make him do the things you want without being able to control his actions at all is just so incredibly frustrating and obnoxious that I can’t stand this game at all. It’s awful.

Second place on the SNES is a very forgettably mediocre racing game, Kawasaki Caribbean Challenge. There are two Kawasaki racing games on SNES, and this is the bad one. It’s a bad top-down racer with extremely bland graphics and poor gameplay. I love top-down racing games when they’re good, but this is the opposite of that with boring tracks, graphics so poor you can barely tell this is the Super Nintendo, and gameplay very far from the better games in this subgenre. You’ll play one or two races then turn this game off forever.

TI-83+ Calculator – While the TI-83+ is a great graphing calculator, it’s a terrible games platform. I got one of these in high school for math and liked it for that, but for games? I know a lot of people like TI calculator games, but I never did. I actually got a PC-to-TI cable a few years ago to try more games than the handful I had on my TI-83+ originally — I only had, like, Snake, Drug Wars, and Tetris, I think — but… well, I couldn’t get most of them to work and the few I did were as terrible as expected. Who knew that a screen with an extremely slow refresh rate not designed for moving graphics, on a platform with no sound support, would have utterly unplayably awful action games? Huh, strange… :p

So yeah, I’m sure there are worse, but Flappy Bird for TI-83+ is an unplayable wreck of a game thanks to that refresh rate. How is this actually supposed to be playable? It’s not. I know “games running ON A CALCULATOR and I can play it in school during math class!” was part of the appeal, but… I’d rather have just paid attention in class and went to play some Game Boy later, you know? On that note it’s not like Tetris for TI83+ is very good either, it isn’t. The GB version is like a thousand times more playable.

TI-99/4A – This classic computer is one I like, for some reason. The lowest score I have for a game is Blackjack & Poker, a completely acceptable single player only card game collection. It scores low because I have zero interest in poker and this is a very bland old blackjack game which does nothing that a thousand newer blackjack games don’t do better, so there is no reason to ever play it. For other genres, probably the weakest is The Attack. It’s not an utterly awful game, but it is below average and boring. Of the TI99/4A overhead ship shooting games, and the system has a good number of them, this one is easily the worst — it’s got awful, ear-piercing audio and very slow and boring gameplay with minimal challenge. You just wait for the enemies to spawn from blocks, wait some more, wait a little longer, and then easily shoot them once they finally appear. Zzzz.

TurboGrafx-16, TG16 – Battle Royale wins it here. This game is a pretty bad wrestling game with weird controls and only one mode. You pick a wrestler, go into the match, and try to throw the other people out of the ring. The throw input’s awkwardly weird, read that manual if you want to get anywhere. This game has 4 player multiplayer, but after a match or two most people will never want to play this extremely slight, forgettable game again. There’s zero depth and even less gameplay of any note.

Next worst is another early TG16 game, Takin’ It To the Hoop. This basketball game is confusing, and honestly I never figured out how to play it well. This game tries to be somewhat realistic so it’s 5-on-5, but they really hadn’t figured out yet how to make basketball games fun, and this one sure isn’t. It also isn’t simple or intuitive, and learning how to defend, shoot, etc. is much harder than it should be. I don’t think this game is worth learning how to play. NBA Jam is the great classic basketball game, not this. This is also a lot worse than other simmish basketball games like Double Dribble (NES), as well, with more confusing and slower gameplay.

Turbo CD, TCD – For Turbo CD, the lowest score I have is for Bikkuriman Daijikai. This is barely a game, though — it’s a trivia game based on the Bikkuriman anime/manga franchise, in Japanese. I’m sure people who like that anime and can read Japanese might like this trivia game but I am neither of those things. Otherwise, Sailor Moon Collection is also almost equally awful. It’s a minigame collection with a handful of bad, extremely basic little minigames. There are a bunch of good Sailor Moon games out there, including beat ’em ups and an RPG for the SNES, but this one is one of the worst, unfortunately; this is basically one of those extremely basic minigame collections aimed at a young audience, and it won’t interest anyone else.

Virtual Boy, VB – While there are a few bad VB games, I do not own them. The “worst”, I guess, is Virtual Fishing, purely because I have absolutely no interest in fishing games. It seems like a very solid classic fishing game, but the subject matter’s a massive negative for me so here it is.

Wii – I have to mention Metroid Other M here for what its story does to Samus’s character. It’s a well deserved worst for that alone. Next worst is Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing, a PS2-port racing game with the worst motion controls I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. I like good motion controls, and a lot of Wii games have good motion controls and benefit from them. This games’ are the exact opposite of that. It’s one of the most unplayable games I’ve ever played, and no, there isn’t a stick-based option; the controls are motion-only and are basically broken. Even beyond that this game is exceptionally low budget with really bad graphics and very basic environments, but it’s the controls that are the worst and most memorable thing about this game. Play it if you want to dislike motion controls even though when done well they’re great.

A few other games near the bottom of my list for Wii are Soulcalibur Legends (a sadly boring and bad beat ’em up in the Soul Calibur franchise with very few playable characters) and another music game some people love but I absolutely hate, Rhythm Heaven Fever. That’s another game I can’t play at all, I don’t think I have ever beaten a stage of that awful game. If you like it that’s nice for you. I do not and think of it as one of the worst I’ve played.

Wii U – This is another controversial one, but for me it’s no contest: the worst Wii U game I’ve played is easily Tekken Tag Tournament 2. I have always hated Tekken games, I think most of them are absolutely terrible to play with controls I strongly dislike, and this one is no exception. The PS1 games are probably the least bad Tekken games, but everything after that is just awful with few redeeming qualities. I’m sure many people like this series’ ‘each button is a limb’ control system, but I hate it. I got this game despite knowing I might dislike it because it was neat to see a Tekken game actually release on a Nintendo console, but unfortunately it did not change my mind one bit about this franchise. Quite the opposite, I think I might have hated this game even more than the other Tekken games… though I don’t know, I found all of them from 4 on quite awful. This is a game on my worst fighting games I’ve played list. (Tekkens 4, 5, and 6 are also F-grade games for me, but slightly less bad than this one. I haven’t played 7 or 8.)

Xbox – The worst Xbox game? It’s probably Kabuki Warriors, another game on the ‘awful fighting games’ list. Kabuki Warriors tries to be a cool MK-ish fighter, but it doesn’t work, at all. It’s a painfully bad game to play. Second worst is the racing game Pulse Racer. This game has a potentially interesting mechanic where there is a pulse meter, and if it goes too high your character will black out. Unfortunately, while a neat concept it doesn’t work well at all in practice. The tracks and gameplay aren’t very interesting either, dragging this game down into this very low F tier, but the pulse meter is the main thing here and it it’s like… “have too much fun and you’ll lose!”. Why would I want that?

