Black Falcon Games

Riviera: The Promised Land (GBA) Review – Riviera is one of the best handheld RPGs ever!

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Brian

I wrote this review in January and February of 2006, after playing the game. Yes, I really loved it; it was one of my favorite console games of ’05. This review needs no alteration, unlike the last one. The only things I would add is that there is also a PSP port, with better graphics and a little bit of added gameplay content but a little bit more censorship, but I haven’t played that yet; I’ve beaten the game already, after all, and loved it on GBA. Also, this game was successful and there is now a series set in the same world, called the Dept. Heaven series, but each game has very different gameplay. They are mostly various types of strategy games, and while I like strategy games more than I do RPGs, I don’t like any of the sequels anywhere remotely near as much as I do Riviera; indeed, that it was a followup to Riviera was one of the many reasons that Yggdra Union was so disappointing. It wasn’t just buggy, tonally horrible, and somewhat unique but frustrating to play, it was also supposedly a “sequel” to one of my favorite GBA games. YU also has several Japan-exclusive sequels, but I haven’t played those, and being spinoffs of the worst game in the franchise is not encouraging. Knights in the Nightmare, a weird but good strategy game with bullet-hell elements, is a lot better than Yggdra Union is, but it’s still no match for Riviera. It is the second-best game in the series, though. And the most recent one, Gungnir, is a more generic game than the previous three; it’s pretty much just a standard tactical strategy game. Solid game though for its genre. But yes, the first game is the best. I love Riviera, and will surely replay it sometime. But on to the review.

Title: Rivera: The Promised Land
Developer: Sting
Publisher: Atlus
Released: June 28, 2005 (US GBA release; Japanese GBA release was November 2004)
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Genre: RPG
Game also available on Bandai Wonderswan Color (Japan only, released 7/12/2002) and Sony Playstation Portable (11/06 in Japan, 7/07 in the US, 4/08 in Europe).

Riviera: The Promised Land is 2005’s major Game Boy Advance RPG. It is a unique title that, in one mark of a good game, both fits within numerous conventions and innovates. People expecting a standard console RPG experience won’t get it here, and this is probably for the better. Trying to do new things and succeeding is somewhat rare in videogames.

Gameplay: Riviera is, at its core, a traditional console RPG, complete with turn-based, menu-driven battles and an epic plot. However, the differences from normal become quickly apparent. First, there is no direct movement of your character in this game. Instead, you move between screens, like some kinds of old PC-style RPGs or adventure games. The character is in the center of the screen and arrows displayed on the screen show which ways you can go. If that was all there was to it, however, it’d be too simple. And indeed, it is not.
There is also, of course, looking at your surroundings. In normal console-style RPGs the challenge comes from dealing with all the (usually random) battles you must fight to get between places, or with the confusing level designs you can get lost in. With only set battles, not random ones, the fact that the game has an onscreen map of the area you are in always on the screen, and the simplified movement system, this game minimizes that — there is an important exception of the puzzles, some of which are truly challenging, (but even these could definitely be solved with some logic and a piece of paper to write down the pertinent information on) but the game minimizes it just the same. So instead, the challenge is not finding the items. Pressing ‘A’ will switch between movement and observation mode, where pressing a direction will intereact with the onscreen trigger point (so, like with movement, you are limited to four points per screen).

This is not to say that there is no challenge in interacting with those points, however. To activate a point and see what happens there, whether it’s a conversation or an item, you need Trigger Points, or TP. These are gotten in battlehe game has a points and rating system. Depending on how well you do in combat, you will get a rating from C to S. The higher the rating, the more TP you get… This means that sometimes you will see chests or items you wish you could get but cannot because you didn’t do well enough on the battles before it in that level. It’s an interesting solution to the question ‘what do you do when you make the exploration so simple?’, and it works well.

There are three kinds of triggers. The first require no TP to use and are mostly people in the town and triggers you have already activated. The second are normal triggers that give a conversation or an item. The third will, in the course of the conversation, set off a minigame, or rather, a timing challenge. Shenmue-like, you must do things like pressing A at a specific time, or copying a complex button combonation quickly, or tapping a button some number of times within a short time. These are challenging and are very frequent. Some are for the ubiquitous traps on chests, but others are at story-relevant points. Sometimes, it isn’t your choice to take one path or another — sometimes failing at a minigame will force you onto one you did not expect. It helps liven up the game and keeps your reflexes quick… and also increases user interation in a game otherwise lacking anything that requires reflexes. Of course it’s best to play it through and resist the urge to retry things until you “get them right”, but I wasn’t able to every time… sometimes, though. It’s definitely different, to be able to fail and keep going, and sometimes actually take a different route thorough that part of the game…

The battles themselves are equally unique compared to what may be expected. While they are not random — they occur at specific screens and are set up with dialogue — they are typical in the sense that they have no movement and you just choose from options on a list. Even here though, like in every aspect of the game unique features are evident. Before combat, you choose which party members to use — you get five in the party, but can bring only three — and then which items. You see, you may only bring four items into combat. Your inventory holds 16 (also an issue, as you constantly have to choose whether to keep some new weapon or item or drop it, as that 16 fills up fast and once you have something you keep it until it’s used up), but you may only take four. Also, like in Fire Emblem, all weapons have durability — so once you use that sword fourty times it breaks. Before I got the game, I heard about this and imagined that limiting you to four items in battle would be a major problem — only four weapons in each battle? How boring! However, there are several mitigating factors. The main one is the fact that no two characters do quite the same thing with each weapon. In fact, every character has a slightly different action with every item (or at least, every weapon; many items do have the same effect on multiple characters). Fia, for instance, heals with rods while Cierra does magic attacks and Serene does nothing useful. You see, each character is ranked in each weapon type. This means that instead of having four weapons, you really have twelve, assuming a party of three. There are even more, including the special attacks.

That ranking also directly effects the other part of the combat system: the special attacks. With every weapon type the character in question is ranked with (they will have one rank 3 weapon, 2 rank 2’s, and 3 rank 1’s), that character gets a special attack of that magnitude — so each character only gets level three specials, the strongest ones, with their ‘signature’ weapon type. But how are these special moves activated? Well first, the special move has to be unlocked. Each time you get a new weapon, you need to use it enough to unlock its special move for that character. Also, in battle, in another interesting design decision, and perhaps one taken from fighting games, Riviera has power meters. Each time you hit or get hit, your meter rises, and gradually fills. Each time you use a special move, that many levels of the meter get drained. The enemies have a meter too; it only has two levels, but functions the same. When their meter fills, some enemy will use a special. So between having to carefully select your party and your items, and the interesting, unique power-meter system in combat, Riviera’s combat is quite unique and engaging.

All this talk about combat naturally brings up a major issue in any RPG: levelling up. Remember how you unlock special moves by using weapons enough, sort of like Final Fantasy Tactics? Well, that’s the level up system. Each time a character unlocks a new special move on an item, they gain a “level” (though it is not called such). When combined with the abovementioned fact that all weapons have a durability, this could be a concern… well, they have a solution. Practice battles. On one of the pause menus, you can choose to fight a battle against a selection of enemy groups you defeated in the previous level. In practice mode, durability does not decrease. You don’t get points or TP for practice battles either… However, the experience with the weapon is still recorded, so each time you get a new weapon, the best thing to do is immediately fight practice battles until all of your characters who can have gotten their special moves (and levelups!) off of it. This also has the effect of lenghtening the otherwise fairly short levels, and game.

There is one more important thing to discuss, the issue of death and healing. Lose a character and there is no penalty, they just come back at the end of the battle. Win a battle and all characters get their health filled up — there is no carryover of low health to the next battle. And with the power bar powering the special ability system, you also don’t need to worry about running out of “mana”. Similarly, lose a battle and you simply get a chance to retry it — and it’s made a bit easier. This serves to keep the game fun, while not making it too easy, due to the good job of balancing it all the devlopers have done.

Singleplayer/Story: Riviera is broken into seven levels. Each one takes maybe four or five hours. They are broken up into many stages, and you can save each time you reach a new stage — during a stage you just get an interrupt save option. So, it is a bit short. It tries to make up for that with the branching level design that forces you forward, making you responsible for your actions (so you can’t just go back and get those other items on that other path without reloading an old save game) and with the replay value.

Riviera’s story is mostly fairly typical anime or console RPG stuff. You are, shockingly, a male warrior-type character named Ein — the “young male warrior hero” so typical to of 99.98% of RPGs. Ein is a type of being called a Grim Angel, tasked by the Gods to judge and protect Asgard, the land of the gods. He, another Grim Angel, Ledah — the “older, experienced mysterious male warrior” — and Ein’s familiar, a flying cat that can talk named Rose (yup… the story is pretty standard anime stuff, for sure… which is mostly good, in my opinion. Others may disagree, of course, but I would definitely say that it works quite well. There is a lot of story, too, for a game of this length, sort of like Fire Emblem… but with player choice in how the story progresses, to a degree.), go to Riviera, a land where an ancient evil has been sealed away that is on the verge of escaping, with the task of destroying the place. Of course, things don’t quite turn out that way. Ein and his friend Ledah seperate from your friend and travel to Riviera and set out on an epic adventure. There, you meet your new travelling companions, four young female characters, Lina, Fia, Serene, and Cierra. of course, this being anime, all four like Ein and, depending on your choices in conversation points throughout the game, and on how often you use them in battle (they get more attraction for winning battles, and less each time they die in combat), you hopefully will get a high enough attraction with one of the female characters to get one of their endings. Including the bad ending and the various good ones, there are a total of six. When you add to that the multiple routes through levels, the sidequests which require items from specific levels (which, of course, you cannot return to once completed), and the special items to find that unlock the sections of the bonus menu (sound test, bonus (but dissapointing) boss battle, display of the cinema scenes, character images, etc), there is definitely more than enough replay value to keep you going past the 25 or 35 hours it will take to beat the first time.

Multiplayer: None.

Graphics: The graphics in Riviera are very, very good. The backgrounds are very well drawn, something very important for a game mostly about looking at static images. The character artwork and cutscenes, anime style, are also fantastic. The ingame character artwork is more standard for a console RPG, with small, stylized characters, but they look great and have a lot of animation, even if they don’t move much, so that also works very well. This game is one of the titles that shows why it’s somewhat unfortunate that the GBA has so many Super Nintendo ports: the GBA is capable of so much more than the SNES was!

Sound/Music: The sound and music are equally fantastic. The game has a significant amount of speech for each character, with voices for special attacks, victory in battle, exclamations while adventuring, etc, and a good, solid RPG musical score. This is about as good as the GBA gets audio-wise.

Final Notes: Riviera is a very good, and original, game. It’s a console RPG without random battles… without money or buying items… without complex level designs that are easy to get lost in… without a traditional level-up structure based on how many enemies you kill… and yet, it is a console RPG with complex, challenging puzzles that make you think back to the PC or SNES days of writing down what goes where or what was said in order to figure out the puzzle… with as many practice battles against past foes as you want… with a complex branching mission path that virtually requires replay to see everything… with timing events… and with characters and as story you’ll become interested in, even if it is somewhat cliche.

So, in conclusion, Riviera is a mass of contradictions. It both streamlines and rolls back the clock. Reviews are somewhat mixed — if “sevens through nines” is mixed — however, and that is probably because of how different it is. Some people will like the unique elements of the game more than others. Some surely wouldn’t like how different this is from normal RPGs in so many ways, but I loved it in a large part for that very fact. In addition, the game has very few things that could be truly called Perhaps the ending is a little bit dissapointing (though there are six endings, providing replay value), but maybe that’s as much because I was loving the game and wanted it to go on longer as anything actually wrong with the way the game ended… that is really the only thing that is wrong with this game. It is unique and great fun and ends well before your interest in its unique system has faded. It is great, then, that it has those six endings, and all those branching paths, to give it replay value, because it was needed. So in the end the game’s one flaw does not matter and the game stands out as an example of what a game can do when it tries to be more than just your average, formulaic title that follows all of the conventions of its genre irregardless of whether those conventions are actually for the better or not. In questioning that hopefully Riviera is a sign of more good things to come from the console RPG genre. And even if that doesn’t happen soon, the game still stands as a symbol of just plain great game design.

Gameplay: 10/10
Singleplayer: 9/10
Multiplayer: N/A
Sound: 10/10
Graphics: 10/10

final score: 10/10 (not an average) – A+. This game is definitely one of the single best on the GBA.

Riviera is a genre-redefining game that hopefully will influence the industry to move away from old, tired ideas of what an RPG “must” be.

Posted in Full Reviews, Game Boy Advance, Reviews | Tagged Atlus, Dept. Heaven (series), Game Boy Advance, Riviera, Riviera: The Promised Land, Sting | Leave a comment

Netstorm (PC) Review – Battle in the Skies of Nimbus in one of the best games ever!

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Brian

In addition to the recently posted Mega Man in Dr. Wily’s Revenge, the other review I posted on the internet in 2001 was this one, for the classic 1997 PC real-time strategy game Netstorm. I first played Netstorm from PC Gamer’s December 1997 demo disc, and immediately fell in love and bought the game the next month, because it seemed good and to give me something to play while I waited for Starcraft. After Starcraft released some months later I played NS less, but it is a game I return to regularly, and still play once in a while to this day — in fact, I’ve gotten back into Netstorm recently, and have played four or five games of NS in the past week. It’s still an amazing game, one of the best RTS games ever made. Netstorm is my favorite RTS not made by Blizzard, there’s no question about it. Netstorm is utterly original and is unlike any other game other than its spiritual sequel, if that game ever actually gets completed; so far that’s looking quite iffy. The game is an innovative and great mixture of (tower-focused) RTS, puzzle, and RPG elements, and it’s a challenging and highly strategic game that requires both great skill, speed, and strategy to be successful at. Netstorm sold only 25,000 copies at retail, but I own one of those copies, and it was one of my best purchases ever!

After the original review, I will update it with some additions, based on some things I don’t mention enough in the original review, and also changes that have happened to the game since the last time I updated it in 2004. I could edit this in to the review, but for now I have not done that; I might go back and do this in the future. I kind of like this layout, with the old 2001/2004 review first and then my new additions (longer than the original) second, but perhaps a merged version would be good too. I put short notes about the most important updates in [brackets] in the text, with longer explanations at the end.

Netstorm: Islands At War

System: PC
Released in late 1997
Review in February 2004 (original review Spring 2001)
Developed by Titanic Entertainment
Published by Activision

Game Overview: Netstorm: Islands At War, developed by Titanic (Netstorm was its only game) and published by Activison, is a Real-Time Strategy game released in late 1997. Its main focus was on its quite good internet play mode. While the game failed to sell, it is actually quite a good game, despite some problems. Netstorm is unique in that it is a RTS game where the only units that can move are the resource gathers– military and support units are stationary towers with specific functions and attack areas. This adds to the strategy because placement of the towers is a major part of the game. There is a wide variety of units. They are not balanced all that well, but all players can get all of the units eventually so it works well enough. These units are placed in the sky on floating islands. A (multiplayer) map will have a few large base islands around the edges, scattered resource geysers floating out in the air, and a field of small floating islands in the center. To get to geysers or islands or to build units (towers) of an island, you must build bridges. This is the game’s most unique element. It is most similar to Tetris, actually, as the pieces are in many different shapes that you have to link together as you try to expand around the map. Skill at quickly and efficiently laying bridges is vital to being able to win, for if you are blocked off by bridges you will probably eventually lose. This is a problem for new players because quick bridge building takes time to learn. As such, new players lose most all the time to a good or even mediocre player. It takes time before you become good enough to compete with better players in the game, and this definitely would turn some people off of the game. Since geysers are all over the map, being cut off is devastating. And since geysers don’t have too much gas in them, and randomly appear around the map, the more territory you have the more money you will make, given enough workers. The key to victory, though, isn’t annihilating your enemy’s units. It is sacrificing their High Priest. A Priest can be captured when damaged enough, and once captured, brought to a Altar where the victor’s High Priest will sacrifice it. Once a person’s priest is dead, they lose the game. It is a very unique game. This is probably its greatest strength and greatest curse, as the game is unique and there is nothing like it, but so different that many people will not like how different it is from every other RTS they have played. New players are also slowed down a lot by the structure of the multiplayer system, where at the start you only have a couple of basic units and actually have to unlock the better units in the game by winning matches and sacrificing enemy priests — this means your enemies, if they are better, will not just be better but will have better units too. Clearly the game is designed so it is best to play against people of a similar skill level and rank, and played in that way it is fun. 9 of 10.

Single Player: Because Netstorm was clearly designed for its internet play, the single player mode leaves a lot to be desired. With no in-mission saving, a fairly long and tedious campaign, and more boring gameplay because there are only large islands and geysers in single player, the single player mode is clearly in the game just so they have one. It will take a while to get through, if you really want to, but probably isn’t worth the effort. The poor story doesn’t really make you want to progress, either. There are some better campaigns made by fans available for download, however, and if you want a good single player experience you should get them. They have things the main campaign doesn’t like branching missions as well. 6/10.

Multi Player: This is where Netstorm is at its best. It was an early online RTS, coming out in demo form in fall 1997, and was probably ahead of its time. With free internet play built into the game, it is very easy to play online. Even here the game is unique — instead of the average online interface, chatroom, and list of games, it has a ”sky” where your island — a small representation of the island you actually have in the game — flies around, to where your mouse clicks, and joins a game when you click on a spot on a battle ring. That spot is the point (of the 8 start locations around the edge) where you actually start the game. Here, games from one to eight players are played on a map with large islands around the outside and a field of small ones in the middle with the geysers. Though there some problems online because of the fact that almost all players are either very good or no good, because of the small (though steady and probably slowly growing now that it is more available) number of people that play, it is still fun and even now, three years after this poorly selling game released, people are usually playing online [Update: fewer now, but the game still plays online; read the new section for more]. There was even a fanmade patch released late 2003. It broke single player mode, in some ways, but as I have said that does not matter [Update: This was fixed in another fan patch.]. It added some great features to multiplay like different colored islands and bridges on the minimap for each player. The only real problems with online play are how many people cheat. Because of how the game was designed, cheating is fairly easy and lots of people cheat. Even with this latest patch, cheating is too easy [Update: The latest patch does what it can to tamp down on cheating, but it’s probably impossible to get rid of all of it in NS; the game simply was not designed for good security.]. When past the cheating, though, the game is a lot of fun. But like many other things about this game its uniqueness is a weakness as well. I like the level progression where you unlock more characters as you win more games, but it does hurt new players chances of completing against good ones even more, or even against not so good ones who have more units. However, just getting a file with all the units isn’t a good solution because you will then be thrown into playing against people who are far better than you, so following the rank tree is needed if you want to get good. It adds to replay value, though, because unlike most online games it actually gives you a tangible award for winning games (which is something I like about this). I like that. 10/10.