Xbox 360, X360 – It’s easy, the worst X360 game I have is again Tekken Tag Tournament 2, followed by Terraria. I’ve mentioned those already for other platforms, though. The worst exclusive is probably Bomberman: Act Zero. The core gameplay is fine, but the aesthetic is just so comically wrong for Bomberman that it almost ruins the game. That isn’t the worst thing here, though, the game design is: you basically get only one life. Die and you start the game over. It’s ludicrously unfun nonsense. Play any other Bomberman game instead of this.

Xbox One, XONE – While I have played a fair number of games for this system, I haven’t played any really bad X1 games. There’s nothing I’ve played for X1 I’d give a failing grade to. The lowest scores I have are some slightly below average scores, for Sea of Thieves (I just don’t find it fun, it’s too aimless) and Killer Instinct [2014] (I’m awful at long combos and just cannot memorize them, which is why I’ve never liked KI games. This one sadly is no exception. It’s not the game, it’s me… but I definitely don’t like it.)

Xbox Series X, XSX – The worst game I’ve played for this system has to be Gears 5. Gears 5 isn’t terrible, but it is a bad game for sure in a bad franchise. I remember not liking the first Gears of War game at all, but hadn’t played any after that until this one. I was somewhat shocked at how similar Gears 5 is to the first one; it feels basically like the first one with only minimal changes other than better graphics and a few more moves and such. Hide behind waist-high walls, shoot, repeat. Fall asleep from boredom because of how dull this game is. So yeah, I still don’t find it fun at all, this is just as bad as the first Gears with minimal changes. I had to quit after an hour or two because of how tediously dull and unfun this game is. It’s clearly well made, but how much does that matter when a game is this disappointing? This game isn’t an F-tier game, but it is well below average. Given how successful this franchise is, obviously my tastes in games do not align well with what’s popular, heh…

Posted in 32X, 3DO, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari Jaguar, Classic Games, Colecovision, Dreamcast, Game & Watch, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, Game Gear, Gamecube, Genesis, Intellivision, Lists, Modern Games, NES, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii, Nokia N-Gage, Odyssey 2, PC, PC, Philips CD-i, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Playstation Portable, PS Vita, Saturn, Sega CD, Sega Master System, SNES, TI 99/4A, Turbo CD, TurboGrafx-16, Virtual Boy, Wii U, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | Tagged , | Leave a comment

2023 Game of the Year

Posted on December 31, 2023 by Brian

What I Have Been Playing This Year

I’ve been sick this week, and while I’m getting better I’m not quite fully recovered yet so this will be shorter than it otherwise probably would be. This year, I bought as many games as ever, but did I play them? No, I often didn’t. I’ve spent far too much time this year just watching Youtube and such and not playing anything.

And when I do play games, it’s mostly the same things. For example, my most played game this year is, surprise surprise, Super Mario Maker 2. According to my Switch I’ve played something closing in on 300 hours of that game this year. That number may be a bit high but it should be close. Second place on my list, for playtime, according to the ‘what did you play this year?’ pages that Sony, MS, Nintendo, and Steam put up, is Diablo IV. It says that I played 200 hours of that game on Xbox, which definitely seems too high; I know I’ve left my Xbox on more than a few times while actually watching Youtube, that’s going to add to the time. However, I certainly did play a lot of Diablo IV. I wrote that two-part review for a reason, I finished the game and kept playing it some after that.

After those two, though, there’s a big dropoff from second to third; my next couple of most played games are in in 50-something-hour range, namely F-Zero 99 for Switch next and then Dead or Alive 6 for Xbox. The first of those games I love, the second … not so much, I just play it sometimes anyway.

The other games that would be in this category if they were on those listing sites are Nintendo 3DS games — I played many hours of 3DS puzzle games. Specifically, digital ones. Most nights I play a few minutes of 3DS puzzle games before bed. I’ve finished a lot of the 3DS Picross games now, I only have a few left. Other digital 3DS puzzle games I played a lot of include Wordherd, Block-a-Pix Color, Link-a-Pix Color, Sudoku Party, and 505 Tangram for DSiWare on 3DS. I’ve also played a bit of Angry Birds Trilogy on 3DS cart. I’ve finished all the puzzles in Link-A-Pix Color and Wordherd, and am close to finishing Block-a-Pix Color. I’ve come to love puzzle games in a way that I didn’t when I was younger, and the 3DS is the best portable format ever for them thanks to the stylus. It’ll be pretty sad once I run out… the 3DS is still amazing and has yet again been one of my most-used devices this year.

What PS4 games did I play this year? Well, my Sony year in reviewsite said that I played 12 hours total of PS4 games this year, so the answer is unsurprising, not many. The most played of the bunch is the Star Ocean: 2nd Story Remaster.

As for retro games, I haven’t been playing them as much as I should, but the one system that I have been returning to is one that’s on a lot of people my age or older’s thoughts these days, the NES. I’ve returned to it after many years of mostly ignoring the system for probably the same reasons as others. I mean, even though I didn’t own a NES as a kid, I played it a lot, it basically was console gaming in my childhood. How well does it hold up? I know that there are some things about the NES that I don’t like very much, most notably overly inscrutably confusing and “just wander around and figure it out” game design. However, there are also a lot of games that are still good. I turn my NES on and play something or other on it on a regular basis. I got a Famicom Disk System for my NES last year and a while ago finally got an accessory to allow for expansion audio to work without needing the internal mod, so I try out FDS games sometimes as well. All I don’t have is a way to play Famicom 3D System games, I’ll probably need to give up on the dream of an adapter to make those glasses work on a regular NES, since to use them on a NES you would need to make a homebrew cable that connects to certain pins on the bottom port, and just buy a Famicom at some point. Oh well.

With that said, here are my top lists for the year.

The Best New 2023 Releases
—
1. F-Zero 99 (Switch)
2. Akka Arrh (played on XSX)
3. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch)
4. Diablo IV (played on XSX)
5. Caverns of Mars Recharged (played on XSX)

My Favorite Older Games that I First Played in 2023

This won’t be the interesting list that it often has been in the past; while I bought a lot of retro games this year, again, I never actually got around to trying most of them. So… uh, I guess this handful of 3DS eshop games will have to do, and maybe a couple of other games.

505 Tangram (DSiWare)
Art Style: DIGIDRIVE (DSiWare)
Gotta Protectors (3D eshop)
Mighty Flip Champs! and Mighty Milky Way (DSiWare)
Bookworm (Nintendo DS version)

The Best Remasters of the Year

There were some fantastic remasters this year.  These are the best among them.

  1. Metroid Prime Remastered (Nintendo Switch)
  2. Towers II: Enhanced Stargazer Edition (Atari Jaguar remaster of an Atari Jaguar game)
  3. Star Ocean: The Second Story R (played on PS4)
  4. Quake II [Remastered] (played on XSX)

Overall Game of the Year

1. Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch) – For me, is this the unsurprising pick of the century? Perhaps. But I really do deeply, deeply love this game, it’s the most perfect game concept ever. The execution needs work, and I hope it gets that work in a third Mario Maker release someday. Even as it is, though, with its issues and its declining userbase, SMM2 is incredible. I’m still loving this game as much as ever, and continue making levels for it. I made a new stage this month that is probably one of my better ones.

[It is not new, but perhaps here I should mention that I finished Super Mario Bros. for the NES on real hardware for the first time this year. I’d beaten the easier GBC version back in ’00, but the NES version had always eluded me because of how hard getting through world 8 is. Well, decided that I can do it, and put in the effort. Eventually I won and it feels very good. The game is certainly one of the best ever.]

2. F-Zero 99 (Nintendo Switch) – The surprise of the year by far, Nintendo’s shocking announcement and immediate release of this new, SNES-style online-only F-Zero game was some of the best news I’ve had from gaming in a long time! I really, really love the classic F-Zero games — the first two are nearly perfect 10/10 classics in my book, and are both among the best racing games ever. Due to its online nature requring a large player base to be at its most fun, which you can never count on, I don’t think that this game quite matches either of the originals in overall greatness. Even so, F-Zero 99 is a truly exceptional game. It’s easily my favorite new release of 2023! I’m amazed and thrilled that this game was released.

3. Akka Arrh (played on Xbox Series X) – Legendary developer Jeff Minter’s latest release is this game.  This is a title that’s a modern re-imagining of a cancelled Atari game from the early ’80s.  Or rather, this is a game loosely based on that title, but if you look at the original prototype and this game you’ll see how different the two are.  The core concept of both is that you are defending a turret from enemies attacking you from all around, and that, like in Tempest, each stage has a new shape.  Also, in both games if certain enemies get past your defenses they attack the tower from below, and you have to zoom in and fight them off there.  However, Minter’s take changes the fairly simple ‘shoot the zone to kill the baddies’ gameplay of the original for something much more like the brilliant ’00s arcade-style game Every Extend.  Somewhat like in that game, you shoot bombs that create spreading explosions within the zone you shot at.  Each enemy destroyed by a bomb creates its own chain explosion, and your chain bonus counter resets if you shoot another bomb.  You also have bullets, with limited ammo that replenishes with enemy kills, and bullets don’t reset your chain.

Because of instant-death enemies that rapidly zoom at you and everything going on on screen with the numerous game mechanics Akka Arrh is probably one of Minter’s harder games and the skill ceiling is high, but it’s a brilliant concept done well.  Expect to be very frustrated but also addicted.   I find that I often find it hard to tell when I’m about to die and when I can take a hit, but otherwise I absolutely love this game!  Akka Arrh has beautiful classic arcade-inspired visuals, that classic Jeff Minter flare, compelling gameplay, and great design.  Nobody does classic arcade gameplay plus synthesesia better than Jeff Minter.  Perhaps this is unsurprising considering that he’s been a game developer since about 1980,  working in the same genre the whole time, but it’s true.  Akka Arrh is incredible, play it immediately if you haven’t.

4. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch) – I wrote a review of this game last month as well, so I don’t think I need to repeat myself. Mario Wonder’s a mostly easy but otherwise great game that any Mario fan should consider a must-play.

5. Diablo IV (played on Xbox Series X) – When I think of my XSX, which by the way I got via mail order on its day of release since I was so fortunate as to get a preorder in from Microsoft.com that one day that they were available, I think of a system with a fantastic controller and amazing graphical capabilities, but few games that really compel me to play them in the way that Nintendo games do. The Switch is junior-grade compared to the Series in controller build quality and graphics, but in gameplay Nintendo, for me, are the unquesitoned masters of console game design. With that said, though, Diablo IV is a fantastic game. I didn’t play it that maybe as much as 200 hour playtime I mentioned earlier for no reason, I played it because of how good this game is. Diablo IV has some major issues with its story, its overlong boss fights, and some of the seasonal content, and more. The core gameplay is fantastic, though. The controls, action, skill systems, and more are compelling and very well designed.

6. Nintendo 3DS puzzle games, and, since I finished it and really liked the concept, perhaps Link-A-Pix Color in particular. There is a game on 3DS with the same concept as this title, but without capacative touch it’d surely be much worse…

Honorable Mention: This year’s outstanding remasters of Metroid Prime and Star Ocean: The Second Story are absolutely top-tier.  Metroid Prime is one of the best games ever made and this remake is extremely impressive.

Posted in Articles, Classic Games, Lists, Modern Games, NES, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Review: Super Mario Bros. Wonder – An Outstanding Platforming Great, With A Few Issues

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Brian

Yes, it’s a review of a pretty new game.  Enjoy!

Title: Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Release Date: October 20, 2023
Developer and Publisher: Nintendo

Introduction

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the latest game in the Mario series from Nintendo.  This game is a 2.5d platformer, somewhat like the New Super Mario Bros. games of past years but better.  It released on October 20, 2023 and I bought it on release day and finished it last week.  I have now beaten every level in the game, though I haven’t 100%ed the game yet; there are some collectible and such I didn’t get.  I’ve played about 20 hours according to my Switch, but my actual play time is probably a bit below that because of some time the system was on but I was doing something else.  I might go back to get more of the stuff in the game.  This game has been getting some pretty high acclaim, and after playing it I can see why, it’s quite good.  It isn’t flawless, though.  In short, SMBW is a great game and is the best non-Mario Maker 2d or 2.5d Mario platformer in 30 years, but it does have its share of flaws.  The main flaws are low difficulty and lacking boss fights.

There is a lot more good than bad about this game, though.  The best thing about Mario Wonder is that it is wildly creative in its level themes and visual design.  The mostly younger team leading the creation of this game were given free reign to come up with new ideas for Mario enemies and stage ideas, and they ran with it and thought up a lot of very clever ones.  I’d love to go in detail about some of the better and more interesting stage concepts and will later in a spoiler section, but I will not detail that here because anyone who hasn’t played the game should not read it because it’s best by far to go into this game not knowing what to expect, it will be a lot more fun that way.  Know that this game has a whole lot of new enemies and new stage ideas that have not been seen in Mario games before, along with other returning ones, and most of the content here is good to great.  Playing the levels, exploring them, experiencing each level’s Wonder flower effect and section, finding the secrets, and experiencing the interesting platforming sections within is the best thing about this game and I very highly recommend it for that.  Wonder is a great platformer with a lot of great ideas.