Graphics: Netstorm’s graphics are clearly out of date, even though they get the job done. They are old, though, and may make some people not really try the game. This area is, because of the game’s age and the fact that the graphics were just OK then, at best, one of the weakest areas of the game. It will even still slow down on a fast computer if you have a huge number of moving units on the screen — a game limitation, clearly. That doesn’t hurt the gameplay much though because again, only resource gatherers, not military units, move. If you can ignore the graphics, there is a good game behind them. 6/10.

Sound/Music: The music and sound in Netstorm is ok. While it won’t stand out, it is decent and doesn’t seem to repeat too often. [Update: I was crazy in 2001 or something, because Netstorm’s music is exceptional!] Each resource gatherer will make some sound when you click on them, and they are good. The battle sounds are good as well. Overall, a little above average in this category. Nothing special really, but appropriate for the game. 8/10.

Other Info: While not immediately apparent, Netstorm does have a map editor for single player levels. However, to make a map you must both place the units and islands in the in-game editor you can get and create a text file to go with that map that tells the game everything from what units are enabled in the level for what players start with (it must be listed), and what the alliances and computer player scripts are. This is more complex than it sounds because this file is a text file and figuring out the syntax takes some time. For most people it probably isn’t worth it and it would just be better to download some of the good campaigns that other users made. A few are good. The result is few maps made and fewer that are actually good. It is good that it has it, though.

Overall, it is a great and unique RTS, but has some definite flaws and limitations and a relatively high learning curve that probably keeps many new players from fully appreciating the game. Still, it is a good game and there is still nothing like it out there. Until there is, it will still be worth playing. One of my favorite RTSes, but I recognize that it is not for everyone.

Gameplay – 9/10
Single Player – 6/10
Multi Player – 10/10
Graphics – 6/10
Sound – 8/10
Total – 39/50 or 78% (average)

Final Score – 88% – B (not an average, but what I think the game deserves). Still a great game despite some problems.

2014 Updated Review Addition:

For the most part this is an okay review, though now I’d make it longer and more detailed on exactly how the gameplay and interface work. So, I will do that now. The units (towers and resource gatherers) are shown on the left side of the screen, in a somewhat Command & Conquer-building-style list. Click on a unit and drag it on to the field to place it. Remember that all towers are immobile, so think carefully about each one, and place it accordingly! Right click to rotate a tower; once placed, it can only attack or interact in the direction shown, for towers with single-direction focuses. Yes, Netstorm is sort of like a hybrid of Chess and Go, except with more different types of pieces. Once placed, towers work entirely on their own; you cannot control them. The strategy is in the placement, and the bridging, which I describe in the original review. Towers must be built off of bridge ends or on islands. Using the bridge hotkeys (QWASZX) is vital, and much faster than going to the bridge buttons. Bridging is great fun and one of the most unique things about Netstorm — no other RTS has anything quite like it. Fast bridging is key to fast expansion. As for the units, units are divided into four trees, for the Furies of Sun, Wind, Rain, and Thunder. Units must be built within range of enough Generator units in order to build, and once you lay out a unit location, a little bit of power has to go along the bridges from your nearest outpost or temple (described below) to the unit’s location. So, they do not build immediately, and the game encourages you to push forward with more outposts. Sun units can use any type of energy and do not have their own Generator, but Wind, Rain, and Thunder require their own, so many players stick with one of the three in each game; otherwise you have to juggle more Workshops, and also more Generators.

So, the High Priest builds buildings. First, you need a temple, then some workshops and maybe an altar (for sacrificing on). Workshops allow you to add limited numbers of units into production, so in Netstorm you CANNOT have everything at once — you are limited to the number of units addable on the workshops you can squeeze onto your island. Workshops by default add two units, but upgrading them can add two more, though each one added costs as much as a workshop. Of course, with the space limits, just building more workshops might not be an option. The other major type of building is Outposts, which are essentially mini Temples, which you can build on the small islands in the central field. Temples and Outposts are the only buildings which can be built on non-controlled islands, an they give you control of the island, provided that there isn’t someone else with an outpost or temple on the island of course; in that case, the person with more of them controls it. If you control an island, no one else can build on it, and you can bridge of of it, and your resource gatherers can return to it, so controlling islands in the central field is critical. As I say in the original review, control of space is absolutely vital in this game, and you do this through a combination of bridges, units (towers), and outposts.

The main categories of units are:

The High Priest, who can cast spells, collect resources, and is the only one who can create buildings — do this through his right-click menu. You also add units into production (add them to the left bar) through buildings’ right-click menus.
Gatherer units, who gather resources. These can also get spells, if they have been enabled (many players prefer spells disabled). Otherwise these gatherers cannot attack. They come in various types, flying or walking; walking ones need bridges, but flying ones are either more expensive, or more fragile.
Generators — Generators allow you to build the other unit types. As described above, there are three kinds, for Rain, Wind, or Thunder. Get the type you want. You can also blow up a Generator unless it is low on health, and destroy bridges adjacent to it. This can be useful for breaking through an enemy line.
Direct Attack units — these attack enemies within the marked range, through a variety of means. Each of the four Furies have one or two attack unit types. My, and many other peoples’, favorite is the Crossbow (Wind). These are usually the core of your forces.
Spawn Attack units — these spawn little flying mini-units, which you cannot control, and which travel out towards any enemy within their marked circular range. Sun, Wind, and Rain each have one of these; Thunder does not. These are great support units.
Defensive Towers — These block incoming attacks from Direct Attack units. Each one has different properties, so Ice Towers regenerate, while Wind Towers are invulnerable from the front and must be attacked from the air, sides, or back. Protect more fragile towers with these — attackers must attack the first thing they see, and these before other tower types, not the best target.
Barricades — These create various types of barricades. Sun Barricades, when lined up, create a wall between them which blocks direct-attack projectiles. Acid (rain) barricades destroy any unit which passes between them. Thunder has a unique single barricade tower which destroy any flying units that get near them; Sun or Rain barricades need to be lined up in pairs or more to work.

And that’s Netstorm. Place your buildings on your island, build a network of bridges, collect storm power, expand out, take territory, place units to hold off or defeat the enemy, and try to force them to give up, or capture and sacrifice their priest. That is how the game plays, and it’s one of the best games ever. There is a reason why people are still playing and supporting this game so long after its release, and that is because of how unique and how great the game is.

So, I needed to do a better job explaining the gameplay, but the basics of what I did cover in the old review were mostly good, except for one thing: the music! Yes, the biggest flaw I notice in the old review, though, is that I do not praise the music here, which is crazy because Netstrom has an exceptional soundtrack from Mark Morgan, the same person behind the Planescape: Torment soundtrack. In fact, he didn’t have much time to compose Torment, so many major themes from Torment’s acclaimed soundtrack are copied straight out of Netstorm’s incredibly under-rated one. Listen to both soundtracks and the similarities will become obvious. Netstorm’s music is some of the best computer game music around, and fits the game absolutely perfectly. Outstanding work.

One other thing to note is the online chat formatting. In the online server, if you type .format and then the modifiers, you can change your chat color and format. This will save to that player file. If you type the modifiers without .format, it won’t save and will just change for one line. ~E, ~I, and ~B Emboss, Italicize, and Bold your text. Lowercase letters change text color, such as ~g for green or ~l for light (aqua) blue. You can add a tag before your name as well, which is nice. I forget how to change your name itself, though, but it is possible to, for instance, have your name display in one color but your chat text in another one. You can also make various NS-related icons appear. Cool stuff. NS chat commands are fun. Of course, since there is absolutely no protections on usernames anyone can pretend to be someone else, and doing exactly that was long a common NS practice, but that was just part of the fun!

The other notes mostly regard changes to the online game thanks to another fan patch and the passage of time. Player populations in mid 2014 are much lower than they were in 2001, no question about it. People do still play the game online, though, and a dedicated fan is still running a Netstorm server, fantastically enough! Netstorm hasn’t died yet, and I hope it never does. Download the version of the game from Netstormworld (or some other source, but right now it is the main one), and the Windows 7 color patch if necessary; this version contains all the fan patches, up to the current final version 10.78, and the game still can be played online — thanks to Fleet_Admiral a fan-run server still exists, and people do still use it. You may have to wait a while sometimes to find a game, but people do play. For new players, I would recommend play some single player campaigns first to get better, or else you’ll be destroyed by the longtime players even worse than if you try to start from scratch. The online game is more fun, but single player isn’t horrible, it’s just nowhere near as good as online — but it does provide for a decent starter in how to play the game, which is important. Either that, or find a friend to play it with, and spread the love of Netstorm!

That 10.78 patch, the current final version of Netstorm with all fan patches, did fix single player mode, I believe, but more importantly, it added some great new features to the online game! But also, I didn’t explain some of the game systems the patch changed. I mention that in multiplayer, the way you get units is by sacrificing priests. When you sac a priest at your altar, you can either get a unit, upgrade your altar, or get 5000 storm power (money). If you have all the units, though, you can go up a rank at this point. Originally, the game boosted your damage by 10% for each rank, giving the online game a strong RPG element. However, many fans didn’t like this design, and hackers often used max-rank (rank 255) files which were near-impossible to beat. So, the fan patches get rid of the advantage of rank. Now, in NS’s online mode the only reason to go up in rank is bragging rights that few care about. Indeed, the most common way people end Netstorm games is by agreeing to a draw when it is clear that one person is going to lose. The only ways to end a Netstorm game are for the winner/winners (in a team game) to sacrifice all of their enemies’ priests, or the players to agree to a draw. It would be better if there was a way for losing players to concede and give the other person a win, but you can’t. This is too bad because the Victory and Defeat screens after a battle are a lot more interesting than the Draw screen. Ah well; at least if you want you could do a 5000 storm power sac win, that doesn’t increase your rank. Another thing to know is that using a Fort Maker program allows old or new players to easily create a rank 1 level 43 file with all the units. Getting the units one at a time is more fun, but with player populations where they are today, it’s an important option to be aware of.

The other major change in the fan patches that I did not mention are the additional game options and map types. Now you can not only play the standard map type with a ring of player islands surrounding a central field of small islands, but also a variety of other interesting game types. They’re worth trying, but honestly, the main mode is the most fun one. Still, all the added options are great, and worth checking out! There’s a smaller map, a larger map, a map with just one giant central island, and more. Also more game options were added, to give greater customization to the rules of each match. I still like the basic, original game the best, though; the others are cool to have, but the basic game is the best. It’s different every time, too, because the islands in the central block are randomly generated, so you will never see the exact same map twice. This mixture of the randomly generated central field, with the persistent player islands, makes Netstorm unique.

In conclusion, playing the game again, yes, I still love Netstorm, about as much as ever! You won’t find a more unique game than this one, and it’s hard to find one that is more fun either. The game has some issues, clearly did not have much of a budget and was made on the cheap, and has a small player base today, but ignore those faults and play this amazing classic! With the 10.78 patch, I might even bump the score up to an A-; there is less cheating now than there used to be, and additions like bridges and islands being colored your color on the game and minimap, additional options and map types, bug fixes, and more are fantastic and help the game a lot.

Get the game at http://www.netstormworld.com/news.php?item.122.1 (download the FLEET’s fix [10.78] version from the link provided, and the Win7 patch if needed)
A fort-maker and some user-made downloadable campaigns can be found at http://nsplanet.tripod.com/downloads.html (note that the “full version” download here is the original 10.37 version straight from the CD. Ignore this and use the updated 10.78 version at the link above. Use this page for the campaign and fort maker downloads.)

Hopefully the better community Netstorm site, Netstorm HQ, or some replacement for it is brought back online. The site vanished earlier this year, and its absence is sorely missed!

Finally, there is a 3d spiritual sequel, or sequel, to Netstorm in development, Disciples of the Storm. The game may or may not ever be completed, but I very much hope that it is completed eventually! Here is their site: http://www.stormisleproductions.com/ Back the kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/525138512/disciples-of-the-storm too.

Posted in Classic Games, Full Reviews, PC, PC, Reviews | Tagged Activision, Netstorm, PC Games, reviews, RTS, Titanic Entertainment | Leave a comment

Mega Man in Dr. Wily’s Revenge (GB) Review – Despite some flaws, Mega Man got off to a good start on the Game Boy!

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Brian

This review, from fall 2001, might be the first one I posted on the internet. Today I’d give the game a slightly higher score — probably a C+ or B-, reflecting that it is a good game and I do love the series, and that considering its early release date I under-rate the games’ graphics (the flicker is bad, and the later games are more detailed, but it still looks pretty good!) — but I won’t change the review, I think it still holds up well. Comparing these old reviews to my more recent ones, I followed a much stricter review formula in the older reviews. I’m not sure if my newer style is better or worse than this one, it’d be interesting to hear thoughts on this.

Game Name: Mega Man — Dr. Wily’s Revenge
Developer: Minakuchi Engineering, Inc. for Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: 1991
Review Date: 10/19/2001
System: Game Boy

Synopsis: Mega Man 1 for Game Boy is a fun, if dated, game. While action game and Mega Man fans will like it, most of the later games in the series for any platform have more features, levels, etc. and are better than this one. Even so, its a good game and a good buy if you like the series.

Game Overview: Mega Man– Dr. Wily’s Revenge, otherwise known as Mega Man 1 for Game Boy, was the first Game Boy Mega Man game. It was released very early in the Game Boy’s lifetime, and in some ways it looks it. Even so, it is a Mega Man game so if you know anything about the series, as I think everyone does, some things can be taken for granted, like the fact that it is a action shooting game where killing bosses gives you a new weapon that you must use on other bosses later to be successful. This one has less of the features that the later Mega Man games have, though. While it may be more primitive than later games on the Game Boy in many ways, its still fun, and as the first Game Boy Mega Man game, it sets some standards that the later ones on the system follow. Now, on to the review.

Gameplay: First, the differences between this Mega Man game and most of the rest of the classic Mega Man games. First, Mega Man himself. Unlike most Mega Man games, in this one Mega Man can’t charge up the Mega Buster (basic pellet shots are all you get), he can’t slide like he can in most Mega Man games, and Rush the dog is absent (Instead, Mega Man can create temporary floating platforms). Second, the game structure and difficulty. There are only 6 stages in Mega Man 1– four initial levels with bosses, just like all GB Mega Man games, a Dr. Wily’s Fortress level, and a final Wily’s Space Station level. There is a second set of four bosses, but they are bosses only, no levels, and you play them all at once at the end of Wily’s Fortress. However, the basic Mega Man game mechanics of you having to find out what order to play the levels in order to use the right weapons against each is intact.
Other than that, there are a few things to say. First, the game has good play control– there is no hesitation between your button press and Mega Man’s action. Sure, control could be a little better and more precise, but it has a style that you’ll get used to. Overall it’s fine, but may take some getting used to. There is one annoyance: the main game uses passwords. The passwords are a 5×5 grid with 5 dots in it… a lot easier than later Mega Man games which use a larger grid with every block in it filled with numbers or pictures, but still annoying to copy, as a grid is harder to copy and is larger than a normal letter password like most games. Oh well.
Score: 8/10

Single Player: The single player gameplay is described in the sections above. In the game, you play the first four levels in any order you wish… until you figure out which order is best. Until then, you may get a little frustrated at getting all the way through a level only to be easily killed by the boss because you donâ€™t have the weapon that is his weakness. Once beating these four bosses, you get the last password in the game… the last two levels must be done in one sitting. That gets very annoying, but for some reason all Mega Man games do this for the last few levels. In the end of the next level, there are four bosses to fight… and like the first four, you must find the best order to fight them in in order to beat them. After that its just gameplay until you reach and try to beat Dr. Wily.

Mega Man is a fun game, but it has a few problems. One is that because there are so many weapons and so few levels, some of them are really not used because you get them near the end when they only have one use. Another is the lack of a password for the last level. Even so, overall the game is fun, if a little too hard. The challenge level is quite high in this game, as I said before. It may not be the longest game in number of levels, but it makes up for it in challenge. Even without most of the added features from later Mega Man games, the game is fun.
Score: 7/10
Multi Player: Like all Mega Man action games, there is none. Obviously, there is no score for this category.

Graphics: Mega Man has graphics that, while OK at parts, are clearly old for the Game Boy. When you compare its graphics even to other later GB games like Mega Man 4 or 5, it just can’t compare. It has low detailed backdrops, for one, and the sprites are not as well done as later games’ sprites. They look simpler and less detailed than many other games. Also, once in a while there is a lot of flicker, even on occasion when only one enemy is on the screen. This is sometimes a problem, but its not a game-killing flaw. Between its mediocre graphics and flicker, this game has graphics that are not that good.
Score: 5/10

Sound: The sound in Mega Man 1 is ok. While not as good as some games, the music is fine and the sound effects right– Mega Man’s gun is his gun, etc. Nothing really to complain about here… the music and sound are pretty well done for the Game Boy. Not much to say for this category.
Score: 7/10 (this is comparing it to other original Game Boy games, not any other platforms… otherwise a GB game would never get more than a 4 or 5 except for very rare occasions)

Other Info: This is the first Game Boy Mega Man game. If you like it, try to find the newer games in the series, namely Mega Mans 3 to 5 for GB and Mega Man Xtreme for GBC. Mega Man 2 GB is not worth getting because it can be beaten in under 2 hours flat.Â I know this because I played it for the first time once at a cousin’s house and beat it less than two hours… that’s not good, especially when you consider the fact that MM games don’t really have any replayability!

Scores:
Gameplay: 8/10
Single Player: 7/10
Multi Player: N/A
Graphics: 5/10
Sound: 7/10
Total: 27/40 or 67.5 % (not the final score– this is just the total of the parts)

*Final Score: 76 % (not an average)* – C

Posted in Classic Games, Full Reviews, Game Boy, Reviews | Tagged Capcom, Game Boy, Mega Man, Mega Man in Dr. Wily's Revenge, Review | Leave a comment

Star Wars: Jedi Knight – Mysteries of the Sith Review (PC) – The expansion to the best FPS ever is as great as the main game!

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Brian

This review was originally written in January 2004, but as I said I’d like to post all of my stuff in one place, so I am posting it on my site as well. I will post more of these in the coming days.

Title: Star Wars: Jedi Knight – Mysteries of the Sith
Platform: PC (Windows 9x)
Developer & Publisher: Lucasarts
Released: 1998

Jedi Knight. A great and, at the time, innovative FPS. I am a huge Star Wars fan, so I loved the game. Mysteries of the Sith is the add-on for Jedi Knight, and is a very worthy follow up. Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith is my favorite FPS.

Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith are very similar, as is expected from an add-on. But in this case that is a good thing because Jedi Knight is an extremely well done game. It does not add much to Jedi Knight’s formula, except for being able to use both the dark and light force at the same time, and adding more guns, but that is okay because Jedi Knight was already among the best in the genre in this category. Jedi Knight is unique, and has a good engine that can display large areas competently and does so often. Yes, by today’s standards the graphics are badly out of date, but if you can look past that you will see a game doing the best it can with the graphical limitations of the engine it is in. And besides, I like the game’s look. It is a nice representation of Star Wars and, as I said, does large outdoor areas very nicely, unlike most engines from when it came out. Quake is painfully bad at doing outdoor areas and even Quake III, whose engine is used in Jedi Knight 2 and 3, had problems here… none in this game. You are frequently in areas which stretch into the horizon. This sense of scale helps make the already brilliant level designs of JK/MotS even better. To me, while they have many strengths, the best part about Jedi Knight is its brilliant level designs. Level design is key to gameplay, and Jedi Knight succeeded brilliantly. Mysteries of the Sith continues that tradition, with more levels in the same style of Jedi Knight. Some are even better than the best ones in Jedi Knight, amazingly, given how good some levels are in the original game.

The last three levels, especially, are very memorable. I would say that that group of three still has yet to be equaled in any FPS… they are just that good. The only gameplay problem I can think of would come in here, however. The first 11 levels are good, but do not prepare you for the challenge and uniqueness of the last three. When you reach them, you will be in for something of a shock as the difficulty suddenly jumps up several levels and you lose all your guns, for good. I truly loved this part of the game, however, so I think that perhaps they should have reduced the doing small quests part in the middle of the game and expanded the final segment. It would have been great if there had been more than three levels on the planet, given how unique they are… Large, quite long, very challenging levels are the hallmark of Jedi Knight and they are fully in evidence here. They also can frequently be confusing and make you search the levels for where to go next all the time, and with frequent (but admittedly mostly switch-based — though not all. Some are inventive.) puzzles. but again, I like this aspect of the game. It is a refreshing change from your average FPS where it is nearly impossible to get lost. Of course the automap helps greatly here. Without it the game would definitely be a lot harder, and having it is a major plus. I think all FPSes should have automaps and am sad to see now few of newer FPSes have them. The level design in these games stands out especially well when compared to Jedi Knight 2 or 3, who have better looks but simpler and less complex level designs that just do not compare at all to the original JK. The gameplay gets a definite 10.

Graphically, as I said, the game is unmistakably old. Low poly, not that great texture detail, amazingly bad water… no one would play this game for its looks, and if you can’t get over that you will not like the game. But I like it because it presents the Star Wars universe very well, and allows for that massive scale. I give it an 9, considering when the game was released. I’d like to give it a 10, but even for then the engine was not exactly the best looking one out there. Based on today’s graphics of course it looks very bad, but judging old games by the graphical standards of now is not fair. And anyway, none of those better looking competitors could make levels as massive and lengthy as this one.

The game’s sound is very good. All the sounds sound very similar to the movie sounds, which is great. And the music can be really good. Yes, it is mostly just remixes of the movie music, but it is presented very, very well. I especially like the music in the last level, perhaps because of how much time I spent confused in it before figuring out how to progress… Nothing to complain about here. 10.0

As other reviews have mentioned, the story is admittedly weak. The game is broken up into groups of levels that are each stories but only have some things in common with eachother. It does feel like a group of mini-missions at times. It does have a story, though, and that story is better if you have read some of the Star Wars books, particularly Timothy Zahn’s popular, and great, trilogy of books that the games draw greatly from. If you haven’t read those books, however, a lot of things in the game just won’t make as much sense. It explains things well enough ingame, but it makes it more interesting if you know the backstory. Still, each of the level groups really does have a separate theme and story that only carries over on some issues. This is definitely the biggest flaw in the game, and don’t get this if you want a great and deep plot. It is good enough, however, and I have read the books so I loved seeing things from them in a Star Wars game — that does not happen very often. 7.0.

The final major aspect of JK:MotS is the multiplayer. It is essentially the same as the multiplayer in Jedi Knight, just with some more characters and levels to choose from. Still, given how good the multiplayer is in the main game, again, the best thing for them to do was not change things much. Also, some of the new levels are great, and the added force powers make things interesting since force is one of the most unique and fun aspects of the Jedi Knight series. 10.0.

In conclusion, Jedi Knights: Mysteries of the Sith is a brilliant expansion to one of the greatest first-person shooters of all time. Especially if you’re a Star Wars fan, certainly, but it has enough good things about it that everyone should try the game. The graphics haven’t stood up to time very well, and plenty of other games have done scripted events and puzzles, but Jedi Knight and its similar expansion have held up great.

And those last three levels… wow. Completely unique gameplay. Without spoiling anything, the final level of this game is one of the greatest FPS levels of all time, I would say, and is a true work of art. It is a hard and frustrating games at time and getting lost or stuck not knowing where to go is easy, but it is well worth it to get to the end. Also, if you buy Jedi Knight these days Mysteries of the Sith is included in the box, so they work as one long game. A true masterpiece, and it’s too bad that Lucasarts didn’t keep this team together to do a sequel. I’m sure they would have done a better job than Raven.

But if you aren’t a hardcore gamer, keeping a FAQ handy might be a good idea for this game.

Overall Scores
Gameplay – 10
Graphics – 9 (by the standards of the day; by today’s low, a 4 or 5 maybe… but I do love the style and size of the levels…)
Sound – 10
Multiplayer – 10

Overall – 9.9. And still among the best FPSes ever! This game gets an A+ and deserves it.

Posted in Full Reviews, Modern Games, PC, Reviews | Tagged Jedi Knight, Lucasarts, Mysteries of the Sith, pc, Review, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith | Leave a comment

A History of Midway Games (and related companies)

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Brian

I first got interested in Midway because they made many of the best arcade games of the ’80s and ’90s. They were one of the best publishers on the Nintendo 64 as well, and that is, of course, my favorite console. But after the N64 Midway entered a steep decline, and went out of business in early 2010. They were not able to recover from the death of the American arcade, sadly. Midway and the companies connected to it have a very complicated history. I can’t mention every game Midway made here, so I’ll try to just focus on the highlights.

As for sources, this was mostly written based on Wikipedia, Klov, and GameFAQs information, though often I had to do some research into game credits, accurate publishers or release dates, etc — a lot of the publisher and release date listings on online sites can be inaccurate. Perhaps I should have fully sourced this article, but I didn’t. If someone has any questions about something please ask. I do link the more important articles I used that aren’t from those three sites listed above.

Midway’s late ’90s and ’00s logo

The Beginning, the Arcade Glory Days, and the Crash: 1958-1987

Founded in 1958, Midway Manufacturing was initially based in Franklin Park, Illinois. Midway was originally a developer of carnival midway games, as their name suggests. They soon became a major pinball table manufacturer, and later arcade game manufacturer as well. Midway was initially independent, then was bought by Bally Entertainment in 1969. Midway was a major producer of pinball games from the 1960s until 1999, and arcade games from 1973 to 2001. During this time Midway was perhaps the most prominent American producer of pinball and arcade games. In arcade games they had no equal outside of Japan, and in pinball their main competition was Williams Electronics. Williams was a nearby Chicago-based company, and Williams and Midway had a long, close relationship.

Midway, Williams, and Bally were all in the arcade or gambling machine business founded in the 1950s or 1960s, as Bally and Williams both made casino gambling machines. After being bought by Bally, Midway would not be a separate company until 1998, and that would not last long before they were purchased again. Along the way it bought numerous other companies, but first I will focus on these three. Bally/Midway and Williams would both enter the arcade and pinball game businesses early. Initially, in the ’70s, Bally made pinball games, Midway arcade games. The two studios merged, but the naming and staff split remained. The Bally name was the top name in pinball, so they kept it even after the games were being developed by Midway and Bally itself was not involved in videogames or pinball anymore. Williams made just pinball at first, but then in the late ’70s started up an arcade division as well, headed by the great Eugene Jarvis. His first game was the all-time classic Defender. Williams’ arcade division was small compared to their pinball division, but released some of the top early ’80s hits. Other top Williams games from 1980 to 1984 include Jarvis’ Robotron 2084, Joust, Sinistar, Bubbles, and Defender II (aka Stargate). Meanwhile Midway had its first hit when it became the US publisher of Taito’s Space Invaders in 1979. Midway also distributed Pac-Man in the US as well, and was the original publisher of GCC’s Ms. Pac-Man (yes, Ms. Pac-Man, the arcade game, is American and not Japanese). Unfortunately, Namco and Midway had a split over the rights to that game, as Namco claimed that Midway did not have the rights to make its own Pac-Man games. In the end Namco got the rights to Ms. Pac-Man and Midway’s other Pac-Man game as well, and Midway and Namco’s relationship was over. Midway also made games internally, such as the aforementioned Gorf, Satan’s Hollow, and Wizard of Wor in the early ’80s. Midway’s 1983 releases SpyHunter and Tapper would be even more successful.

In 1977, Midway, while a division of Bally, developed and released a console, the Bally Professional Arcade. The first machines launched under the Bally Home Library Computer name, but it was quickly changed to Bally Professional Arcade. The system released shortly after the Atari 2600, and even though it was quite substantially more powerful than the 2600, its high price put it out of reach for most people, and Bally’s marketing was poor; they sold it mostly in higher-end stores, not consumer electronics shops. Also, the system has reliability issues. As a result, despite its power Bally’s console sold poorly, and Bally/Midway stopped supporting their system in 1979. Midway’s game library for the system is small, but does include good ports of Gunfight and Space Fortress. The system had a second life when the rights to the console were purchased by a small company called Astrovision. They relaunched the console in 1981, first titling it the Bally Computer System and then later the Astrovision Astrocade, and supported it for the next few years. Astrovision did not have the rights to Midway’s arcade games, though, and Midway would not have its own home console game development division until 1996, so despite being a Midway console, it doesn’t have as many of Midway’s games on the system as you would expect. The only Midway game on the system from after 1979, ported by Astrovision and not Midway, is Wizard of Wor, retitled to The Incredible Wizard here. It’s a great port of a good game, but it is too bad that other great early ’80s Midway classics like Gorf or Satan’s Hollow do not have Astrocade releases. Still, Astrovision did return the system to stores, until its final discontinuation in 1983. This is Midway’s only attempt at a home console, and they would not make home console games between 1980 and 1995. All Midway home ports during that time were externally developed, usually by Acclaim in the early 1990s.

In 1981, Midway’s arcade release label was changed to “Bally/Midway” instead of just Midway. Pinball tables mostly kept the Bally name alone. In 1983 the great video game crash destroyed most of the home console gaming market in the US. This hurt Midway and Williams because the size of the US arcade game market shrank at the same time; arcade revenues in the US peaked before the crash. While arcade revenues leveled off for a while, and even saw a small boost in the early ’90s, ultimately they would decline again, and that time the decline did not stop. But returning to the first crash, as a result of it, Williams scaled down the size of its arcade division; Jarvis’ recently-set-up Wiz Kidz division closed down in 1984, and Williams released only one arcade video game between 1985 and 1987, 1986’s Joust II. Midway, however, never stopped making arcade games. They were surely less successful than in the years prior, but Midway kept releasing games anyway, including the hit game Rampage in 1986.

The Successful Williams Years: Williams Buys Midway (1988-1995)

Williams restarted arcade game development in 1988. Also that year, Williams (who had changed their name to WMS Industries in 1987; they still use this name) purchased Bally/Midway, that is, the pinball and arcade game division of Bally. Williams moved Midway to Chicago, where it stayed. At this time Bally exited the pinball and arcade games businesses, but Williams-Midway (sometimes called Williams-Bally-Midway) got the rights to continue to use Bally’s name on arcade pinball titles because of how well-known the Bally name was in pinball. Williams would merge the Midway (Bally) and Williams pinball divisions but continue to use both names on their tables, and with the merger Williams dominated American pinball; other manufacturers like Stern, Sega, or Gottleib were much smaller. Williams seems to have merged the divisions, adding on Bally’s design staff to their own. I’m not sure if the two design studios were immediately merged or if that happened later. For manufacturing I have questions too, but my best guess would be that Williams moved manufacturing over to their plant after buying Bally-Midway. Even so, tables using pre-merger Bally back-box designs released until 1992; after that, Bally tables used backboxes just like Williams tables had, but with the Bally name on them. (Source) Unfortunately, it was a declining market, as the history of pinball in the ’90s shows. Still, “Midway” never appeared on a pinball table, only Bally or Williams, while Bally-Midway vanished from arcade games in 1991. It would be nice to be clear on the manufacturing question, that thread linked above is helpful but I can’t find anything to clarify this point. I’m a videogame fan, not a pinball fan, though, so I don’t know pinball history (or where to look to find more about it) like I do videogame history.

Unlike pinball games, Midway did return to using only its own name on its arcade games after the Williams purchase. Bally’s name was dropped from Midway’s arcade games in 1991, and replaced with just Midway. Evidently they had confidence in the Midway name for arcade games, at least. After the merger Williams seems to have merged the Williams and Midway arcade game teams into one studio, except unlike pinball, here Midway was the larger, so they got the Williams people. This label merger happened in 1991, so between 1989 and 1990, arcade games were released under both labels, but what isn’t clear is when the two groups were moved into the same studio — was in 1989, or 1991? Between 1988 and 1990 Williams made NARC, Smash T.V., Hit the Ice (hockey), and High Impact (Football), while Bally-Midway did Trog, Pigskin (Football), Arch Rivals (basketball), Tri-Sports, and Blasted. It may be that the two studios stayed entirely separate, but Mark Turmell says that Trog, Smash TV, and Strike Force were in development when he joined Williams. Trog, of course, was released under the Bally-Midway label, not Williams, which suggests that the two had been merged to some extent by that point. Strike Force was a 1991 release, so it of course was released under the Midway label; Bally-Midway and Williams had both been replaced with Midway. Either way, though, in 1991 they dropped the Williams name. From 1991 to 1998, when Midway separated from Williams, the Midway name is on all of the company’s arcade (video) games. From 1991 on WMS would only use the Williams name on the Williams pinball tables and its casino business. It’s interesting, though, that they merged the arcade game labels, but kept two names for pinball machines.

In 1994, Williams bought the Leland Corporation, a company formed when Tradewest bought Cinematronics. Cinematronics was behind the arcade hit Dragon’s Lair, but Midway did not get the rights to that game, or to Tradewest’s games either as far as I can tell; Don Bluth kept the rights to his games, while Tradewest mostly released outside titles like Rare’s Battletoads or Japanese games. The only Leland game Midway has ever re-released is Super Off-Road, I believe; they surely got the rights to at least some others, but those games have not reappeared. Leland’s biggest hit was the arcade racing game Ivan Stewart’s Super Off-Road. This is why the game is found in Midway Arcade Treasures 3. Danny Sullivan’s Indy Heat, another similar game from Leland, has sadly never re-appeared; perhaps its license is harder to strip off, as the Ivan Stewart license was removed from the version of Super Off-Road found in MAT3? Leland also had set up a new home console game side as well before being purchased, and who developed a few games for Williams, such as Kyle Petty’s “No Fear” Racing for the SNES. The Leland name was soon dropped, but their staff joined Midway, since that was Williams’ videogame division. Buying a studio with its own home console development team must have helped push Midway towards releasing home console games of its own. Several more reasons to do this would appear in the next few years.

In the early ’90s Midway made many hit arcade games, but the most successful of these were Cruis’n USA, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam. Midway most likely peaked in popularity between 1992 and 1995 thanks to those games and their sequels. All three were sensations, some of the most successful games of the time. Cruis’n USA was published in partnership with Nintendo, who helped boost the game in return for the IP rights. The game had a “Nintendo Ultra 64” logo at the start, even though it runs on a Midway board, in order to promote the coming Nintendo 64. This created unrealistic expectations for N64 graphical hardware; it could never have matched a multi-thousand-dollar arcade board. The Nintendo connection also brought Midway distribution rights for Rare’s three arcade games from 1994-1995, the two Killer Instinct games and Battletoads (Arcade), and continued on on the N64 once Midway started home console development. Midway also made a couple of successful lightgun games. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the first one, and it’s always been a favorite of mine, both in arcades and the (Acclaim) home ports. Great game, and it was quite successful as well. They followed it up with the cheesy Aerosmith-licensed Revolution X, which released three years later but clearly runs on the same engine.

All of the games listed except for the Nintendo-published Cruis’n USA were published by Midway’s usual partner, Acclaim. However, in some cases, NBA Jam for example, Acclaim was making more money off of this deal than Midway was, and because Acclaim released the home ports of Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam, some people identified those games with Acclaim instead of Midway, which of course did not help Midway as much as it did Acclaim. Then, Acclaim managed to get the IP rights to the NBA Jam name away from Midway through some corporate skulduggery. As a result, Midway lost the NBA Jam name after the second game, 1994’s NBA Jam: Tournament Edition (T.E.), and had to call its next basketball game “NBA Hangtime”, while Acclaim made the completely different, and not as good, NBA Jam Extreme game for home consoles and its even worse successors. Hangtime and its successor NBA Showtime were successful, but not as much as NBA Jam had been. This soured the Midway-Acclaim relationship, and in 1995, Williams/Midway set up their own home console division. Mortal Kombat 3 released on consoles that year published by Williams, not Acclaim. In addition to the financial reasons, perhaps Williams was worried about something happening to Mortal Kombat like had happened to NBA Jam; MK was Midway’s biggest hit at the time.

Midway the Home Console and Arcade Developer (1995-2001)

In 1995, Williams decided to get into home console game development and publishing itself. Instead of licensing out its popular arcade games, they would make them themselves. Initially, the Williams name was used — Williams was on the initial Nintendo 64 “Dream Team” developer list, for instance. They developed Cruis’n USA, which Nintendo published through a deal which had given Nintendo the Cruis’n series IP rights in return for them helping to market the game and get it as an exclusive for their system and supposed arcade showcase for what the Nintendo 64 could do. Some games in 1995-1996 were released under the “Williams” label, such as the aforementioned “No Fear” Racing game for the SNES, or Williams Arcade Classics Vol. 1 for SNES, PS1, and Saturn. In late 1996, though, they changed over to using Midway’s name on home console titles. Buying Leland may have been Williams/Midway’s first home team, but the next item provided a big boost to Midway’s arcade and home console divisions as well.