In terms of challenge, Mario Wonder was designed to be accessible to all.  Nintendo clearly aimed for a lower difficultly level in order to have anyone be able to play and enjoy this game, and they achieved that goal.  Most stages are moderate in difficulty at most, so anyone experienced at platform games should get through the game fairly easily.  Even the hardest levels are easier than those hard levels that occasionally randomly show up in endless Normal in Mario Maker 2.  And while most levels are far better designed than most Mario Maker levels, there are a few I will mention later that I greatly dislike.  Even so, the brilliantly original stages are this games’ great strength.  All gamers who enjoy platforming at all will surely love many of the stages here, from running on flying bulls to dodging enemies that expand in height when you stand up but shrink down when you crouch and so, so much more.  Super Mario Bros. Wonder is, well, wonderful most of the time.

The Main Game Structure

The core structure of the game is familiar, with worlds made up of levels.  There are two kinds of levels, smaller ones and full levels.  Smaller stages have only a single flower coin to collect, which you get by completing some challenge.   Main levels, however, have not only a main exit with one Wonder Flower, a Wonder Flower somewhere in the middle with its own special section using some kind of usually interesting stage concept, and in a few cases a second hidden exit with its own Wonder Flower. The game also notes if you completed a stage by landing on the top of the flagpole — and note you cannot go over the top, anything above the top stops you there and drops you on the top, if you completed it with the three badges that make levels harder, and if you got the three hidden giant coins that every level has, in that New Super Mario Bros. style.  The game does NOT have any kind of timer and does not keep track of your time in the levels.  It would be nice if it did that in order to increase the games’ replay value, but it doesn’t.  It does have two currencies though, with regular coins giving you a life for every 100 as usual and purple coins and coin tenths being used in the shops that scatter the overworld.  When in the overworld the R and L buttons bring up a map and a stage list, respectively, to help you quickly go to any stage or view the world design.

Graphics, Sound, Controls and Characters

When it comes to platforming games, the most important elements are the controls, the smoothness of play, and the level designs.  Super Mario Bros. Wonder does all three elements extremely well.  I will start with the technical element.  The game runs at a smooth and stable 60 frames per second, at the Switch’s maximum resolution of 1080p, or 720p for handheld mode.  This game looks about as good as a Switch game can, and runs extremely well.  On the audio side SMBW is fine, but I don’t think any of its music is particularly memorable.  I beat the game fairly recently and can’t remember any SMBW songs offhand.  It’s all decently good stuff which fits the game well, though.

The controls are pretty much flawless, too.  As in a 2d Mario game this game has digital controls, so you either are moving or stopped, with buttons for run, jump, twirl, and ‘use stored powerup’.  The physics are fantastic, and feel very similar to the NSMB and Mario Maker games.  If you are used to those physics you’ll be able to pick this game up instantly, it tweaks a few things but is very familiar.  The controls in Mario platformers are always great and this game is no exception, Mario is the standard bearer of the platforming genre not only because the early Donkey Kong and Mario games created the platformer as we know it but because the series has kept at the top of the genre in controls and responsiveness.

One of the better things about this game is that it has a lot of playable characters.  Instead of playinga s only Mario, or as Mario or Luigi, in this game you can play as Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, blue or yellow Toads, Toadette, and four easy mode characters who cannot take damage or pick up powerups in red, blue, or yellow Yoshis and Nabbit.  Yes, Daisy is playable here for the first time in a Mario platformer.  That’s really great, I love it.  Somebody who worked on this game clearly loved the Mario Land games, because there are more references to those games in this title than this.  Some stages and enemies (of sorts) are clear Mario Land 1 and 2 references as well.  It’s great stuff.

Here I must mention though, probably the most controversial thing about SMB Wonder is that longtime Mario voice actor Charles Martinet, who had voiced Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, and others for over 30 years, was fired or forced to retire this year, and new voice actors voice all of the characters in this game.  The new actors are fine, and I am not one to almost ever care much at all about who voices videogame characters, but getting rid of Martinet in the way they did seemed somewhat disrespectful, and disappointing beacuse the new voices are a small downgrade from his.  Oh well.

Anyway, the way they include so many characters in the game is because all characters control identically.  Yes, the character-specific jumping styles of past games like Mario 2 (USA) are not character-specific anymore.  This was the right decision for sure because it finally allows them to put playable Peach in mainline Mario games, something they had not done in the NSMB or Mario Maker games in part because they knew people would expect her floating jump and they didn’t want to have that in the game.  I love that they finally decided to figure out a way to get more playable characters into Mario.

The Badge System

Because you see, moves like Peach’s floating jump or Luigi’s higher jump are not gone, they are just made optional.  Instead of having each one tied to a character, this game has a Badge system.  Badges are items you unlock from special stages in the game.  Badges do various things, including giving you those various alternate jumps that make the game easier, making you run fast, making all powerups give you some powerup you like, or making the game harder in several ways.  You can equip one at a time and can choose which badge you have equipped in a menu before entering a stage.  The badge system adds a highly customizable level of difficulty to this game.  Most of the stages are easy to moderate, but children or people inexperienced at platforming or just anyone who wants an easier time can use badges that make things simpler to various degrees.  Or you could use one primarily not because it makes the game easier, but because you like that form of jumping.  Or you could make it harder with the three hard mode badges.  Can you beat the levels… while invisible so you can’t see yourself?  It’s an option.  The badge system is absolutely fantastic and is one of the best new features of this game.

Now, I do need to say, despite my complaining about this game being too easy most of the time, I admit I did use a pretty good badge: the one that gives you a double jump at any point in your jump.  Once I unlocked that I stuck with it almost all of the time.  The enhanced traversal this badge gives you makes some challenges much easier, but once I was used to having it I didn’t want to go back to the default, even if it made the game easier.  So yeah, is complaining that the game is too easy while using a badge that gives you a double jump somewhat hypocritical?  Perhaps, but it’s my position anyway.

I think that this is a defensible position because even though that badge certainly saved me from deaths, not having it wouldn’t make the game THAT much harder.  It just reduced the frustration of having to retry sections more.  Apart from the lost progress dying doesn’t mean much in this game, you can get extra lives so quickly that I never got even remotely close to running out of lives.  Even had I never chosen a jump-enhancing badge, I’d never have gotten a Game Over in SMBW, of that I am sure.  The core challenge of this game is what it is.  The badges modify that in a really interesting and well-thought-through way, though, to make it easier or harder depending on what you want.  And they bring in the variety of character jumping types that SMB2 (USA) and such had, without forcing you to use just that one character to play that way…

… Unless you play as the Yoshis or Nabbit, who are locked into not being able to take damage or die any way other than falling into a pit, and in not being able to pick up powerups.  Why wasn’t this an option or special badge?  I’d like to be able to play as Yoshi without it removing almost all challenge from the game, but you can’t.  This is not one of SMBW’s bigger flaws, but this is an issue others have mentioned and that I entirely agree with.

The Powerups

A major part of each Mario game is its powerups, from the original Super Mario and Fire Flower and beyond.  Super Mario Bros. Wonder has five powerups, two classic and three new.  The Super Mushroom to turn big and the Fire Flower to be able to shoot fire return, of course.  The three new ones are Elephant form, which turns you into an elephant-person about double or more the size of a regular super Mario and which can pick up and toss water or break blocks in front of you with your trunk; Bubble form, which allows you to shoot bubbles forward that you can jump off of and that also trap enemies in them if they touch them, defeating those foes in a hit; and Drill form, that Japanese gaming staple for whatever reason, which allows you to drill into the ground and move along straight paths hidden out of sight on the floor or ceiling, and damage enemies that you jump up into with the drill on your head.

The three new powers are all great and useful throughout the game, I like all of them quite a bit.  I’ve seen some criticism of the Bubble form, but I think it’s quite useful really, those bubbles float on the screen for a while so it is often a better option for defeating enemies than the Fire Flower.  My only possible complaint about the powerups in this game is that enemies never use their own versions of any of these powers.  You won’t be fighting elephant enemies or anything, and there’s nothing like the final boss of Mario Land 2 where Wario fights you with each of that games’ powerups.  That is a minor issue, though.  Nintendo did a good job with coming up with powerup options in this game that are new and interesting, and that add new forms of movement without just involving flight or something like a lot of the powerups of the late ’80s to early ’90s, since the Badge system does so much to modify traversal.

The Story

Skip this section if you want no spoilers.

Once you begin, the simple little intro cutscene plays.  Our heroes from the Mushroom Kingdom are visiting another land, the Flower Kingdom, but just as they arrive Bowser and Bowser Jr., along with Kamek, show up, and using the power of the Wonder Flowers that are all over this kingdom, merged himself with their castle.  Your goal is to free the castle from being merged with Bowser.  He also stole all the special flower coin things and locked them up across the kingdom, conveniently in or at the ends of the stages you’re about to visit.  And he let Bowser Jr. loose to mess with the people of the land and cause chaos, which the kid will do in several of the areas you will visit.

Beyond this, though, Bowser doesn’t really do much in this game.  Bowser Jr. is wandering around, and you save a flower person from captivity at the end of each stage, but Castle Bowser himself is just sitting there doing nothing.  For the most part I rarely felt like Bowser was actually threatening much of anything here.  Bowser is a bad guy in Mario Wonder, but he’s less bad than usual, I thought. I mean, come on, he just wanted to be a music star, and you ruined the party!  And he got tired of Bowser Jr.’s nonsense too, as shown in an amusing way near the end of the game.

I’m not calling for ‘bring back the kidnapped princess plot’, of course; quite the opposite, I’m thrilled that it’s finally gone!  However, I felt kind of bad for Bowser at the end of this game.  He can’t be allowed to kidnap castles, but perhaps a bit more of him doing something more would have been good.  Essentially, Bowser sounds like he wants to be a music star and put on a show, or something like that.  Sure, he does mix in some with vaguely threatening ‘you’ll all be forced to attend’ comments which are not good, and of course he kidnapped their castle, but still I felt like it wasn’t enough to convince me that he was as much of an immediate threat as the game wants you to think. It’s fine though, this is a Mario game so it’s not like story is important.  Quite the opposite, the story is just an excuse to play the stages, and it does a perfectly acceptable job of that.

Overworld Design

As I said previously, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a game I think players should experience without spoiling its level concepts and ideas for themselves.  The stages are the best thing about this game and a lot of them are fantastic.  So, this section will stick to just talking about the structure of the game, for the most part.

I discussed the core structure near the beginning, but to go into more detail, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is broken up into eight worlds. There is an initial numbered stage, a hub world with its own levels, five more numbered stages, a final Bowser section with a few levels and the boss that I guess could be considered the end of the hub world, and a bonus world of hidden levels unlocked by getting all wonder flowers in the regular stages.  Yes, unlike Super Mario 3D World, Bowser doesn’t have a full world to his own this time, only three stages then the final battle.  Oh well.  World have varying numbers of levels, with some being longer than others.  The game has an interesting mixed structure where sometimes you move along paths from stage to stage, while other times you move freely around open areas. It’s a good mix.  There are secrets to find in the overworld, as well, which is pretty nice.

However, some of the worlds in the game definitely feel too short, while others are full-length.  It’s odd and uneven in this regard.  The visuals are beautiful and varied in the overworlds and levels alike, but there should have been a little bit more here, to flesh out the lacking worlds up to the standard of the better ones.  Why are some worlds literally twice the length of others?  The levels in this game are fantastic and maybe they couldn’t come up with any more ideas, but if so then stage locations should have been moved around or something to make each world about the same length.  A few more stages, either main or side, would be ideal though.

On Hidden Things

There is one trend in SMBW stage design that I hate and must mention: hidden blocks.  This game has hidden blocks that have items in them scattered around in usually out of the way places in the sky, each only visible to a certain character.  This is pretty annoying design I dislike.  The idea was probably to reward those playing in multiplayer, but the result is to obnoxiously hide items for no reason.

That’s not the worst thing, though, the worst are the Search Party levels.  These side levels have a smallish several screen area with hidden blocks and paths all over that you must find, because you need to find five 10-coins and they are hidden.  Again some blocks will appear depending on your character choice, but if you’re playing solo having to come back wtih all of the characters is obviously not feasible, so you’ve basically just got to randomly jump everywhere, push against pipes because this game amusingly lets you move them sometimes, try everything you can think of, or give up and look up the locations in a guide online.  And that is what I did, I looked up guides for several of these utterly abysmal disasters of stages.

Yes, the Search Party levels are, in my opinion, the absolute worst levels ever to appear in any Mario game with levels made by Nintendo.  They should not hae been included, what is this, Mario Maker?  I mean, I love Mario Maker a lot, but mandatory hidden blocks are one of the absolute worst things about that game, and having them infect mainline Mario game like this is incredibly disappointing and should never, EVER have happened.  Most of the levels in this game are good to great, with clever layouts, unique obstacles, secrets hidden in various clever ways, interesting Wonder effect sections that start off probably too short but get longer and more satisfyingly involved the farther you get into the game, and so much more, but the Search Party levels are irredeemable trash.

More positively though, much like in Super Mario World and Super Mario Land 2, Mario Wonder has alternate secret exits to find in some levels.  I really like their inclusion, though I think the game should definitely have had more of them, there are unfortunately few to find.  The ones that there are are great, though. You can guess at which levels have secret exits by which worlds seem to have areas that you haven’t gotten to yet, I didn’t need to look up a guide to know which stages to search for secrets.  What great world design!  Perhaps the most interesting possible Mario Land reference in this game is that six levels in SMBW have hidden exits.  That’s the exact same number of secret exits as, yes, Super Mario Land 2.  I doubt this was a coincidence…

The Wonder Effects

As I said, every main level in this game has a Wonder Flower hidden somewhere in the middle-ish of the stage.  Once you find and touch this flower you are sent into a weird and wild stage section of some kind.  Once you complete the section you get one of the stages’ two or three reward items, depending on if it’s one of the stages with a secret exit or not.  These start out short and simple, too short.  Most Wonder sections in the first world are so simple, basic, and short that I was kind of disappointed.  I’m sorry, but the section with the dancing Piranha Plants did little for me, there was virtually no interesting gameplay to be found in that Wonder section and wanting to experience the usually great gameplay is why I’m here playing this game.