In 1996, Williams/Midway bought Atari Games, the California-based studio who were the arcade division of Atari that had split from the home console division of Atari back in 1984, when Warner Bros. got out of the videogame industry for the first time after the crash and sold off Atari Consumer (Atari’s home console and computer divisions) to the Tramiels. Atari Games became independent in 1986, and for a while was lucky compared to the travails of Tramiel’s Atari Consumer Corporation (I won’t get into that here, but they had many problems.). It kept its staff and was in decent shape until the late ’90s. Atari Games only had the rights to use Atari on its arcade machines, not home console machines, but in 1987 decided that they wanted to do their own home console ports, so they had to come up with a new name for the home division. Thus, Tengen was born. In 1989, Time Warner Interactive (yes, Warner again) bought Atari Games. Tengen lasted until mid 1994, when Warner decided to use the Time Warner Interactive label on Atari Games’ home videogames, instead of Tengen. Thus, the Tengen name was retired. TWI did not last long, though, because Time Warner sold Atari Games to Midway in mid 1996. At this time, these home ports went under the Williams name, and then Midway by the end of that year. San Francisco Rush, Atari Games’ first title as a part of Midway, was a fantastic game and very successful. It’s one of my favorite arcade racing games ever. This purchase also got Midway, and thus WB Games now, the rights to the incredible 1984-1996 Atari Games arcade game library, including the classics Toobin’, Paperboy 1 and 2, Vindicators, Gauntlet I and II, Rampart, Marble Madness, Pit-Fighter, Super Sprint, Championship Sprint, Xybots, A.P.B., Cyberball 2070, and 720 degrees. Midway would soon start making its own new Gauntlet games, and including the others in compilations.

Midway continued releasing popular games in the late ’90s. My interest in Midway peaked during this period, so I have more to say about their games from this era than the others. Also, Midway was releasing its own home ports now, which meant more releases. Midway’s games in the late ’90s were so much better than anything that came afterwards that the difference must be explained. Trouble was right around the corner, but many gamers like me didn’t see it coming. NBA Showtime and NBA Hoopz were successful but did not regain NBA Jam’s smash-hit status, but they did make some good arcade hockey and football games. Midway had made arcade sports games before, such as Hit the Ice, but Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey (1996, arcade and Nintendo 64) and NFL Blitz (the next year; for arcade, N64, and PS1) did better than past non-basketball Midway sports games had, I believe. Both games started out in arcades, but soon were ported to home consoles. NFL Blitz became particularly popular, as its brand of violent football action resonated. Another popular series around this time was the rebirth of Gauntlet, with Gauntlet Legends and Gauntlet Dark Legacy. I personally really love these two games; they’re some of my favorite action-RPGs ever, hands down! Midway’s Cruis’n series was also hugely successful in arcades; though the home console ports never did as well as the arcade versions did, the three Midway Cruis’n games are among the most successful arcade racing games ever.

The home ports of all these games did well also. Midway also became a home console publisher, and published other developers’ games. Midway released games on all popular consoles from 1995 on, especially the N64 and Playstation, but saw particular success on the N64. Atari Games’ N64 titles were all exclusive (that PS1 Rush port was external and terrible), the Cruis’n games were N64-only because Nintendo owned the rights, Mace: The Dark Age, a quality 3d fighter, saw its only home release on the N64, and Midway published some significant external titles as well. Midway published all four of Boss Games’ N64 games, for example, including Top Gear Rally, Transworld Snowboarding, the fan-favorite World Driver Championship, and Stunt Racer 64. They also published Wipeout 64 for Psygnosis and Body Harvest for DMA Design after Nintendo dropped that game. For a while Midway made more money from the N64 than from any other console. By 2000 the N64 was fading, though, and Midway’s PS1-only efforts, such as Assault: Retribution (another externally developed title), Mortal Kombat: Special Forces (this started out as an N64 game before being canned and moved to PS1; good move, N64 gamers expected some level of quality from Midway), and Rampage Through Time were not nearly as the level of their N64 games. Midway did try branching into handheld game publishing as well, but none of their handheld games were particularly great. Acclaim’s GB Mortal Kombat games had not been good, but Midway’s were no better. Another GBC Midway game, Cruis’n Exotica for the GBC, looks nice, but has badly flawed gameplay.

Midway also started releasing classic compilations in the mid ’90s. In the ’90s, Williams/Midway owned the rights to now only all of the other games described here, but also some pre-1984 Atari games. Those rights would later go (through a sale I presume, or because it was a temporary license?) to Infogrames, which became the new “Atari”, but for a before then Midway released several collections on the PC, PS1, Saturn, and SNES which include pre-’84 Atari classics on the discs. They did two collections of pre-’84 Atari games during this time, and two of other Midway/Williams games. The first ones have Williams’ name in the title, the later ones Midway. There was a further collection of mostly Midway games on the PS1 only.

Despite being a part of Midway, Atari Games/Midway Games West (as it was later called) maintained separate studios and a separate identity as long as it lasted. Atari Games’ home ports were, as under Tengen, often done internally — the SF Rush games for N64 were done by Atari Games itself, for instance, not Midway. Atari Games also developed the N64 version of their arcade game California Speed. Some games that were outsourced, like SF Rush for the PSX, were terrible. Midway did outsource more games though anyway, such as Hydro Thunder, done by Eurocom on the N64 and DC and Blue Wave on PSX. Atari Games was successful for its first few years under Midway, but after the turn of the millennium, the continued collapse of Western arcade markets helped doom the studio, and later Midway as well. Still, the company went out on top; its last released arcade game was San Francisco Rush 2049. Their home port of the game is, in my opinion, the greatest game ever made in which you control vehicles. Midway Games West had another arcade racing game in development when it was cancelled in 2001 thanks to Midway abandoning arcade games. I’d still love to play it someday.

However, despite these successes, overall arcade revenues were declining, and pinball, as mentioned earlier, was doing even worse. Midway was a successful home publisher at this point, for their home ports of arcade games were doing well, and they published some good home-exclusive titles as well, but there must have been concern for the future. Williams wanted out. So, in 1998, halfway through the release history described above, WMS Industries (Williams) spun off Midway. Midway was still doing okay for the moment, but with declining arcade revenues industry-wide, Williams was done. Midway kept all of Williams’ back-IP rights to console games, though; this is why WB now owns the rights to games such as Defender. Despite this, Williams and Midway stayed close, and continued to share a board member for as long as Midway survived. Williams got out of arcade and video games, going to just pinball and slot machines. At this time Sumner Redstone, Viacom’s owner, started buying up Midway stock. He started out with 15% of the company in 1998, and became majority owner in 2003. He oversaw Midway’s decline and fall. Midway sold most of its pinball assets to Williams and then abandoned pinball in ’99, finally ending the use of the name Bally outside of casinos. However, Williams didn’t last much longer in pinball than Midway — after the failure of its “Pinball 2000” line in, well, 2000, Williams followed Midway out of the pinball business, leaving only little Stern still making pinball tables. Like Bally, WMS Industries has been successful in their surviving business, casino games.

The Fall of Midway (2001-2010)

In 2000, Midway was the fourth largest videogame publisher. They would drop precipitously from that position in just a few short years. In 2001, Midway stopped making arcade games. This is where Midway’s quality level started to precipitously drop; the company never recovered from this move, as much sense as it seemed to make at the time. Midway had always been an arcade game developer, and the shift over to home console gaming went badly. Midway never quite managed to entirely adjust over to what console gamers wanted, and game quality suffered badly as a result. As something of a Midway fan after their great years in the ’90s, it was a sad time. In 2003, Midway Games West (Atari Games) was shut down. Midway Games West only made one console game between ’01 and ’03, the 3d platformer Dr. Muto for PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. It’s a good but not great game, but the teams’ lack of experience in the genre shows — the team had never done a 3d platformer before, since those do not work in arcades. The game must not have done well enough, and so one of gaming’s oldest developers, one with a direct history to the original Pong, closed. Things got even worse for Midway afterwards.

That really is the story of 2001-2010 Midway. Midway still made some good games here and there. Mortal Kombat had begun declining after MK Trilogy, but MK: Deadly Alliance was a bit of a boost for the series in ’02, after some down years after MK4’s relative failure. It saw two sequels by ’06, on Gamecube, Xbox, PS2, and Wii, but while successful, the new MK wasn’t the phenomenon that the original game was. They were among Midway’s most popular games of the period for sure, though. Among other games, the new classic collections for Gamecube, Xbox, PS2, and PC were pretty good. Many classic Midway, Williams, and Leland games appeared again in the Midway Arcade Treasures line in the ’00s. Those collections include everything Midway still had the rights to from their PS1 discs (so, everything except for the pre-’84 Atari stuff), and many more games besides. The first collection even includes all of the developer interview videos from the original PS1-era collections, though it’s missing the Atari ones of course for rights reasons. Midway also continued bringing back classic franchises with new games. Their 6th-gen SpyHunter reboot was successful, and led to two sequels. The first one’s pretty fun! I also really like the highly under-rated Defender reboot, Defender, also for the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. Midway mostly let its arcadey racing game dominance die with its arcade divisions, stupidly, but they did make the good, and also under-rated, kart-ish flight racer Freaky Fliers. The TNA wrestling games were popular, though. Midway had some other good games as well. However, otherwise they were getting far off-base, and it’s not hard to see why they were failing financially. Midway mostly left Nintendo behind in the early ’00s, thanks to the Gamecube’s lacking success compared to the N64, but it didn’t help. Games like LA Rush and Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, both for PS2 and Xbox, were debacles that ruined some of my favorite franchises and failed to sell well also. Midway’s sports games in this period abandoned the arcade sensibilities that had made them successful in the first place in favor of more simmish designs like everyone else, but Midway wasn’t quite as good at that as EA or the other top developers, and so Midway just couldn’t quite hold on in the genre. The third of the new SpyHunter games was a disappointment as well. The NARC reboot was also bad. Later Midway handheld games like Cruis’n Velocity and Gauntlet: Dark Legacy for the GBA are no better. Midway had never been great at handheld games, but they definitely did not improve in the ’00s.

In 2005, Midway bought Ratbag Games, only to close the studio four months later because the next generation was coming and rather than pay for Ratbag to become able to handle next-gen development, they shut them down. Closing studios you bought is not uncommon, but such a short time between purchase and shutdown is pretty cruel, and a pointless waste of money. Midway continued to decline. By 2006, Midway was the 20th largest video game publisher, down 16 places from only six years prior. People who remember this era’s Midway forget that only a few years earlier Midway was one of the biggest publishers in the industry.

The next generation brought even higher costs that Midway could not afford. Some games did okay, but the last generation was a generation of the destruction of the midsized publisher, which is what Midway was by 2006 because of how badly they had contracted from 2000, when they’d still been one of the big publishers. Midway published some good PS360 games, such as Epic’s Unreal Tournament 3, but costs were too high, particularly for a company barely surviving as it was. Midway poured a lot of years and money into the open-world game This Is Vegas, but it never materialized, until finally dying with Midway when the company went under. The PS3/X360 game John Woo’s Stranglehold did release in 2007, and is an ambitious, decent to good game, but it cost a lot to make and sold poorly, so it was something of a financial disaster. The game is sometimes mentioned as one of the final blows to the company, sort of like BMX XXX was for Acclaim, though I doubt it reaches the level of THQ’s PS3/X360 UDraw debacle that ultimately destroyed that company. Midway did see success from the Touchmaster series of casual motion and touch minigame collection games for the DS and Wii, but it wasn’t enough.

In 2007 Sumner Redstone owned 87% of Midway, but the company was losing a lot of money every year. Even someone as rich as he was would eventually get tired of large losses and no gain. Midway closed two smaller studios in 2008. Later in 2008, Sumner Redstone, facing large losses in both Midway and his main businesses of Viacom and the National Amusements theater chain, sold Midway for nearly no money. Later that year Midway entered bankruptcy as a result. Despite this, in 2009 Midway released games, most importantly a Mortal Kombat reboot which became very successful, sparking a rebirth of a franchise which had faded in the late ’90s. It could not make up for all of Midway’s losses, but it showed that that team, at least, could still make great, and successful, games. However, Midway’s end was not delayed long. A lawsuit from stockholders against Redstone for his management of the company did not help either. The company finally closed in mid 2009 and was officially shut down in 2010, after Redstone got tired of losing so much money.

Aftermath: WB Games and Conclusion

After this Midway did not exist anymore, but its legacy does. After Sumner Redstone allowed Midway to go bankrupt, its assets were sold off. THQ bought the San Diego studio and the TNA license, only to shut it down several years later as they headed towards their own bankruptcy and dissolution. Warner Brothers, perhaps interested in part because they had previously owned Atari Games twice before (as described above) and Midway owned that company’s back-catalog rights from 1985 to 2003, bought the main Chicago studio, the Seattle studio Surreal Software, and Midway’s name and game IP rights. The other two smaller studios Midway still owned shut down. Many people lost their jobs in Chicago as well; only one team, the Mortal Kombat team, survived the culling. In the last year of its life everyone at Midway either left, or desperately tried to attach themselves to Mortal Kombat as best they could, since everyone knew that that was the only IP, and team, with a chance of survival. Some made it, others didn’t. The resulting studio, part of WB Games, is now known as NetherRealm Studios. NetherRealm makes Mortal Kombat games, and some other fighting games as well such as Injustice: Gods Among Us, and has seen a rebirth in popularity. Surreal had been working on This Is Vegas, but WB abandoned the game, and instead merged that team into their other Seattle team, Monolith, a first-person-shooter focused studio. It’s too bad the game never finished, it could have been interesting.

In addition to NetherRealm and the staff from Surreal, WB Games also used the Midway back catalog in the 2012 Midway Arcade Origins collection for the PS3 and Xbox 360. The collection, as with all Midway collections since the mid ’90s, is a mixture of Williams, Vid Kidz, Midway, Atari Games, and Leland titles. Midway owned all of those back catalogs by the mid ’90s, and now WB has them. Midway didn’t make all of those games, but they did make some.

So, Midway lives on as a part of WB Games, both in a library sense and a development sense. However, Midway the independent developer, and most of Midway’s teams and staff, are gone. Midway went from being one of the more successful developers around, back in the early to mid ’90s, to a money-losing failure. This really shows how quickly the technology industry changes, and how hard it can be for companies to keep up with the changing marketplace and audience. Midway’s downfall was the decline of arcades in North America. Arcades declined because computers and consoles were getting more powerful, and the price of arcade machines was too high to support their reduced revenues. Arcade machines could have done better graphics than home systems just because of their higher costs, but people thought that home computer and video games looked good enough. Also, the growth of the internet further hurt arcades, as people turned to online play for multiplayer, instead of gathering in arcades.

Midway tried to adjust with the changing times by moving to console game development, but the company was designed to make arcade games, and it just could not adjust well to console development. Midway was one of my favorite N64 publishers, but by the next generation they were barely even on the list by the end of the generation, thanks to how far their games had fallen. And many other people weren’t even as kind as I; Midway became something of a laughingstock, like Acclaim (another company I kind of like, despite its faults). That’s sad, but I’d rather remember how great Midway was up until the early ’00s. They had their faults for sure, but all publishers do, and Midway published some of the best games of the ’90s. Nobody should forget that just because they could not keep that up once arcades lost their importance outside of Japan.

Today, WB Games owns parts or all of the back-catalogs of games published by the following companies and labels:

Midway Manufacturing
Bally Entertainment
Williams Electronics / WMS Industries
Bally-Midway
Leland Corporation
Atari Games / Midway Games West
Midway Games
Tengen Inc. (Atari Games division)
Time Warner Interactive (Atari Games years)

Posted in Arcade Games, Articles, Dreamcast, Gamecube, Modern Games, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PC, PC, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Research, Saturn, SNES, Xbox | Tagged Articles, Astrocade, Atari Games, Bally, Bally-Midway, Company History, Gauntlet, Leland, Midway, Mortal Kombat, rush, Sumner Redstone, Tengen, Time Warner Interactive, Warner Bros., WB Games, Williams | Leave a comment

Rolling Thunder 3 (Genesis) Review – The Flaws of a Still-Good Sequel to a Classic

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Brian

Title: Rolling Thunder 3
Platform: Sega Genesis
Developer & Publisher: Namco
Release: 1993 (US-exclusive title)

Rolling Thunder is a side-scrolling action series from Namco. The original Rolling Thunder released in arcades in the late ’80s, and it was amazing! The game feels like a slow-paced run&gun inspired by Elevator Action, but I think any Rolling Thunder game is far better than anything from that in my opinion slightly boring series. This game, Rolling Thunder 3, isn’t quite as good as its forbears, but it’s still a good game. I should start with the first game, though, for those who don’t know it.

Rolling Thunder (NES) title screen

The first Rolling Thunder was a true classic. The game is a modern spy-movie type game, inspired by James Bond and the like, and you play as special agent “Albatross” who has to slaughter his way through an army of evil cultists as he tries to rescue his female partner “Leila”. So yes, it’s a rescue-the-girl game. The cultists all wear hoods, which makes them look more menacing. You have limited ammo, and if you run out are in deep trouble, so conserve, and only shoot when you have to. If you run out of bullets, that’s it; you have no melee attack. Rolling Thunder is a strategic shooter, essentially. You need to duck, jump, or jump between platform levels to avoid fire, while shooting precisely to take out the enemies. Some doors (see the Elevator Action element above) have weapon recharges in them, or rarely health ups. You have eight hit points, but getting hit takes away half of it, and getting shot pretty much kills you, so watch out. Die and it’s back to the last checkpoint. It’s unforgiving, and a bit slow paced as you carefully edge forward and take out the enemies, but it’s a fantastic game. I first played it back in the ’90s in the arcades, and while I couldn’t get very far, I liked the game a lot. The game also has a pretty good NES port which adds in a badly needed password save system. It was released on other platforms as well.

Rolling Thunder 2 (Genesis) gameplay

Rolling Thunder got two sequels before the series sadly stopped. I didn’t play either sequel until within the last decade, but the second game was released in arcades and on the Genesis, and it’s a great game. It lets you play as either Albatross or Leila, adds bosses to the series, is just as hard as the original, and has a two player co-op mode, which is great to have. The level designs don’t feel quite as good to me as those in the original game do, but it’s still great. The third and last one here, which this review is for, was released for the Genesis only. This is the only console-exclusive game in the series. Overall though it’s a great series, and I wish that it’d come back; make a new (still side scrolling of course) digital-download Rolling Thunder game, Namco! It’d be great.

Rolling Thunder 3 Title Screen

Now, on to Rolling Thunder 3. This time you play as Jay, another special agent for the same group as Albatross, and you’re out to beat the evil villain Dread and destroy his sinister organization. Your mission apparently is happening at the same time as Rolling Thunder 2, which is why Albatross and Leila are unavailable. There’s also a woman who is the usual female voice in your ear character; as I said above you can play as her with a password, but she has no story, just the levels, and plays identically to Jay (though that I would expect; Albatross and Leila played the same in the second game, too).

Overall, while Rolling Thunder 3 is a good to great game, I think that it’s disappointing and the worst of the three games for multiple reasons. First, the game is easier than either previous title. On Normal difficulty the final boss of this game is very challenging, but the rest of the game before that really isn’t so bad, once you spend a little time memorizing it. Second, the great co-op mode from the second game is gone for no reason. And on that note, by default, and in the story, you only play as a male agent again this time; there is a female one to play as, but only through a special password, and she has no story. It’s better than nothing though. The game also gives you a special weapon in each level (except for level 9), which might sound good, but really it’s maybe a bit too much much firepower for a game that is supposed to be more about thought and careful action than it is about running around guns-a-blazing. Rolling Thunder 3 also has less interesting level designs than the previous titles, except for the final bosses’ final form easier bosses than Rolling Thunder 2 (the first one didn’t have bosses, remember), However, the game does have mostly great gameplay, the diagonal firing ability is great and was a very welcome addition, despite the flaws the game is plenty of fun if you’re a fan of the series, it’s is the only Rolling Thunder game with actual cutscenes between levels that tell a continuing, if generic, spy action movie plot, and it has some decent and varied graphics and sound too, so anyone who likes this series at all should definitely play Rolling Thunder 3. Just don’t expect it to be as good as the previous two games.

As the list above suggests, the most important thing to know about Rolling Thunder 3 is that it’s a consolized game. The story scenes between levels, changing locations, simpler level designs, heavier weapons in your arsenal, and more all add up to simplifying and consolizing the series. The special weapons are emblematic of that change, I think. You can choose from nine different weapons before each stage, or you can choose to not take one with you, and if you choose a weapon before a level, you can’t use it again in the rest of the game, unless it appears in a door as a pickup. So, you need to conserve your weapon choices, and have the right one left for the final level, for instance (I recommend the Bazooka!). It’s an interesting mechanic, but the special weapons in general aren’t needed, and give you a feeling of power that doesn’t really fit with the Rolling Thunder series’ theme. A bazooka, in Rolling Thunder? Really? Sure, the weapons have limited ammo and you are rewarded a bit for not taking one, as you can then use any for the final stage and also you do have a knife weapon if you don’t have a special weapon equipped (it does two bullets worth of damage per hit) and also if you go into a special weapon ammo refill room without one you’ll instead get healed (or have 1 added hit point added, if you have full health), and that’s great. Really, I think this game is the most fun when played without special weapons, except for that bazooka to help against the final boss. Take them if you want, but they’re not needed.

An early level in Rolling Thunder 3

In terms of length and level designs, the game isn’t any longer than the first two games; on the contrary, thanks to its lower difficulty level, it’s shorter, and even without that, it’s not that long. Rolling Thunder 3 has ten levels, three of which are somewhat short special stages, and most of the rest are straightforward. When compared to the previous games, and the first game particularly, in terms of level designs and weapons Rolling Thunder 3 tries to make things simpler and more actioney. Level designs here are not as complex as they often were in the first game. Levels just go to the right, or occasionally up or down a single screen at set points. There are no large areas multiple screens tall for you to go through, as the first game had from the beginning. Don’t expect anything like that big staircase in the first level of Rolling Thunder, either. That’s disappointing. There aren’t even interesting set-pieces like the sections with all those tires in Rolling Thunder 1! There are some nice scenes to be sure, like that one time that enemies jump at you from a helicopter, or the explosive gas tanks, but those are in the first two levels,… and then nothing like either one happens again for the rest of the game. Yeah, this game is like that. That level with the gas tanks you can blow up also has a very bland design; it’s mostly just walking to the right and shooting, simple as that. The later levels get harder, and there are almost always two platform levels later on, but the game just doesn’t have those unique level design challenges like the ones that fill the first game from the first level on. No, Namco, having every level take place in a different place, often with a different set of (similar) enemies, doesn’t excuse how bland the levels are once you take off the new paint jobs.

This game has many fewer doors than the previous games, too, so when you see a door, there’s an odds-on chance that something is actually behind it. The level designs this time really are too simple and bland. Most of the time you’re just on a one or two level sideways path. The only variation is in the environment — and this game has many, as befitting its action-movie theme, as every level has a new setting — and in which areas have that second level of platforms and which don’t. While playing this game it’s easy to forget this problem, as the game is fun and simple, but play this and then the first or second ones, and the problem becomes apparent. There was plenty of imagination here in the settings, but not much in the level designs.

Compounding that issue are the three special stages, which are levels 3, 6, and 9. In the first one you are on a motorcycle, the second on a jetski, and the last in a hijacked airplane. The first two are isometric, not side-scrolling, and they’re simple but fun. Don’t expect much challenge, but they are entertaining diversions. That airplane level is a real pain, though. You aren’t allowed a special weapon in this level, and there are no alternate levels of play either; it’s just one long flat floor. There’s no way to hide here. As a result it’s somewhat frustrating, and doesn’t feel like something with any place in a Rolling Thunder game, either. At least the level isn’t too long; still, use the knife a lot, or you’ll run out of bullets. Learning that is the key to the stage.

Scene from the intro

There are some good things about Rolling Thunder 3, though. Most obviously, as I said above, this is still Rolling Thunder at its core. They put in too much actioney stuff, but the Rolling Thunder core is still here, and it’s a lot of fun. First, that diagonal firing ability is just great to have. It’s no replacement for the co-op mode in the second game, but still, it makes things more fun in single player mode, for sure. Also, the game may be easier than the first two games, but there is an unlockable Hard mode you get after you beat the game the first time, and given how crazy-difficult the first two games get, making a somewhat easier Rolling Thunder game isn’t all bad. I mean, I can actually beat this one… it’s satisfying to finish a game. Also, that final boss was a fun challenge. Sure, it took me dozens of tries, several days, and innumerable replays of the final level (yes, I got pretty good at it) before I finally got past him, but once I did it was quite satisfying. I only wish that the game had more unpredictable challenges like that one, but it doesn’t; the first three bosses, and the first form of the final boss, have basic patterns that should be easy to learn. Either that, or you can just beat them by moving in and attacking until they lose, it varies from boss to boss. Still, at least the final form was hard.

Also, the levels which are more traditionally Rolling Thunder in style, like levels 8 and 10, are both moderately challenging, and are quite fun to try to master. At first they seem tough, and level 10’s boss is, but other than that, with practice I learned how to get through them without too much trouble. Memorization is of course key, but that’s par for the course in this kind of game, and I don’t mind it. It’s unfortunate that the game takes so long to get good, and that the levels stay bland in layout and design, but at least they do manage to get more fun as you go along even if the floor layouts never match the original title. And finally, the graphics are nice, the music is good, and the story, if simplistic and generic, is solid for the genre. The ending is fitting for the genre as well. I only wish that the female character had an ending, but ah well. I like that they added cutscenes to the game; they’re decently done, and don’t go on for too long.

Overall, Rolling Thunder 3 is a very good game that I quite enjoyed playing through. I’ll probably come back to it and try it at least partway through on the Hard mode, too. However, it’s just not nearly as good as either of its predecessors, and overall, as a Rolling Thunder game it’s a moderate disappointment. Still, it’s sad that the series ended with this game; it’s a great series, and deserved to continue. Ah well, at least there were three good games. Overall, definitely play this game, but consider it an intro to Rolling Thunder, and move on to its superior predecessors after spending some time with it. I’m not sure what score I’d give this game, it’s honestly hard… a B or B-, probably, maybe a C if I was being hard on it, but choosing one rating is tough. On the one hand it’s fairly good as a standalone game, but on the other hand, it’s moderately disappointing compared to the incredible original game. That makes it tough to precisely score. Anyway though, overall, Rolling Thunder 3 is a good, but not great, game. I liked it a lot, but I would have liked it even more if it’d been more like the original. I guess I give it a B; I do really, really love the original. Make a Rolling Thunder game again, Namco! A 2d one would be great.

Posted in Classic Games, Full Reviews, Genesis, Reviews | Tagged Genesis, Namco, Review, Rolling Thunder, Rolling Thunder 3 | Leave a comment

Avenger (Turbo CD) Review – Under Defeat’s under-rated, and great, TCD spiritual predecessor

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Brian

Title: Avenger
Platform: Turbo CD (PC Engine CD)
Developer: Telenet Japan
Publisher: Laser Soft
Release: December 7, 1990 (Japan only)

Intro

The Turbo CD is a great, and important, console. Designed by Hudson and sold by NEC, it was the first ever CD-based gaming platform when it released in Japan in 1988. While I love cartridges too, that is an important advance. I finally got my Turbo CD drive repaired in late summer 2013, and the system has been my most-played TV console since then. This is the first Turbo CD game I finished (Alzadick aside, but that’s a special case), so it got my first full review. The Turbo CD is awesome. I wish more Western gamers in general knew about its greatness. The TG16+CD, or PC Engine and PCE CD as they were known in Japan, have some dedicated fansites, but very little awareness outside of that hardcore base. Given the system’s low sales in the West, and thus low availability here, that is sadly unlikely to change, but it should. Anyone who likes 3rd or 4th gen gaming really should play more Turbografx! It’s really good.

Background

The box does a good job of showing what the game is like.

Avenger is a shmup from Laser Soft, which was one of Telenet Japan’s many divisions, along with Riot, Reno, Renovation, and Wolf Team. Telenet supported the Genesis and SNES as well, but while they did make cartridge games, they were also an early pioneer in CD gaming. From 1989-1994, they supported the Turbo CD and then Sega CD as well. Telenet was the first third party to support the Turbo CD, which was the first ever CD-based gaming platform. However, several years later, Telenet fell apart. By 1995 Telenet was collapsing; Wolf Team was bought by Namco (they became Namco’s Tales Studio). Renovation, their American publishing arm which had focused almost exclusively on Genesis and Sega CD games, was bought by Sega. At the time they were just starting to support the SNES, so they released only one SNES game. Renovation never supported the Turbografx, sadly. Too bad. NEC released a few of Telenet’s TG16/CD games, most notably Valis II and III, but Avenger, like most of their games, stayed Japan-only. The rest of Telenet either shut down or became a shadow of its former self, as Telenet itself devolved into being pretty much a gambling games only studio from about 1995 on, and closed in 2007. Looking at their games from their 1989-1994 time as a major console games publisher, Telenet’s games are often flawed, and are not as polished as, say, Nintendo’s, but they made quite a few but while they lasted they made some interesting games.

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Review
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Title Screen

So, on to the actual game. Avenger is not one of Telenet’s more popular releases, for sure, but I at least think that it is an under-appreciated, quite high quality game. This review will cover all major elements of the game, including the gameplay, weapons and upgrades, cutscenes, ingame graphics, options, and music. Lastly, final thoughts and a grade for the game (since I have finished the game, so I think scoring it is reasonable).

Game Design

The city level (level 3 or 4) is the best-looking level in the game. Also note the angled fire from your copter.

Avenger is a vertical shmup clearly inspired by Toaplan games like Kyukyoku Tiger/Twin Cobra, but it has one key original design feature: the aiming system. Your helicopter rotates as you move right or left, and fires at the angle it is facing. You can aim up to about a 45 degree angle in either direction. By holding the II button while firing with I, your futuristic helicopter will lock at the angle you’re currently firing at, so that as you move around the screen you continue to fire in the locked direction while moving wherever. This is the key design decision Under Defeat would reuse, over 15 years later. That game is certainly better (and much, MUCH better looking) than this one, but any Under Defeat fan should find Avenger interesting. It’s important to note, though, that you must leave the Turbo switches on your controller OFF for this game, or the controls will not work right! The lock won’t work with the switches on. You have autofire anyway, so it’s not needed.

From the last level, this is one of the harder parts of the game, if you’re not at full power… but I did eventually figure out how to get through this corridor safely. Watch those bullet patterns!

Apart from that, though, Avenger definitely feels inspired by Toaplan games and other major ’80s shmups like, perhaps, Raiden, though this is not a “Raiden-style” game like Cyber-Core (TG16) is. The game is a vertical-scrolling shooter, and feels somewhat like Kyukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra), except not quite as hard, and better looking than that game is. The game has about eight stages, but is somewhat nonlinear — you will play all of the levels every time, but can choose which order to play the middle levels in (2-3, 4-5, 6-7). You choose one or the other, then will go to the other stage next. It’s a minor, but nice, addition. Avenger heavily relies on memorization. Each time you play the game you will get better and learn more, so your first few times through the game might be tough. This isn’t the hardest shmup, though, s stick with it and it is doable. Even so, the game can be challenging in that classic shmup way because of how it demands memorization, and also punishes you for dying. I think the difficulty level is balanced very well, though. This game is not nearly as hard as Kyokyoku Tiger/Twin Cobra, thankfully. I completed the game after some practice, and I’m definitely not the best shmup player around. Overall Avenger isn’t easy, but it’s not super hard either — it’s just right. While many enemies shoot at you, bosses and some certain enemy types shoot preset patterns instead. These are not bullet-hell-impossible, though; with a little practice, and watching, I could figure them out. There are often safe spots in a pattern, so look for them. I like the bullet pattern design in this game for sure. It’s good.

Weapons and Upgrades

Level 2 or 3, the canyon. Hit the sides and you will blow up! Only some levels have instant-death walls, but this is one of them. So watch out.

Avenger lets you choose which weapon/item you want for each of your copter’s three slots: main weapon, secondary weapon, and special ability. Helpfully, the weapon-select screen is entirely in English, even though the between-mission story text is in Japanese. There are three things you will unlock in each category over the course of the game; at the start you have no choices, but by the end, or if you use that “unlock all weapons from the start” code you can find on GameFAQs and elsewhere, you have some choices for sure. The three main guns are a machine gun, a laser, or rockets. I like the rockets at first, then lasers later, though all three are good. You don’t start with a secondary weapon, but will get homing missiles at the start of the second level, and then later get a directional gun (useless) and side gunpods. I find the homing missiles and gunpods both useful in different levels. For special abilities, you start with one which destroys all bullets on screen (3 uses per level). The other two come much later in the game. One is a one-time-use invincibility item, and the last a two-uses megabomb (finally!). You also have shielding on your copter which can take 5 hits before you are destroyed, which is very handy.

As in Toaplan games, or others, one enemy ship type drops powerups when destroyed. The drop will cycle between different letters. “R” restores one hit point (up to a max of 5). The others upgrade your main weapon and upgrade your special weapon (only appears in level 2 and on). You cannot upgrade or restore your special item, so use them carefully. Your secondary weapon maxes out with only a couple of powerups, but the main gun takes four or five to hit max power, so try to stay alive. If you die, though, you get game over and will have to continue and start the level over. You have infinite continues in Avenger, but can’t save your progress, and this game can get hard at times if you die, due to losing all of your powerups. This is an oldschool game, and getting reverted to base power HURTS. Even though you can take multiple hits, which adds an very helpful margin for error to the game, it’s easy to take damage quickly once the hits start coming. Some skill will be required, though again, the difficulty here is reasonable overall. Tough, but reasonable. Overall, the weapon and upgrade systems are classic, and work well. It is very annoying how once in a while the upgrade icons will fly off the screen before going to the powerup you need, though, so watch them carefully and try to destroy the ships carrying them as far up the screen as you can!

Cutscenes

Beginning of the intro. Poor city… it is doomed, just in order to give you a game to play.

This game released in 1990, still in the early years of CD gaming. So, the cutscenes here are important. Telenet did a nice job with the presentation in Avenger. Unlike some early Turbo CD shmups (Legion, Daisenpuu Custom, Sidearms Special…), the game has not only CD-audio music, but also has voiced introduction and ending cutscenes. The voice acting is in Japanese, but the basics of what is going on are simple enough to understand: with our high-tech futuristic helicopter, defeat the badguys attacking your country. Beyond that, apparently the story is about a military commander from your nation who became a traitor and is trying to take a large carrier, which was supposed to be your helicopter’s base, to the enemy. You have to stop him, and the carrier. As with most Turbo CD games the intro and ending are “animated” in a very limited fashion. The Turbo CD has only 64KB of RAM by default, and this game released before the RAM-expanding Super or Arcade Cards, so animation in cutscenes is limited and cutscenes have frequent black screens for loading. Still, the two cutscenes look nice enough.

Options

Avenger has no options or settings, unfortunately. This is a common issue in Turbografx games, and probably comes from NES-era design since most NES games work like that as well. The game does have cheatcodes, but only to let you have all weapons from the start or for invincibility. That first code is nice, though, for trying out after you’ve beaten the game. Beyond that though, all you can do is start playing.

Ingame Graphics

Beginning of the first level. Yes, it looks bland.

Once you get into the game, you see what is perhaps the most-criticized element of Avenger: the bland in-game background graphics. I first played this game, emulated, several years ago, because I heard that it controlled like Under Defeat for the Dreamcast, a game I absolutely love. Well, I saw how bland these graphics look compared to other, later Turbo CD games, and didn’t play this much at all. After finally getting my Turbo CD fixed, though, I made Avenger one of the first import games I bought, because it was something I wanted to play for sure, once I had the actual system. I’m glad I did; the game is fun, despite the mediocre background art, and it’s cheap too.

Once you look beyond the backgrounds, however, Avenger actually looks okay. I think that the ship designs are good, and while the ingame ship graphics aren’t quite at the level of the cinema scene ship graphics, they still look nice. Look at the ship designs in the various screenshots above; This is no Nexzr, for sure, but I think they look okay to good. The various laser bolts and bullets are well-drawn and large as well. I think Avenger gets something of a bad rap for its graphics — play it for more than a couple of minutes and you’ll see that there are some nice things here, graphically. Get beyond the first impression and there is more here. The gameplay is definitely the biggest draw here, but Avenger doesn’t look THAT bad. As I said earlier, the game at least looks quite a bit better than Kyukyoku Tiger’s TG16 port, and some other HuCard shmups besides. The best looking level is definitely the level set in a city at night; that one honestly looks nice. Unfortunately there are a few too many bland desert levels, but still, I think the game looks okay.

An end-level screen. These are nice. Static, but nice. Each level has a different one.

While there are no cutscenes between the beginning and the end, there are Japanese-language text-only briefings befor missions, and nicely drawn static-image cinema scenes after them, with a fanfare, showing the level you just blasted through. The “game over” screen is also nicely drawn. Looking at reviews of this game these screens receive praise, but the ingame graphics are often harshly criticized. And while it is true that many of the environments are bland, I think that the art design of the ships is pretty good, and levels like the city or final level look decent as well. There are also some interesting boss designs, and nice big flashy lasers sometimes too. Avenger‘s graphics aren’t the greatest, but they are better than some of the critics suggest.

Audio
Avenger has a CD audio soundtrack, and it’s good. I don’t know if I will really remember most of the songs in the game, but some of them are quite nice songs with do a very good job of backing the action and keeping the game more exciting. I like the soundtrack, it’s solid early-game-CD music, and I love this kind of stuff! I will definitely be listening to this soundtrack sometimes in the future. Composers who previously had only worked on sound chips suddenly had access to CDs and could do higher-quality music, but still were often thinking in terms of videogame music. The results are often unique, and it’s really unfortunate that the days of getting such soundtracks passed in favor of generic licensed soundtracks and the like. Well, at least we still have stuff like Avenger. The game doesn’t have one of the best TCD soundtracks, but it does have a solid, good one. The sound effects are average; nothing special, but most games have okay sound effects I think. Overall, the game looks okay and sounds good. Youtube musical selection: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNAYv0z50yk

Final Thoughts
Avenger is a good game that I liked quite a bit. Despite the frustration some of the harder parts of the game induced, I kept coming back to this game anyway until I finished it, which says something for sure! I have probably thousands of games now I haven’t finished, but this is one of the ones I quickly knew I’d be playing to completion. It took a few weeks, but I accomplished that. I am sure that I will replay this game, too — it’s quite fun, and I am certain to play it again, probably in the near future. Avenger may not have the best graphics around, though they are better than, say, Kyuukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra) on HuCard, but it has addictive, quality gameplay, and the game is well worth playing. I’d highly recommend this to any Under Defeat fan, and recommend it generally as well. This is a solid, fun, under-rated shmup. B+.