That disappointment turned around later on, however, as Wonder sections got longer and more involved.  Some take up entire stages of challenging platforming!  The Wonder effects are not all original, as you will see some repeated more than a few times, but each time they mix things up with new ideas in the Wonder section, so I almost never felt like I was wishing for another totally new Wonder concept instead of an old idea returning but with more to it this time.  The first of the ‘you move around the background as if it’s and overhead game instead of a side view platformer’ section was really short and kind of lame, but the last one was quite tough indeed.  Wonder effect sections were a great idea that this game mostly implements well.

Indeed, of the things to find in each stage beyond the regular goal, Wonder effects are the best by far.  The regular three NSMB series-style hidden giant coins are standard stuff, fun to find if you want, but the Wonder sections are inventive and interesting most of the time.  My only real criticism is that too many use timed music style effects, I don’t like music that way so they lost me with how much of that stuff this game has in it.  Most will disagree with me about this I am sure, but it’s my opinion; this game has too much music level style stuff, I don’t like it much.

Considering how many stages this game has and how many varied effects there are, though, this is a pretty minor complaint.  There are probably dozens of levels in this game with great, interesting Wonder Flower sections that I greatly enjoyed finding and playing through.  I highly recommend finding all of the Wonder flowers, it’s worth it!

Maybe This Games’ Biggest Flaw: The Boss Fights

Now, however, I need to talk about probably the worst thing about this game.  This is something other reviews have mentioned, and they are entirely right!  Yes, I’m talking about how bad, or absent, the bosses are in SMBW.  In this whole maybe 20 hour game with eight worlds and scores of levels, there are a total of five boss fights.  Total, in the whole game.  And four of them are against Bowser Jr.  What about the other three worlds, you say?  Well, two of the six numbered worlds don’t have bosses, and the bonus world doesn’t have a boss either.  It was very disappointing to finish what was mostly a pretty good and interesting world only to find that there wasn’t a boss, it just ended abruptly, gave me a royal seed as a reward for victory, and sent me on to the next world.  After you beat each world, one of these snakes guarding Castle Bowser is destroyed.  You’d think that Bowser would protect the things which protect his new castle form, but nope, he didn’t bother to protect them all with anything.  It’s really strange and makes the game feel incomplete.

And as for those fights, the four fights against Jr. are quite conventional.  The designers tried to mix things up a bit by modifying the stage with things like giant bubbles floating around in the boss room you can move around in, but on the whole these are extremely standard “bop him on the head a few times and dodge his attacks” battles, almost exactly the same as NSMB boss fights of years past.  Except those games had a boss in every world and a lot more boss variety, so bosses are the one thing that Wonder can’t match the New series in, that’s for sure.  The Bowser fight at the end of the game is much more unique, but while somewhat conceptually interesting though unfortunately the music theme returns here with a vengeance, I found it oddly easy; I beat it first try.  So yeah, boss fights are not Mario Wonder’s strong suit.  Ah well.

In addition to the five regular boss fights, there are also boss rooms of sorts at the end of each of the several airship level that Kamek teleports in.  These have a robot Bowser head at the end of a two screen long area, with obstacles in the way.  The problem is, these aren’t really boss figths because all you do is go right for a couple of seconds, maybe avoid the obstacles or maybe damage boost through them, jump on top of robo-Bowser, jump on the red button on top of its head once, and you win, level over.  These rooms are conceptually interesting but by making them only seconds long with virtually zero challenge in any of them, I’m honestly not sure why they even exist.  Why tease these interesting encounters then instead just have something so basic and probably easier to beat than some regular enemies?  SMB3 or World’s bosses aren’t the hardest ever, but they put up more resistance than these rooms.  You need to hit them three times each, for one thing, instead of only once.

Also, the the two worlds without bosses are the worlds with the fewest stages and wonder flowers or seeds in them.  This makes the game feel almost rushed.  Nintendo said that the development team for Wonder had as much time as they needed, so perhaps not, but the game suggests otherwise.  I have a hard time believing that the game was intended all along to have such huge disparities in world length, with one having a mere 17 wonder flowers to get while others have 30 or more, and with several not having bosses either.  Despite Nintendo’s words maybe the game actually was rushed?  I have no idea, but whatever the cause of this it’s really unfortunate and hurts Mario Wonder.

Additionally, it’s particularly weird that you don’t fight Kamek, because the guy appears in the game, summoning airships for you to face and more.  But you never fight him in any way yourself.  It’s really strange, how did the game ship like this?

Multiplayer and Online

SMBW has local and online four player co-op multiplayer.  Unlike Mario Maker 2 or the NSMB games, however, in this title you can’t interact with the other players, they are like ghosts, kind of like human verisons of the AI ghost you could race against in the Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (GBC) multiplayer levels.  This decision removes some of the fun of multiplayer, but also a lot of the frustration, and overall was probably a good idea.  The game doesn’t have any kind of ingame chat of course, but this is a Nintendo game, none of them do.  You can only play with people you have listed as friends outside of the game or randoms.

In addition to the multiplayer, this game also has an optional online component to its single player mode.  If you go to the online towers in the levels, you can enable online features.  Do this and you will sometimes see the ghosts of other players going through levels as you play.  You can leave Standees for other players as well, cardboard cutouts of sorts with an image on them.  These can help other players at tricky areas.  You can resurrect players who are knocked out, too, if you wish.

You start with only one standee to place, but can buy more through a random draw gatcha in the shops, spending 10 purple coins for each attempt to get a new one.  Each character has a bunch of different poses to unlock.  If you get one you already have, too bad, you get nothing.  Yes, you can’t just buy the standee you want.  In the postgame bonus world you do get a new shop with more expensive gatcha draws each for one specific character, but still the result is random.  It works, but is a pretty annoying feature, why does Mario have random draw rewards in it?  You probably should have just been able to buy them if you want for more money, or use a random draw for less.  You get a lot of extra purple coins to throw at this gatcha, though, so you should get a lot of them by the end.

I chose to leave the online features off, because I don’t need the game made easier for me; it’s plenty easy enough as it is, having other players around resurrecting me if I fall or something isn’t the kind of experience I want.  But for those who do want that this is a pretty interesting feature for a Mario game to implement and it seems to be done well.