Warning! Ending spoiler.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/screen/full/2/9/2/195292.jpg

Yes, in the ending, you learn that your helicopter’s pilot is a woman. This was secret up until the end. The “twist” was probably inspired by other games of the time that did similar things, I assume, but it’s a nice touch. At the end you’re shown the “use all weapons from the start” password, but this comes first.

Finally, here’s a Youtube LP someone did of the game, for anyone interested in seeing the whole game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE9SYKDGPMU

Posted in Full Reviews, Reviews, Turbo CD | Tagged Avenger, PC Engine CD, reviews, Telenet Japan, Turbo CD, TurboGrafx-16 | Leave a comment

Hexcite review updated! Also site updates

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Brian

So, I worked on the Hexcite review again, and added some more details, fixed the images, improved the review, and particularly added more to the review of the PC version. Go check it out and look up this incredibly highly under-rated classic!

Hexcite: The Shapes of Victory (Game Boy Color & PC) Review

Also, I’m going to be updating this site more frequently for a while, as I upload a bunch of older stuff I never posted here to the site. Work on new content is slow (I am working on a Gamecube Game Opinion Summaries article), and the reviews coming up have been posted on forums or GameFAQs before, but they’re new here, and it’d be great to have all of my reviews in one place!

Finally, I updated the look of the page. I stuck with the same theme, Twenty Ten, but actually chose a custom color and top-bar images, and changed the order and contents of the righthand sidebar items as well. I like the look of the site a lot more now. The three rotating top-bar images are my own pictures, of some of my games.

Posted in Updates | Tagged Hexcite, updates | Leave a comment

Game Opinion Summaries: TurboGrafx (Turbo) CD / PC Engine CD – An Amazing System!

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Brian

System History
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The TurboGrafx-CD, also known as the PC Engine CD, was the first ever home gaming platform that used CD-based media. The only even remotely similar predecessor is the Japan-only MSX Laserdisc drive from the mid ’80s, but that was mostly just used for games which played video in the background while putting MSX graphics on top, I believe, and had very thin support and an extremely high price. The PC Engine/Turbo CD was pricey, but was within the realm of possibility for normal people. When Hudson first thought of the idea of a home system with CD media in the mid ’80s, it was a crazy-advanced idea. When the system released in late 1988 in Japan hard drives were far too small to fit all of the data from a CD, so they had to use very expensive setups in order to test games — and to try a game, you’d have to spend a lot of money to get a CD made. This was long before CD-Rs. But after NEC released the PC Engine, a year later they followed it with the PCE CD, so despite an initially extremely thin game library, the CD drive released. The launch games were Fighting Street, a fine port of the bad arcade game Street Fighter (1), and NoRiKo, a “game” about an idol singer popular at the time.

The original Turbo CD and PCE CD are in the form of a two-part addon, one a base unit that your TurboGrafx or PC Engine attaches to (the two regions have different designs, but the same internals), and the other a CD drive that also attaches to the base unit (these are identical between regions except for color and language text on the shell). It’s a somewhat odd system, but it works. The base unit has the added hardware in it, including a capacitor-backed save memory chip that allows games to save data to the system and a tiny 64KB of RAM to load data from the disc, plus another 64KB of RAM meant for audio loading, though some games used it for more data, if they could squeeze the audio into a smaller space. The base unit also has composite AV output jacks on the back, for better video quality than the RF that the original TG16 or PCE support. Hudson and NEC would later release many more models, and two more CD formats, the Super CD system card (with 256KB of RAM onboard) and the Arcade Card (with 2MB of RAM onboard), but with addons the first system can play any CD games. The Turbo CD and Turbo Duo (combo system with Super CD and HuCard systems built in to one unit) were miserable failures in the US, selling an unknown but not out of the tens of thousands number of systems. In Japan, though, it was a successful format, and had game support from its release in late 1989 until early 1997, followed by one final game in late 1999. The Turbo/PCE CD is probably the most successful console addon ever compared to the amount its base system sold, probably in no small part thanks to the Duo line getting CD drives into the hands of most everyone who bought a PCE from late 1991 on. However, because of how badly it did in the US, only a small fraction of the systems’ library released here. Many games have language barriers, but thankfully, unlike TurboGrafx-16 HuCards, the CD system is region-free, so import CDs work fine on any system. I do have a region-modded TG16, but still, not having to get the CD drive modded too or something is great.

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Notes
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This list seems to have the most text per review of any of the threads in this series yet, I think… but even so, they’re not quite as long as full reviews — compare that Avenger review thread I made recently to the Avenger summary below, this one is shorter. Still, some are not short. I had fewer games to cover, so I put more time into each one, and also a bunch of these games are imports which a lot of people probably don’t know all that well or have never heard of at all, so I spent more time explaining stuff. I hope it helps.

For one last starting note, I only have the regular Turbo CD system so far. I got the CD drive repaired, by PC Engine FX’s Keith Courage, this past summer, but only had a US system card 2.0 at the time, and haven’t gotten anything better yet. I think I’ll get a Super System Card pretty soon, and more Super CD games to go with it, but I wanted to do this thread as it is first, before I go into those games as well. The CD drive mostly works, but still has some issues, worse with some games than others — Avenger almost always runs fine for instance, but the sound very often fails early in level 1 of Daisenpuu Custom. There’s clearly still something not right with this drive, which is a bit annoying given that the laser is new (replaced with the repairs). Ah well, at least it usually works, and that’s fantastic, I love the system despite the occasional music-failure annoyances.

Of course, as I said above, so far I can only play regular CD titles on my Turbo CD system, so that’s all I actually review; I’ve played other games elsewhere, but I almost always only review games I’ve played on the original system in lists like this one. Super and Arcade CD games usually have better graphics than regular CD titles, since they have more RAM to work with, but these are what I’ve played so far, and some of them look nice. There are quite a few regular CD titles, so there’s been plenty to play.

[Later Edit: With some help from Keith Courage of PCEFX I finally found the correct CD drive laser pot settings within a few months of posting this article, and it has worked fine since.]

One last thing: if I don’t say what region of the game I have, it’s the US version (Japanese titles are marked). Also, for simplicity I just call the system the “Turbo CD” or TCD no matter what region the game is from. It’s all the same system after all.

Here normally I list my favorite games for the platform in question, but I’m not sure if I can make a list with much confidence yet, but I can mention some games I definitely like: Alzadick, Avenger, Cosmic Fantasy 2, Shanghai II, Splash Lake, Ys I & II, and Efera & Jiliora. There are more games than those that I like, though; it’s always hard to choose, and there are so many more games than these that I need to play, too… I’ve played some in emulation, but far from all!

Table of Contents
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The Addams Family
Alzadick: Summer Carnival ’92 (J)
Avenger (J)
Bikkuriman Daijikai (J)
Cosmic Fantasy 2
Daisenpuu Custom (J)
Deko Boko Densetsu (J)
Down Load 2 (J)
Efera & Jiliora: The Emblem from Darkness (J)
Final Zone II (J)
Gulclight TDF2 (J)
Hihou Densetsu: Chris no Bouken (J)
Jantei Monogatari II: Uchuu Tantei Deiban: Shutsoudouhen (J)
Jantei Monogatari II: Uchuu Tantei Deiban: Kanketsuhen (J)
Last Alert
L-Dis (J)
The Legend of Xanadu (J)
Legion (J)
Mateki Densetsu Astralius (J)
Pomping World (J) [J ver. of Buster Bros.]
Prince of Persia
Puyo Puyo CD (J)
Ranma 1/2 (J)
Record of Lodoss War (J)
Road Spirits (J)
Rom Rom Stadium (J)
Shanghai II (J)
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective
Side Arms Special (J) (aka Sidearms Special)
Splash Lake
Super Albatross (J)
Ultra Box Vol. 6 (J)
Valis IV — The Fantasm Soldier (J)
Ys Books I & II

==
TURBO CD Game Opinion Summaries
==

The Addams Family – One player. The Addams Family, from Icom, is a TCD-exclusive, and US-only-released, 2d platformer based on the Addams Family. Ocean also made Addams Family games, released on many platforms, based off of the movies from around that time, but this game is not Ocean’s game, it is entirely different. As with most of Icom’s platformers, though, the game has issues. Icom could make good adventure games, but their platformer abilities had more mixed results, and you can see that here. The Ocean games are also kind of mediocre, though, so I don’t know which is better. So, in this game, as you would expect from an Addams Family game, you play as… their greedy lawyer. Yes, you do not play as any of the Addams’s in this game, but instead play as their lawyer, armed with an umbrella which can shoot bullets, who is at the mansion attempting to collect some money from their safe, because apparently they owe it to him. As usual on the Turbo CD, the story is told through static images with voiceover behind them. This game does not have actual cutscenes or voice actors from the movie in it, but instead has static images and its own, lower-budget, cast. It’s good enough to do for a game. Your character’s job won’t be easy, though, because the Addams Family will not just allow him to go in and take the cash, he’ll have to earn it, if he can stay alive. It seems like a strange choice of characters to me, as the Ocean games all have you playing as Fester, Gomez, or Puggsly Addams (no, no games for the female characters, Ocean was sexist clearly), but I guess it works. You have several lives, but no continues, in this game, so it won’t be easy to complete. As with all of Icom’s platformers I’ve played, the game has somewhat suspect collision detection; they just never quite got it right. This game rarely demands super-accurate platform jumping, as you’ll probably be doing more shooting than jumping, but still it is annoying. The graphics and music are okay. They’re not high-budget work, clearly, but they’re acceptable and look better than some Western movie-licensed games. There are some nice details at times as well, such as areas where one of the Addamses is hitting golf balls at you from the background that you have to avoid, a fight against psychically controlled toys in Wednesday’s room, and more.

This game starts out with a linear stage where you go to the mansion, but once you arrive, it gets a bit more open-ended. Your goal in the mansion is to search for keys that let you go in doors, so as to explore more of the mansion and eventually find that money. Again, you do a lot of shooting in this game. Bosses take a lot of hits to defeat, and even normal enemies need a few shots, and you can’t jump on enemies to hurt them, that’ll just get you hurt. Level designs are okay, but nothing great. Because of the loading for each area, it’s annoying when I go through a door only to find a single-screen dead end room, because that means right back to the load screen… oh well. This game is on the short side if you know where to go and what to do, but it will take some practice before you get good enough to stay alive and go to the right places. I’ve gotten partway through it, but haven’t gotten more than a third of the way into it so far, I think. It’s an okay game, I guess. My first impression of this game was poor, but once I got used to the way the game plays, with having to avoid the enemies and shoot them, and also learning where to go at which point, it started getting a bit better. This game isn’t too expensive, so if you have a Turbo CD and like platformers, give it a try; it’s average at best and probably isn’t quite that, but there are much worse games out there, and this game does have some unique elements to it, such as all of the exploration required in this game that you didn’t usually see in platformers in 1991.

Alzadick: Summer Carnival ’92 (J exclusive) – One player, saves to internal memory. Alzadick is a time-trial shmup, or space shooter, designed for a contest held that summer by its publisher Naxat Soft. This game doesn’t really have a normal full single player game; there is a “Story” mode, but there are only two levels there, and they won’t take long at all to complete. Instead, it’s just got a 2 minute score attack mode and a 5 minute time attack mode on one level (it’s got two bosses, one at 2 mins and one at 5), and a 2 minute score attack practice mode on a second level that has no bosses. And that’s it. As a result of the extremely limited content, reviews of this game are usually harsh or dismissive. However, after trying teh game in an emulator, I quickly came to love this game, and I had to have it after I got the actual system, too. And yes, I’m still playing this game regularly. It may have only five minutes of content, but this is my favorite TG16/CD timed-mode level that I’ve played so far. Alzadick has great graphics for a regular CD title too, and even has some parallax scrolling! Very nice. The next shmup Naxat Soft published, the exceptional Super CD game Nexzr, looks better, but even so, Alzadick does a good job and looks great. The level designs are great as well. As you would expect from a CD title, Alzadick has a great CD audio soundtrack. That is really the only thing here that makes the choice of a CD necessary, but this electronic-music soundtrack is fantastic and easily justifies it on its own! I like Alzadick’s soundtrack a lot. There aren’t many tracks, but what there are are great. I wish that the game had more levels, of course, but the two that it does have are both good, very well-designed levels. Alzadick isn’t a pushover, either; it took me some time practicing until I was able to complete the 5 minute mode. The game actually requires some skill to complete. The game also saves (to the system) your best score in each of the three score-attack modes, which is nice.

Alzadick is a fairly traditional 4th gen shooter. Your ship has four weapon types, each of which is a different firing pattern for your gun. I prefer type 3 myself, since that gives the most forward and side fire coverage. Try not to get hit, since hits will reduce weapon power, and reduced weapon power will greatly decrease your scoring potential. If you get hit at minimum weapon strength you lose a life, and three deaths and you lose. With a little practice game over will be quite rare, but getting hit a time or two and losing weapon power happens, and ruins games. That’s okay, though; this game does require skill, and that’s great. I wouldn’t like this game nearly as much if it was easy. You also have a superbomb, but only have ONE per run and there are no pickups for more. You choose one of four firing patterns for the superbomb before you start each game. Each of the four patterns has advantages and disadvantages, but I think I like the six-lines-up or swirl styles best. I find the bomb most useful at the midboss (2 minute point boss), myself. Graphics and enemy types repeat often, but there is enough variety to keep things interesting. Each enemy wave usually waits until the previous one is done before entering the screen, which is a key strategic element — killing waves faster will fit more waves into the limited time. There are also some hidden bonuses, of course.

Naxat Soft based its 2 and 5 minute modes in this and their other shmups on Hudson’s 2 and 5 minute modes popularized in the Star Soldier series (from Super Star Soldier on), but unlike Hudson, where your goal in either mode is simply to score as many points as possible in the set time, Naxat changes the rules. Two minute mode works like Hudson: Your goal is to score as many points as you can in the set time. The applies to both the “Practice” mode, which is just another 2-minute mode just without a boss at the end due to that level not having one, and the regular 2 minute mode, which takes the first two minutes of the main 5 minute stage and has you play that. In 5 minute mode, however, your goal is actually to see how quickly you can score one million points. Once you score a million points, the game ends. If you fail to reach a million before the five minute timer runs out, you lose. In addition, you must meet a mid-point score requirement too. Oddly, while nothing else in this game is configurable, you can set the time and points needed at this midpoint score. The default requires 500,000 points at 2:30, which is challenging but possible with some practice. Avoid getting hit much! You can easily make impossible goals of course, too. Want to set it to requiring 900,000 points in a minute? You could never succeed, but it lets you set it to that anyway if you want. This is kind of a weird feature, though, considering that you cannot change the overriding 5 minute timer and 1 million point overall victory condition. Still, it’s kind of neat to mess with, for making things easier while you’re still learning the stage, or harder after you’ve played the game a lot. As for the “Story” mode, the two levels there are one for each of the two stages. Before and after each level there’s a screen of Japanese text telling you the story. I don’t know what it is. The levels are the same in Score Attack or Story mode, though, except in Story mode you only get one ship, so if you die you lose and will have to try again. The first stage (“Practice” in Score Attack) still doesn’t have a boss, unfortunately. Otherwise I like that stage, though; it’s a cool looking big red ship. The second stage (2/5 minute modes in Score Attack) is much longer and better designed, and has those two bosses, but the color scheme is more muted.

Overall, I really, really like Alzadick. The game is expensive — expect to pay $50-plus for the game — but I, at least, think that it’s great. The game has limited content, and playing it over and over will eventually reach diminishing returns as the game, like most 4th gen shmups, does not have a complex scoring system so all you can really do is try to kill more of the enemies and panels faster in order to get a few more waves to appear, but even so, this game is just so much fun to play through that I don’t really mind that. Alzadick was one of my most-played games in TG16 emulation, and now I’m playing it quite a bit on the actual system too. The game is one of my favorite regular-CD titles on the system, and is a great game to sit down with and play for ten minutes here and there.

Avenger (J exclusive) – One player. Avenger is from Laser Soft, which was one of Telenet Japan’s many divisions, along with Riot, Reno, Renovation, and Wolf Team. Telenet released many Turbo CD games, including this 1990 title, but faded mid-generation, and by 1995 Telenet had fallen apart. Wolf Team was bought by Namco (they became Namco’s Tales Studio), Renovation’s American publishing arm was bought by Sega, and the rest shut down or became a shadow of its former self; Telenet’s 1995-2004 (their last year) release library consists exclusively of pachinko, slot machine, and mahjong games. While they lasted though, Telenet made some interesting games. Telenet supported the Genesis and SNES, but they released the first third-party game for the Turbo CD, and supported the Sega CD for several years as well. Avenger is not one of Telenet’s more popular releases, however, but I think it’s an under-appreciated, quite high quality game. This game released in 1990, still in the early years of CD gaming. The game has a Turbo CD-style introduction (with mostly static images and a voiceover on top) and ending, which is nice; unfortunately the story before each stage is just told in Japanese text, but still, the intro is nice. Many other early, regular-CD Turbo CD shmups don’t do that and are just expanded HuCard games with CD music. In between levels there are also some nice static images with a fanfare, showing the level you just blasted through. These recieve praise, but the ingame graphics are often harshly criticized. And while it is true that many of the environments are bland, I think that the art design of the ships is pretty good. I think this game looks okay, really — the ships look nice enough and are well designed, and the action is fast, furious, and sometimes flashy. The CD audio soundtrack is also reasonably good. It’s not one of the system’s best, but it’s good and does a fine job of backing the action. Overall the game looks okay and sounds good.

In terms of its gameplay, Avenger reminds me a bit of a Toaplan-style game (like Twin Cobra or so) in design, but the game has one key original design idea: your ship, which is a futuristic helicopter, can rotate left or right, and by holding the II button (I fires; leave the Turbo switches OFF for this game or the controls will not work right!), you can lock your turret. With Turbo on the lock won’t work, so leave it off. You have autofire anyway. You can aim up to about a 45 degree angle in either direction. You also have a “bomb” attack and secondary weapons, and have a shield which can take 5 hits. One ship type drops powerups when destroyed, which then cycle between upgrading your main weapon, your secondary weapon, or giving you a hit point back if you’ve taken damage. There are three of each type of weapon, which you slowly unlock over the course of the game (though there is a code that lets you use all of them from the beginning). It’s a solid system, and I like the different options you have. The health is important too; it’s easy to get hit in this game and if you die you start the level over, so the health system gives you some margin for error. Also, the weapon-select screen options are in English, which is nice. The aiming-lock system is highly reminiscent of the design used in the much later title Under Defeat for the Sega Dreamcast. I absolutely loved that game (it’s my second favorite Dreamcast shmup, after only Ikaruga!), and then heard that this one does something similar, and that made me want to check out Avenger. The bland graphics left me initially unimpressed, but after getting my Turbo CD repaired this year I decided to buy the game anyway. I’m very glad that I did, because as I said, I think this game is good. I really love the aiming-with-lock controls, they are what makes the game so interesting I think. Avenger is a challenging game which will require practice to beat. YOu get infinite continues, but because you lose all powerups when you die, and there are some very challenging parts where having more power will be a big help, memorizing the game enough to stay alive is important. Some enemies shoot at you, but others shoot in patterns you must learn the safe points in. The last level can be very frusterating after you die the first time, for instance… but that’s how shmups worked back in 1990, I don’t hold that against the game. It just made beating it that much more of an accomplishment, anyway. Avenger lets you play some of the levels in different orders, which can add some variety, but you’ll need to play all the levels anyway in order to complete the game. Despite the frustration some of the harder parts of the game induces, I keep coming back to this game anyway, which says something. Avenger may not have the best graphics (though they are better than, say, Kyuukyoku Tiger (Twin Cobra) on HuCard…), but it has some addictive, quality gameplay, and the game is well worth playing. I’d highly recommend this to any Under Defeat fan, and recommend it generally as well. This is a solid, fun, under-rated shmup.

Bikkuriman Daijikai (J exclusive) – One player, password save. This isn’t really a game, and I’m not one who can “play” it. Bikkuriman Daijikai is bascally a fan/data disc, full of character descriptions and such, all in Japanese of course, and not much else. The only “gameplay” is some trivia questions, which is where the passwords come into play… though why a game on a system with internal saving has password-only saving, I have no idea. THis was one of Hudson’s earlier discs for the system in 1989, so at the time that they could do something like this at all — a disc full of images and audio clips and such — was very original, but it has aged very badly and tehre’s no reason to touch this today unless you know Japanese and are a serious Bikkuriman fan, which I’m not on either count. I have this because it came in a lot with some stuff I was interested in. Obviously the quiz questions are impossible to answer unless you know Japanese and know about Bikkuriman, too. I don’t know either one.

Cosmic Fantasy 2 – One player, saves to internal memory. Cosmic Fantasy 2, by Laser Soft (Telenet) and translated and published in the US by Working Designs, is a traditional JRPG. It’s a very simplistic one, with Dragon Quest-inspired but even more simplified combat that has basic, special attack, critical hit, and miss-free combat, but it is an RPG. The game has cutscenes (with minimal animation as per usual on Turbo CD), nice in-game graphics with decent-sized sprites and some nice graphical design, and a story that is part cliche, part original. The extreme simplicity of the battles may seem bad, given that even bosses will just do a set amount of damage per hit, every turn, but you get used to it, and the good graphics and decent, if initially cliche, story keep you going. As for that story, you are of course a boy from a medieval village who has to rescue his childhood friend/female love interest after she gets kidnapped because she is actually a princess. Yeah, zero points for originality there, even back in the early ’90s. It gets a bit more interesting later, though — as per the title, this isn’t a pure fantasy game, but does have sci-fi elements and a darker side to its story. I’m not all that far into the game, but honestly, even though I didn’t really expect to, I’m liking this game. The encounter rate is annoying, but it could be worse, and the presentation helps as well. Also, even though the combat is extremely simple, that isn’t all bad. Sure it means there isn’t much variety, but it also means you can plan what will happen quite nicely. I do like that. Cosmic Fantasy 2 got at least one US magazine’s “RPG of the Year” award in 1992, and I can kind of see why — between the then-impressive CD elements such as CD music, cutscenes, etc (this was the first menu-based RPG on a console in the US, after all), the good graphics, and the simple but decent gameplay behind that, it’s an okay package. I would have liked to see more complexity for sure, and don’t know if I have the patience to get all the way through this game, but still, for what it is, with good graphics, a decent story, okay gameplay, and more, it is good and was worth getting. Also available on Sega CD, in Japanese only, in the “Cosmic Fantasy Stories” collection.

Daisenpuu Custom (J exclusive) – One player. Daisenpuu, or Twin Hawk as the Western arcade release was called, is a vertical shmup from Toaplan. The game is somewhat like Twin Cobra (aka Kyuukyoku Tiger), but has several unique elements, most notably its allied-fighter system and its complete lack of any aerial enemies. In this game only bullets can kill you, all enemies are strictly land or water-bound. Indeed, almost all enemies in this game are tanks or ships. There are a lot of different kinds of tanks, but at first the very limited enemy variety can get repetitive. I got used to it after a while, though, and it does make the game unique. The idea is that your nation has planes, while the enemy in this World War II-analog world has only ground forces, tanks and ships particularly. So, you’re going in to stop them. You gain greater firepower yourself with some powerups, but it just adds more guns; there are no alternate weapons. This is a simple game. The allied-fighter system brings six fighters onto the screen when you press the other button. This replaces the megabomb many shmups have. These fighters will fly straight ahead and shoot, too, so they will increase your firepower. However, if they get hit by bullets, they’ll go down. They will shift left and right slightly if you move left and right, but you can’t really maneuver them much. Still, they can help kill enemies, or protect you in key moments if you plan ahead, since it takes a little while for them to fly onto the screen. Daisenpuu has lots of bullets to avoid, and is a challenging game as always from Toaplan. Daisenpuu isn’t their hardest game, but it is a good challenge.

This version, however, is Daisenpuu Custom, the CD release. Most reviewers are very harsh on the CD version, and say that you should play the HuCard version instead. Well, I have that version as well, and honestly, I like this CD version more. The biggest difference between the two versions is, of course, that the CD version has CD audio music. Unfortunately this was clealry a very low budget port, so there aren’t any cutscenes whatsoever, but at least it does have a quite nice CD audio soundtrack, which is a massive improvement over the poor, annoying music of the HuCard version. Toaplan could do great cartridge music, but Daisenpuu doesn’t show that at all. Fortunately though, this CD version exists as well. Second, the CD version adds one all-new level, and has new bosses for the first and last levels as well. Also, it breaks the game into levels, instead of being one always-scrolling game as the cartridge versions are. This was necessary because of the CD medium, but some people might dislike it. I don’t mind, though, and like the new bosses — the game fills in some areas where the HuCard has bizarre gaps, where I expected a boss but there is nothing. The new level is nice as well. However, and this has gotten a lot of criticism, they did change some things, and reduced level variety in some areas. So, the flooded-city section in level 2 is gone, replaced with more generic streets. Level 1’s bridge is gone, replaced with a rock bridge that matches the rest of the area. Some other areas later in the game are altered as well. This was likely done in order to give each level a more consistent visual look beginning to end for RAM-restriction reasons; remember that regular CD titles have only 64KB of RAM to work with. It’s not much. I do wish that that flooded city section had remained, but overall, I think the complaints about the graphical alterations are overplayed. The actual gameplay is exactly the same, after all, and there IS more content overall thanks to those added bosses and that new level, where you go through a desert city. Overall Daisenpuu Custom is a simple but very fun shooter that I think is pretty good. This game is not visually complex and doesn’t have much depth, but the simple fun of flying along and shooting tanks and ship turrets with solid Toaplan shooting design behind it holds up. This is another good, under-rated game. It can’t hope to compete visually with the later Super CD shmups, but the gameplay is good. Daisenpuu Custom is an arcade port with added content, so this version is TCD-exclusive, but the original Daisenpuu is available in arcades, Genesis (Japan only release), and TurboGrafx-16 (Japan only release).

Deko Boko Densetsu (J exclusive) – Five players (with multitap). Deko Boko Densetsu is a racing game from Telenet (yes, again!) that was clearly inspired by the Moto Roader games for the TG16. Essentially, Dekoboko Densetsu is a somewhat cutesey and simplified Moto Roader clone. The game is a top-down racing game where all cars are always on the screen together at all times, as you’d expect, and you have to complete a series of races. If you win, you move on to the next race; otherwise, try again. There are five racers per race, and each can either be a human or an AI, as in Moto Roader. Unlike that game, though, Dekoboko does not have car part buying or different course options. Instead, you just play through one championship, that’s it, and go straight from each race to the next. The part-buying element to Moto Roader added some strategy, but as it basically ended up being a frustrating puzzle minigame (in Moto Roader, you need to buy parts in the correct order if you want to have a serious chance at winning races), that’s not all bad. Losing the different circuit choices is unfortunate, though. To mix things up a bit, the game does have some weapon pickups, which is nice. As with Moto Roader though, if you’re at the forward edge of the screen, and thus ahead in the race, you have almost no forward vision. This means that either you must memorize all the tracks, or stay farther back on the screen until late in the race. You get used to it, but it can be frustrating sometimes. There are also obstacles and traps to avoid on the course. If a car takes too much damage it will explode, so try to avoid them if you want to have any hope of finishing even the first race — this game is challenging at first. With practice you will get used to the game, but there is a learning curve. As for the visuals, I like the graphics. The game has an amusing opening which starts out trying to fool you into thinking that this is some serious racing game before revealing the cute reality underneath that. Not bad. Ingame, the graphics are simple, but competently drawn and reasonably varied. The music is decent as well. Overall Deko Boko Densetsu probably isn’t as good as the Moto Roader games, since it is simpler and has less content, but it is a decent little game worth a try. Even though I find Moto Roader kind of annoying, I do think this game is alright.

Down Load 2 (aka Download 2) (J exclusive) – One player. Down Load 2, aka Download 2, is the sequel to NEC’s great HuCard shmup Down Load, and it’s an interesting game. Flawed, but interesting. Both games are cyberpunk-themed shmups with a decent story and good graphics and gameplay. As with the first game, Down Load 2 is a horizontal shmup. This game is easier than the first game, and indeed the low difficulty level is probably this games’ greatest flaw, but with some good cutscenes, solid gameplay, and good graphics with some impressive effects, Down Load 2 is a good game anyway. While you play as the same guy from the first game, this game changes the game system significantly from the first one. In the first game you had a health bar, but if you died you started the stage over. Also you could choose from two of each of your two weapons at the start of each level (which you were then stuck with for the stage), and had a speed-select button. This time your ship is larger — it’s a ship, not just a bike — and you can switch between your four weapons at any time. The weapons themselves are different, too. Also it now has speed powerups instead of letting you choose, and most importantly, you die in one hit this time. You do get multiple lives now, though, and most levels have some checkpoints. The reduced difficulty means that it’s much easier to avoid taking damage than it was in the first game, though; the removal of the health-up item, as there are no extra lives in this game, is really not a problem at all.

Now, for a HuCard game, Down Load had a lot of cutscenes. In a longplay where the player doesn’t die, cutscenes took up 17 minutes of DL1’s 45 minute length. DL2 is 50 minutes, but 25 minutes are taken up with cutscenes this time, so overall this CD game actually has several minutes LESS gameplay than its HuCard predecessor does; disappointing! Also, this time each level is about the same length. In the first game one level had only one section and was over in a minute or two, while the last had four stages and took over seven minutes. This time, all levels are two to 2 and a half minutes long, and have only one stage each. There is a boss at the end of each level. Some are easy, others are hard; this games’ difficulty balance could have used some work. Harder difficulty settings are badly needed too, since some bosses are way too easy. Ah well. The graphics in this game are fantastic, though. TG16 games, and regular CD titles in particular, rarely use any parallax scrolling, but this game is FULL of it! And it’s not only the basic “different vertical strips of the screen scroll at different speeds” stuff, either; this game has some real “scrolling plane behind the playfield” parallax too. Awesome. The visual themes are interesting, too. The first two levels look very similar to some stages from the first game, but after that it branches out as you start using your VR/computer to travel through time as you chase the villains. The cutscenes look nice; though the character art is by a different person from the first game (another change!), it looks great. Your main character guy sure has a lot of nude scenes in this game… As always animation is limited, but they did a good job with the system. Of course the voice acting is in Japanese, so I don’t really know what was going on, but the basics are easy enough to figure out. For one mild spoiler, yes, at the end of this game, you fight a reborn infant-Hitler-monster thing, on a level full of red biological stuff and Nazi imagery. Yeah, really. Killing Hitler once again? What could be better, for a videogame story? Some of the earlier levels, as you travel through time, are very cool as well. The Rome level is particularly interesting. I thought it was quite clever how the background “pictures” attack you. The Hindu-themed level looks great as well, though it was too short.

Overall, Down Load 2 is a good game, but don’t expect it to last very long at all. This game is short and isn’t very hard, and as with far too many TG16/CD games, there are absolutely no modes or options in this game; it doesn’t even have cheat codes! And since you have infinite continues, unless you artificially limit yourself by not continuing, getting to the last level will be easy. I had a bit more trouble with the final boss, and he did take some effort, but still, this game left me wanting more. I like the game system here — it’s different from the first game but is also good — but while the first Down Load is probably one of the best HuCard shmups I’ve played, this game is not quite on that level. The game isn’t cheap, either — expect to pay $25 to over $30 for this. If it was cheap I’d probably be more forgiving, but it’s not. Still, this IS a good game. I like the graphics and gameplay, and I’m sure I’ll replay it. DL2 is a decently good game, and a nice technical accomplishment for sure.

Efera & Jiliora: The Emblem from Darkness (J exclusive) – Two player simultaneous (with multitap), saves to system ( blocks). Efera & Jiliora, from Brain Grey, is a clearly Ys-inspired top-down fantasy action-RPG starring a pair of female warriors, one a mage and the other a fighter. This game has a somewhat dark story, good gameplay, two player co-op multiplayer, and good graphics, as well. Indeed, Efera & Jilora looks FAR better than Ys I & II does, with both a larger play window and larger, better sprites too. Very nice. The gameplay probably isn’t quite up to Ys’s level, though. While this game is pretty good, it can be frustrating at times — your melee weapons have a very short range, and this game does use a button to attack instead of Falcom-style bonking (see Ys below), so be careful. Grind is also required in this game, just like in Falcom games; after reaching the first town, for instance, the very next combat area is quite tough. Fortunately, like Ys, you can save anytime. Also, naturally, language is a factor here. It’s nice that the gaem does have voice acting in many cutscenes, and the cutscenes look good (even if, from the beginning, the story is not exactly happy), but there’s text as well, in towns and the like. Most of the time this game is easy enough to play, but you will need to talk to everyone in town, and then wander around as well looking for where to go next, if you can’t read the language as I can’t. Figuring out how to buy items takes practice too; stand on the little platforms in shops to buy. There are no walkthroughs in English for this game, so you’re on your own. Make sure to talk to EVERYONE, and explore the towns thoroughly. This game is manageable, as it’s reasonably linear, but I did get stuck sometimes starting early on, and had to explore and/or grind more in order to progress. The good gameplay and graphics made me want to keep going, though. I wish that someday this game gets a translation patch, and that would be really awesome, but it IS playable with a little effort — and that effort is worth it! Despite the occasional frustration, I definitely like this game more than Ys I & II. It looks better, and when I know what I’m doing it plays just as well or better, too. It’s also very cool that it has two player co-op! In single player you have to play as either Efera or Jiliora (I prefer playing as the mage, myself), but with another person, both can go through the game together. This is a relatively long RPG, so of course this will take a while, but if you have someone to play this with, go for it. Recommended! This game is sometimes overlooked, probably because of the language barrier, but it’s a great game that I really like, and it’s well worth getting.

Final Zone II – Final Zone II is a top-down run & gun developed by Telenet and released in the US by NEC. It’s considered somewhat average, but I like it. This game is the sequel to a Japanese computer game which was not released here; “Final Zone” on the Genesis is actually a version of the third (and last) game in this series. Final Zone II is one of the earlier CD releases in the US, which means, yes, horrendously bad voice acting! Somewhat like Last Alert, Final Zone II has comically bad voice acting its cutscenes which make even the tragic moments (such as the intro) kind of funny. It’s not all bad, though; this is “so bad it’s funny” stuff sometimes for sure. Final Zone II is a fairly simple game: get through the eight levels, all linear, vertically-scrolling stages, and you win. The graphics are good-sized and look pretty good for an early CD title. No complaints there. The music is decent to good, as well. The game has a sci-fi story, as you play as a small group of soldiers in powered armor suits who are teh only survivors from their ship and have to defeat the enemies and escape from the planet they crashed on. You start with only one guy, but unlock more as you progress. The female characters are in pink armor, of course, and there are some pretty sexist moments in the story, sadly. Fortunately, the actual gameplay is a lot better than the story. Yes, I like this game! Final Zone II is a simple game, and does not have Last Alert’s great strafing controls; instead, more like a Commando game, you simply shoot in the direction you’re facing, can use a special attack with the other button, and that’s it. The levels are well-designed and can be challenging at times, which is great. With enough replay I’m sure this game gets easy, but I think it has a good difficulty curve, and die regularly even on the first level. It’s not impossible though, just a solid challenge — which is great, compared to way-too-easy Last Alert. This is a simple, classic shooting game, and it’s a reasonably good one. I can understand why it gets some criticism, but I think its gameplay is a bit under-rated — I found myself having a lot more fun with this game than I expected to. Final Zone II doesn’t quite have Last Alert’s flash, as it has many fewer levels, simpler, more dated controls, no saving, and not as many cutscenes, but it does have solid gameplay, and it costs a lot less than Last Alert, too! So yeah, pick it up for a few bucks. It’s worth it, if you like action games (but if you don’t and can’t speak Japanese, then probably don’t bother with the TG16…).

Gulclight TDF2 (J) – One player, saves to internal memory. Gulclight TDF2 is a very basic, and flawed, turn-based tactical-style strategy game from Data West. This is an incredibly simplistic top-down sci-fi strategy game where you control a fleet of warships which have to defeat an alien menace. There aren’t any cutscenes here, though; the only story to be found here is the Japanese-language manual and the sentence or two of Japanese text in each mission briefing. The story is that you control the T.D.F. (Terrestrial Defense Force), Earth’s defense force of planes, land vehicles, and mechas who have to save the world from the evil Plea alien monsters. Production values don’t get much better ingame. Indeed, this is one of those games where the only thing justifying its choice of CD media is its CD music. The music is decent to good early-CD-videogame stuff. I like the opening-screen theme, and the ingame music is nice too. As for the graphics, the sprite work is decent; it’s average early ’90s mecha and monster stuff, which is a plus if you like that kind of thing. There are little “battle” animations between ships, when they fight, but they’re nothing a HuCard game couln’t have done. Military Madness’s are better, in fact — those actually have a custom background. Here, larger versions of your and the enemy’s ships appear with the stage map as a background, nothing more. And those stage backgrounds are not too thrilling. The first level is supposed to be a city at night, but it just comes across as a blue map with little rectangles and stuff on it, with no variation. The second level is better, with trees, roads, and hills (plus your units can move farther on roads than through the trees, too), but still the graphics are basic, and it doesn’t get better. This game has to have been made on an extremely limited budget! It is interesting that your units change from mission to mission, though. You are not following one unit, or one person’s, story, here, it seems. Instead, you’re just following the TDF’s battles in this war against the Plea.