Conclusion

Overall, Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a fantastic game.  The game has some issues, but the vast majority of the game is fantastic fun.  This isn’t a forever game like Super Mario Maker 2, it’s something to play for a while, finish, and move on from unless you want to go back to collect absolutely everything, but that’s fine; there is absolutely nothing wrong with a standard single player experience meant to be played through and completed.  As someone who for some years now has spent way too much time with online forever games and not with actual completable experiences, including Super Mario Maker 2, Splatoon, Dead or Alive 6, 3DS Picross titles and their huge amounts of puzzles to get through, and such, having something that I can play, finish, and mostly greatly enjoy in a relatively short amount of time is great.

On the main issues I covered, I think that Mario Wonder has enough content for the most part, and the challenge level is enough to keep the game fun most of the time.  I wish that there were a few more stages and secrets in several of the worlds and a few more bosses, but even as it is this is a truly fantastic game that stands near the peak of the platforming genre.  the new enemies are interesting and amusing, the Wonder effects varied and mostly good, the absence of a ‘rescue the princess’ plot welcome, the visuals rock-solid in framerate and as good looking as the Switch can do, the art styles varied and often new for the series, and so much more!  Super Mario Bros. Wonder is an experience not to be missed.  There’s more than enough here to charm and enthrall just about anyone for a while.  I give it an A rating, close to an A+ but not quite.

Comparing this to the other Mario games of the past few decades, as I said at the start I’d put it above all NSMB games by a good margin.  I don’t think it’s quite as amazing as Mario Galaxy or Mario 3D World, but I definitely do like it more than Odyssey.  It’s great.

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Super Mario Maker 2 – My Oct. 2023 Update, along with some commentary on SMM1 and Super Mario Wonder as well

Posted on October 31, 2023 by Brian

Yes, my favorite game of the current century is indeed one I’m still playing, and making levels for.  I’ve got two things to discuss this time, my latest levels and a certain accomplishment I completed.  It’s not the hardest thing you could do in this game but it took me quite a while so I’m pretty happy I did it.

For my levels, I have uploaded three levels since my last post in May.  Two of the three are uncleared, and none of my older uncleared levels have been cleared either, unsurprisingly; a lot of people have left this game, sadly.  I get it, Super Mario Wonder is out — and yes I do have it and it’s quite good, I will write about that game on this site soonish for sure — but still, Mario Maker 2 is incredible.  Wonder is fantastic, but nothing else matches Mario Maker 2 at its best.

Lastly, at the end I also have a little comment on Nintendo’s latest awful announcement about the Wii U and Super Mario Maker 1.  That game is being shut down next year along with all Wii U online services.  It’s sad but true.  I hope that Mario Maker 2 won’t be joining it any time soon.

My Latest Super Mario Maker 2 Levels

First, in July, three months after my previous level, I made another level: Bouncing in the Clouds.  This is another Super Mario Bros. 3-theme level with the sky theme, since I hadn’t made a sky SMB3 level before and I decided I wanted to.  The level code is MGW-448-DWG.  My clear time was 2:20, so it’s a mid-length level.  I think the length is just about right.  This stage has two parts.  It starts out with a fairly standard for me jumping section where you are jumping between small platforms and bounce pads in the clouds, as the name says.  I really like this kind of stage, where you aren’t as pressured as you are in kaizo to do exactly the right move at exactly the right timing or you die immediately but do have reasonably challenging jumps to navigate.  This is what I think platformers are about.  Sure, the concept and execution here are simple, but it’s the fun kind of simple.

The second part of the level was a challenge I set for myself: I wanted to try to build a custom boss challenge room.  Now, in Mario Maker games there are two kinds of boss fights: one where you fight one of the standard bosses, either in a plain room or in some custom chamber, and contraptions that function as a boss using some kind of hopefully clever item usage to create a boss-like experience.  I’d never tried to make one of the latter kind of boss rooms before this level but was interested in trying.  The resulting area isn’t incredibly complex, but I think it works well.  It’s a several screen high area where you first have to get to the top of a large box with flame jets coming out of all of its sides, then get a shell, then go back down and throw that shell into a small hole on one side of the large box structure.  Repeat this three times and you get a key and can proceed to the end.  Is it frustrating sometimes, sure, but it’s a fair challenge.  I’d love to get some feedback on this room but I like the results, it’s challenging but fun.  I think I succeeded at what I wanted to do.

My next stage published a bit over a month after the previous one.  Actually, though, I completed the basic layout of the third level I’m covering here before I started this one. I decided that I wanted to make another hard level with shell jumps in it and such… but I wanted more than that, so after some experimentation I thought of something: how about not just jumping off of a shell, but jumping off of a snowball that a Spike’s throwing at you from the top of a cliff in order to get to the top of that cliff?  You see, in the winter theme the green enemy called Spike throws snowballs at you instead of spike balls.  They are, obviously, much less deadly, and you can jump off of them normally.  They bounce you back if they hit you, though. Spikes in the winter Super Mario World theme don’t run at you, either, they stand still throwing snowballs at you.  This is key for how these levels work.

A lot of levels have snowballs, but I’ve never seen a level with this particular usage of them before, myself.  After completing the design of the level, though, I was intimidated by how hard it would be for a pretty average player like me to clear it, so I didn’t even try to do so for weeks.  I decided, instead, to make a short level that focused exclusively on the tech I’d thought of, jumping off of diagonally falling snowballs in order to make it up cliffs.  Watch out for the Spikes on top of the cliffs, though, they are right in front of you!  Precise landing of your jumps is required.  This level was uploaded in late August.  It’s Snowball Jump Trials and has the level code B70-1HX-X1H.  It is a winter-themed Super Mario World theme stage and my clear time was 1 minute 20.

The stage has three of these snowball jumps, with the last one being a bit trickier than the first two since I didn’t put in any guide coins.  I also put in a little puzzle at the end; it’s nothing hard, but maybe don’t kill that last Spike… you’ll need it.  Heh.  Get past the puzzle and you win.  This is a short level that’s only a minute and a bit long, and with its moderate difficulty and short length it’s not surprising that it has clears and a few likes.  If I made more levels this length and not as long as most of my levels are I’m sure they’d be cleared more often, but… I can’t help it, overall I like making a longer level more than a shorter one.  I do like this level though, it’s a fun little challenge with a tech that I’m surprised I haven’t seen levels use.

 

After uploading Snowball Jump Trials, some time passed.  Eventually I decided to start trying to actually clear that previous harder level that I had designed.  Its name is The Mountain of Torment and its level code is PGP-1L1-F0G.  I uploaded it in late October.  My clear check time was 4:12, but you can do significantly better; I decided to not do the thing I’d usually do and keep trying until I got a clean run because it was decent enough to do.  I’m sure you could clear this level in at least a minute less than my clear check, and perhaps less than that.  As with the previous stage it is a winter themed Super Mario World level.  This level starts out fairly normally, until you hit the up pipe jump.  Past that you have snowball jumps, a vertical section, a few shell jumps where you have to hit the shell in midair over a gap, and more.  There isn’t any crazy hard tech here, but there is enough to make the level a stiff challenge for me.

So once I started trying to upload the stage I started out not doing well at all, which is unsurprising given all the moderately tricky techs I put in the stage.  I tweaked things here and there, gave it a few tries now and then, and then put it aside for a bit.  Eventually I decided I really wanted to clear it before the end of October, so I got more serious about playing the level.  The practice really paid off and I knew I could clear it.  And then I did… and then I realized that I’d made the boss room key door a regular door for testing and hadn’t fixed the issue.  Oops. I’m glad I’d messed that up though, because before the final upload I made a few more tweaks that improved the level, it’d be a less good level without them.

After fixing that mistake I put the game down for a bit, got Mario Wonder since it released about then, and didn’t return to Mario Maker 2 until several days later.  Once I got back to this level though, I cleared and uploaded it surprisingly quickly.  It’s not that hard of a level, kaizo players would surely consider it easy.  I’m just not good enough to consistently hit the jumps the way a good player could.  I’m sure a good player would beat this level in five minutes.  I found it challenging though, and I think it made me better at this game, too — I’m hitting shell jumps more consistently than I did before I built this stage for sure.  Trying to beat a level that is hard for you is a great way to get better at Mario Maker 2.  So, why not give this level a try?  If you’re good you will beat it without too much trouble I imagine, but if you’re not you will get better at the game as you try to clear it.  I had a lot of fun uploading this level and don’t regret a second of the time I spent playing it.

 

My Other Mario Maker 2 Accomplishment

So, what is that other thing I did in Mario Maker 2?  I finally completed a run of getting over a thousand clears in Endless Normal.  This isn’t an arbitrary goal because getting a thousand clears in each of the games’ four difficulty levels unlocks a costume item for your Mario Maker avatar.  Beating a thousand levels in Normal may sound easy, and for a good player I’m sure it would be, but it really isn’t.  While most Normal levels are not all that hard, Normal throws curveballs at you sometimes, occasionally hurling something straight out of Super Expert and at you because the only people who had played it before are very good.  You also start with only five lives  in Normal, which is not enough.  Most of my runs in Normal end quickly because of not having enough lives to survive.  Once I decided to see how far I could get in Normal, I thought it’d be easier than it was; Easy is extremely easy and Expert is hard, so Normal will be only a medium challenge at best, right?

Well, if played without skipping those occasional hard levels that drop into Normal, not so much.   My first good run at endless Normal ended at like 500-something lives.  I played most of it no skip, before starting to skip once my lives got low.  Looking back, I think that I could only have gotten that far without skipping because whenever I did this last year or such the levels weren’t as hard as they are now, because the levels I played this time were hard!  The levels in Mario Maker 2 have gotten harder over time as players get better, so this does make sense.  I’m better than I used to be at this game, and so are many other people, and the levels you get reflect that.  My second attempt at endless normal got me to 700-something levels, before it sadly crashed out because I spent way too many lives on an absurdly hard level I’d never have been able to clear and should have skipped early.  I didn’t game over on that level but I never recovered my life count after burning like 30 lives on one level.

After that, I told myself that my third attempt would not go like the previous ones.  I’d skip any level that I was dying on much in order to keep the run going.  I’d try to fight my instinct to keep trying those levels I know I can beat at a cost of too many lives.   And this time, it worked!  Well, kind of.  I did indeed finally get to a thousand clears, a long time after I started this challenge because I’d play a few levels here and there most of the time, other than a few days where I’d just play endless N0rmal for hours, but a bit over a thousand levels completed now I have only 28 lives.  Considering that your life counter maxes out at 99, that’s not great.  I had more than 50 lives at a bit over 900 clears, but stopped playing much for weeks after reaching that point.  Once I got back to it I quickly wasted over half of those lives on various hard levels.  I ran into so many awful, poorly designed life-drainer levels that it’s kind of crazy!  Sure, I skipped them if I couldn’t beat them in three or five lives or so, but when you keep going -5 on levels and then on the levels you do clear you only get back maybe one life in a stage it adds up to a rapid life decline.  This is why knowing how to bounce on a shell just right to get lives from a single shell is such a useful technique, it’s too bad I haven’t learned it yet.  Oh well.  Dying on levels I should have beaten didn’t help either, but that’s just how I am, I consistently choke when there is pressure, only to beat that same level in a try or two once I’ve skipped it and am playing it without the pressure of limited lives.

Anyway, at least I did stop the life decline — I got down to 18 lives at the low point, ten less than I have now — and completed the thousand clear challenge, so even if I made it hard for myself I got that costume and completed a major accomplishment in this game.  Of the four 1000 level awards in Endless, I easily could get the one in Easy, I just haven’t because Easy levels are incredibly, mind-numbingly easy.  Almost none provide any kind of a challenge at all, I don’t find Easy very fun for more than a stage or two here and there.  Maybe I will do this eventually just to get the reward, I’m not sure.  As for Expert, my record is still 9.  I doubt I’ll get to a thousand anytime, heh.  And Super Expert’s not happening, it’s way too hard for me to beat more than a level or two in a run.  Ah well.  Still, only about 5,400 people have completed a thousand levels in endless Normal, so this is a decent accomplishment in this game considering how many people have played it.

Conclusion

Overall, as great as the wildly imaginative new enemies, design ideas, and more of Super Mario Bros. Wonder and its mostly well-designed stages are, I honestly do prefer this game.  Sure, a lot of the levels are terrible, unfair, broken messes, and a lot of the rest are pretty bland, but the magic of never knowing what you’re going to get, seeing the kinds good and bad of things people make with this toolkit?  There’s nothing like it.  Even so, though, Wonder is fantastic and I’ll get back to it soon.  My next article will be about SMB Wonder.  As for Super Mario Maker 2, though, it’s still every bit as incredible a game as it ever has been.  I wish that it had more stage themes and such, and yes I badly hope that we eventually get a Super Mario Maker 3, but as long as this game continues to get support I will play it.

On that note, though, Nintendo has announced that all Nintendo Wii U online services will be turned off early-ish in 2024.  This means that the Super Mario Maker 1 online servers will be disconnected then, rendering the game basically useless since it does not have much built-in content.  There probably is or will be a private server, but it’s not the same as the real Nintendo server.  This is yet another expected but horrendous decision from Nintendo; surely the Wii U / 3DS servers could have been left up, particularly for key games like this one that still draw interest… but Nintendo doesn’t care about that, they only care about if you are buying things for their current system.  It’s a real shame.  This will probably happen to Mario Maker 2 someday as well, though the much greater success of the Switch hopefully will push that back a long time.  In these last months of the official SMM1 servers, though, some people are trying to clear every level in the game.  There are only about 18,000 uncleared uploaded and not deleted levels left in all of SMM1, so it is a possibly attainable goal.  Can SMM1 be finished before it’s shut down?  It’ll be very interesting to see!  I hope this can be done.

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