As for import-ability, while the gameplay is too simple, this game is at least easy for the English-only speaker to play. The main screen displays and ingame menus are in English. Only the manual, mission briefing screens (there is nothing important on them), and ship and weapon names are in Japanese. Ship stats? What stats? All you can see is each TDF or PLEA ship/monster’s name, location, health bar, “Lv” bar, and movement range. Yes, this game is really stripped-down. Also, all units attack the same way: left/right/up/down only, and only to the next space. There are no ranged attackers here, no units that can use special abilities, heal the other ships, etc. Each one of your ships IS different — the weapons they are armed with (each unit has one or two weapons, but which ones each unit has vary) are not the same, and max health and movement ranges vary as well — but still, since all units operate and attack the same way, the game feels samey. Enemies have a similar lack or worse of variety — generally each mission has only a couple of enemy types. Since units don’t have real strength stats, levels, or anything, it’s hard to know exactly how strong any ship is, which is frustrating. On that note, as for that “Lv” bar, I’m not sure exactly WHAT it means. I’d to be able to read the manual to know that, and I can’t read Japanese, sadly, and there is no information about how to play this game online. I can tell that it changes based on which weapon you equip, though, so my only guess is that it represents max weapon power, or something along those lines. Lv is definitely not much of an indicator of unit strength. For instance the enemies on the first level have low Lv levels, but are much stronger than your individual ships anyway. This lack of numbers really is an issue. Imagine playing something like Fire Emblem, except your specific potential damage range and hit-chance percent are never displayed to the player! Yeah, it’s a pain. Those numbers have to exist, but you aren’t allowed to see what they are. Awful design there. All you can do is just look at how far the enemies’ health bar goes down, or doesn’t if it was a miss as it often is.

On the note of damage, at first I thought this game was broken and impossible. Looking at the two bits of “review” this game has online in English that I could find, at Mobygames and GameReviewDen, both comment on how hard this game is. And indeed, I lost badly my first handful of times I tried the game. The first level pits five of your ships against six enemies, and as I said earlier, on a one-on-one basis you are outgunned. Even though all units heal a bit every turn, I lost badly, rarely even managing to take out one enemy before being wiped out, or losing my lead unit; if your leader, the unit in the center of your starting group, loses, it’s an instant game over. I didn’t give up on the game, though, and eventually through luck and experimentation managed to figure out the key to the game: You can stack units! Specifically, you can put two units on a space. Then, if you tell one of those two units to attack, your first unit will attack, then the enemy will attack your first unit, and then your second unit will attack, become the “top” unit (swapping with the other unit). The enemy cannot attack that second unit, which is really important because they CANNOT stack like you can. There is one thing to be cautious of, though: your other units cannot move through a space which currently has two of your units on it. In the first mission this is irrelevant, since it’s in the air, but in land-based mission two, for example, this matters. Also, since you often seem to start with five units, you don’t start with an even number of units to group. Still, with this strategy, I was able to get through the first mission in only a couple of tries. Since luck is such an important factor in this game, both in hoping for enemy attacks to miss and for yours to hit, victory took a few tries, but this made it possible. What was my reward? A screen, in Engrish, saying “Congratuation”, of course! I could expect no better. However, I WAS surprised to see that the game saved my progress afterwards! The game does not initially create a save file, you see, so I thought it didn’t save… until I hit reset after losing a few times at mission two, and I found that yes, the game does indeed then create a file, so you can continue from any level you have reached. That’s fantastic. I also liked that mission two has a somewhat more strategic map, as I described earlier. So yeah, the very few things I’ve read about this game in English call it a terrible game, but it’s not THAT bad. The game is too simple (not much variety here!) and definitely has flaws, but I kind of enjoy it anyway, and will continue to play it once in a while for sure. It may or may not be worth a look, if you like this kind of game.

Hihou Densetsu: Chris no Bouken (J exclusive) – One player. Hihou Densetsu is an okay, but not great, platform-action game from Arc Co. Ltd, now known as Arc System Works. Yes, they did not always make good fighting games. Hihou Densetsu clearly was inspired by sources such as Indiana Jones, Ghosts n Goblins, Ys I&II, and other popular platformers and TG16 games. The game stars Chris (or something like that; the game has absolutely no English text either in the manual, CD, or ingame, so that’s just the best guess at how names should be spelled), a girl (yes, she is a girl, even though her sprite design and costume are somewhat androgynous) who is searching for her father, an archaeologist or something, who is missing in South America. So, she’s off on an adventure to go through tombs, kill Indians, villains, monsters, and the like. You know, it’s your usual racially insensitive adventure story through jungle tombs. There are a few twists along the way, though if you can read Japanese you’ll be spoiled for them, since apparently the manual describes every one of them in detail! Yeah, great idea there… or not. The story is told by cutscenes, and there is a cutscene between every level. They are done with TGCD-standard very limited amounts of animation. This game has even less animation than most games on this system, though; usually it’s just got a sequence of stills with a voiceover. The art design is solid, though. It’s nothing great or original, but the game is decently drawn. Don’t expect anything fancy like parallax here, though, and the graphics could look better, but aren’t awful either. Overall, the graphics are probably average. The games’ sound is also average.

Hihou Densetsu is a somewhat short game, but it makes up for its length with its difficulty. Please note, this game does NOT have saving. You do get unlimited continues, but have to start the game over if you turn the system off, always a very unwelcome “feature”. Each level in the game is made up of two stages and a bossfight at the end of the second stage, and the saving is between levels, not stages; run out of lives, and you start the level over. The stages in this game are short, but there is a clock and the time limits are even shorter, so it will take practice and memorization in order to get through each level. Thanks to the traps and tricky jumps this game really is memorization-heavy. The game is linear, though — there are very few times when you’re doing anything other than moving straight along a set path, so there isn’t really exploration. I don’t mind that, myself, and honestly kind of like the level designs, but some dislike the games’ fairly simple, linear stage layouts. The environment often is more of a threat than the enemies, but you will need to fight them off along the way as well, and learn boss patterns at the end of each level. One hint: The first disappearing platforms in the first level won’t disappear if you are standing on them, so after jumping on one don’t rush to try to get to the top quickly — you’re in no danger of falling. By level three or four the game won’t be so kind, though, so don’t get used to it. I haven’t managed to finish this game, but it’s decent enough that I expect I will eventually. Thanks to all the traps, memorization, and frustration the game sometimes stops being fun, but I do want to see the rest of the levels, and the game is decent enough to certainly be worth a try, at least for platformer fans. There are very few non-Super CD Turbo CD platformers outside of the Valis series, but this is one of them, and while nothing above average overall (and perhaps below it), it’s decent enough that I kind of like it.

Jantei Monogatari II: Uchuu Tantei Deiban: Shutsoudouhen (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system. Jantei Monogatari, published by Atlus, is a series of mahjong games. Yes, Atlus’s longest-running TG16/CD production was a mahjong series. As with most mahjong games, you play as a guy and play against various girls, with fanservicey scenes your reward for victory. This game has more story than just that, though — as the title (detective something) suggests, this is a sci-fi game. You play as future detective Deiban, and with your female sidekick have to stop various female villains before they can accomplish their villainous plots by beating them at mahjong. You start out defending some children who are in trouble in their school thanks to one of the villains’ underlings, for instance. The story scenes play out with limited interaction — you don’t just watch all the time and then finally play mahjong, but do make choices. There are two choice wheels at the bottom, with eight total options, but this is a simple game and trial and error will get you through even if you don’t know the language, fortunately; just keep trying options until something works and progresses the story. There is plenty of voice acting, which helps as well. The visuals are nice, too — the cutscene/adventure part of this game looks good for a regular-CD title. Once you get to a mahjong battle, your guy faces off one one one against the opponent. Yeah, this is 1-on-1 mahjong only, no full four-player games unfortunately. Also the game fills up a bit too much of the screen on my HDTV, so the bottom half of my tiles is cut off — very annoying! It does display the whole picture on my CRT, though; must have a smaller cut-off area around the screen (my HDTV is rear-projection and not new…). Also, if you are successful in the battles, there are some special options you can buy with points between rounds. The options are all in Japanese text, though, so good luck figuring out what they do. You can also transform into super mode, for a slight power boost I presume, but only do so if you have a good hand I would expect.

Beyond that though, this is a mahjong game. It is important to note that like most such games, this game game does NOT explain how to play. The manual has a several-page-long comic, some basic control and interface descriptions, and that’s it; nothing at all about how the game plays. You’d better already know how to play two-player mahjong. I don’t know the rules very well, and aren’t any good at memorizing what winning hands are, so I haven’t managed to win rounds of this game. I don’t know poker, and with more tiles in your hand and a great many complex rules, mahjong is a lot more complex than that game is to learn. This game will not help you with that in any way. I’ll return to this after I manage to learn some more about how to actually put winning hands together in this game. Overall though, with good visuals in the story scenes and okay mahjong action, this seems like a decent mahjong game. The system has a lot of them, though, so I have no idea how it compares to the others.

Jantei Monogatari II: Uchuu Tantei Deiban: Kanketsuhen (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system. Released a couple of months after the above title, this second volume of Jantei Monogatari II is very similar to the first, except with a few additions. Most importantly, the story is new, and you fight new opponents. Also, this game adds a Mahjong mode in addition to the main Story mode, if you want to go straight to the action and do some one-on-one fights against five opponents from the game. This is a welcome addition for sure. The interface graphics have also been improved a bit, particularly in the story scenes. The game does reuse a lot of animations from the first game, though; even though the story is new, the hero’s transformation scene, the overlong die-roll animation, etc. all are reused from the first volume. The gameplay is just the same as the first one, too, with no changes. The few improvements it has, though, put this as slightly better than the first volume of JM2.

Last Alert – One player, saves to system. Telenet’s Last Alert is a top-down run & gun action game. With many cutscenes, lots of levels, some variety in level designs along the way, and that the game saves your progress as you play, Last Alert is a pretty impressive game for 1990, when it released. The gmae also has fantastic controls — unlike many run & gun games from its time, this one has a strafe-lock button, so you can lock your firing direction with ease! It makes shooting easy. Controls are good, as well. The game has some flaws, though. Most notably, the voice acting in this NEC-published US release is absolutely abysmal, to a comical degree. Also, the graphics are small, there is no multiplayer, and the game is easy and sorely lacking in challenge. This game gets a fair amount of praise from Turbo fans, and it deserves some of it, but the downsides are real. In Last Alert you play as Guy Kazama, a muscular ’80s style action hero. You’re off to beat a series of villains who want to take over the world, naturally. The game has cutscenes between missions, with the usual Turbo CD-style barely-animated-scenes-with-voice, and conversations with each boss once you reach them. However, the story is generic action/spy movie stuff, and the voice acting really is awful. That bad voice acting is entertainingly bad at times, though, so there is that. Also while the story’s far from great, a game, or even movie, in this genre rarely does much more. Back in 1990, just having voiced story cutscenes in a game was a pretty big deal, of course. Now it’s not, but the story here is mostly fine. Gameplay is what matters the most in games, anyway, and the plot sets the scene for each of Guy Kazama’s exploits.

Last Alert has 23 levels spread across a sequence of missions. Each mission is made up of several levels, and sometimes you can choose the order you play a missions’ levels in. The game will also autosave after you complete a mission, which is great (it does not seem to save after each level, though.). Levels are reasonable length in Last Alert, and you get experience as you kill enemies. As you level up you’ll get more health and unlock more guns. However, as I said earlier, the game very rarely provides much challenge. I’m not the greatest at games, but I do not die very often in this game, that’s for sure. Honestly I find the game getting tedious after a while, thanks to the low difficulty level and long length of the game. Sure, the controls are great and wiping out the enemies is usually easy, but it’s often TOO easy. You can also often shoot through cars, which is weird. The games’ internal rules for which things you can shoot through and which you can’t don’t make much sense, and more obstacles to your fire probably would have been a good thing. And as with many TG16 games, like a NES or SMS game don’t expect to find any difficulty level options here, there are none. The game does have a few different level types, though. The variants don’t change much, but in this genre anything is nice. In most levels, you’re navigating through a fairly linear level, looking for the boss and wiping out the enemies along the way. A few missions have you instead “infiltrating” a base trying to rescue prisoners. Here, the amount of enemies you face depends on how often you shoot your gun. So, arm your machine gun and fire away if you want to face endless waves of respawning foes, or use the pistol and have an easy time of it. There are also some levels where you have to explore around an area, finding all of the bombs to disarm for example.

The basic gameplay of going around and shooting enemies as they appear never changes, though, and nor do those small graphics. HuCard games in this genre like Legend of the Valkyrie or even Bloody Wolf probably look better than this game. This game does show off its CD format by having a lot more levels than those games do, of course. The game also has a decent CD audio soundtrack. Overall, Last Alert is an okay game. The firing-lock button makes moving around and shooting where you want easy, and the game is plenty long and it is a fun game, at least for a while at a time. The game costs quite a bit more than the other Turbo CD topdown run & gun, Final Zone II and I don’t know if it’s a better game, though. Since it saves you don’t have to play the whole game all at once, though, unlike that game, and that’s great. Still, slightly bigger graphics and some difficulty level options would have gone a long way here. Still, Last Alert is reasonably good, overall. It’s worth a look for sure.

L-Dis (J exclusive) – One player. L-Dis, from NCS Masaya, is a hard cute ’em up-styled horizontal shmup. This game is reasonably well regarded I think, but isn’t one of the better-known Turbo CD shmups. For a regular CD title, though, this game looks and plays great. L-Dis has a very basic sexist videogame plot: you play as a boy who has to save the girl he likes, who has been kidnapped by aliens. Yeah, this plot again. Fortunately the game is a lot better than the story, though. You pilot a cute little ship, flying through six or so several-part levels on your quest. L-Dis is a very tough game, and beating it will take quite a bit of practice; I haven’t gotten even close yet, so far. If you run out of lives you can continue, but you start the whole level over, which is quite cruel when you’ve gotten to the final boss. Most levels do have obstacles to avoid, and of course the level designs get even tougher as you progress. The game has a powerup system of course, with floating powerups some enemies drop. There is a problem here, though: unlike almost all shmups, the powerups here are Japanese text boxes. So yeah, memorize which one is which, or else you’ll have problems getting what you want. It’s kind of annoying, but with some practice you will get used to it. The text color tells you which of the two different powerup types the powerup will give you, weapon or ship, so that’s a help. Weapon powerups give you different weapons, while the ship ones can give you helper ships (like Gradius Options), a shield, and and such. You can have a few (but limited) options, and have to choose between either option helpers or bombs which do nothing until you use them as screen-clearing superbombs. The weapon system works well, as long as you can figure out what you’re getting.

L-Dis is a pretty good looking game. The game does have some parallax scrolling, though not in every level. Still, on the Turbo, any parallax is great to see. Backgrounds are well-drawn as well, and the sprites are done in a nice cartoony style which looks quite good. The ships all have big eyes on them, which is a nice touch. The game makes use of the CD format to have some enemies, and the bosses, talk during your fights with them. It’s a nice addition and gives the game more personality. The music is good, fitting stuff as well. Overall, L-Dis has graphics and sound about as good as you can expect from a regular-CD title, and plays about as well as it looks, too. L-Dis is a hard game, but it’s well worth the effort, and I will definitely be going back to this one as I try to get farther. This is one of the better Turbo shmups I own, though it’s hard to choose when they’re almost all so good… but even so, it’s one of the better ones.

*The Legend of Xanadu (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system, Super CD game. This is another Super CD game, so I haven’t played it yet… and from what I’ve read about it, I’ll have a hard time once I do. The Legend of Xanadu, from 1994, is a later release on the system from Falcom, and it’s one part Ys I & II, one part Ys III, and one part confusing, apparently. This game has top-down Ys-style action with somewhat small sprites but actual fullscreen gameplay (unlike all previous Falcom games or ports of Falcom games on this system), along with side-scrolling levels that have nicer graphics. However, it also apparently has some pretty tricky puzzles which are very, very hard to figure out for those like me who don’t know Japanese — you need to talk to people then go to specific places at specific times, since this game has an ingame time system, in order for some things to happen. There is a partial walkthrough for the game, but it’s far from complete; hopefully someone works on it soon. Even if I don’t get oo far though, I’m very interested to play this game, since it looks pretty good. The gmae has a sequel, LoX II, which has some of the system’s best graphics. That one is apparently a lot shorter than this game (people say 30+ hours for this one, maybe half that for the sequel), but it sure looks nice. This game does have one thing that game doesn’t, though: it comes in a dual-jewel case, and comes with not just a slightly thicker manual, but also a map/poster that was one of the reasons why I got this. On one side, you have the poster with art for the game. It’s very ’90s anime-style stuff, but it’s kind of amusing. On the other side, there’s a map of the floor layouts for all of the floors of the apparently very tricky dungeon at the end of the game. That’d probably be very useful, once you get that far.

Legion (J exclusive) – Two player simultaneous. Legion is usually regarded as being one of the Turbo CD’s worst shmups, and it’s easy to see why. This game is not without any value, however. Legion is by Telenet, and was released the same year as Avenger. This game is a far cry from that great should-be-classic, however. Legion is a brutally hard, unforgiving game with average to subpar graphics and lacking music. This game is mostly for masochists and people who really want another two-player co-op shmup for the TG16/CD, since there are so few on the platform.

Legion is also interesting for having English-language voice acting telling the story. The art design is okay, and has that Telenet look to it, but clearly did not get the budget of even Avenger. This game doesn’t have parallax, of course. This cut-rate game has no actual cutscenes, but it does have audio logs from your ships’ pilot which play over the level, all voice acted by a native English speaker. Is he the same guy who did one of the voices in The Ninja Warriors on Sega CD? I’m not sure. Anyway though, the story is somewhat amusing, and some of the lines are weird. You’re a space pilot sent to defeat an enemy ship fleet threatening your planet. However, it comes at the cost of CD audio — this game has none! Instead, the actual soundtrack is chiptunes, and don’t sound as good as Turbo CD shmups usually do as a result; the TG16 can do some good music, but it doesn’t have one of the best audio chips of its time. Still, the music isn’t all bad. It’s very repetitive, but some of the songs are kind of catchy, such as the between-levels space map tune. Others are just annoying. Ah well.

As for the gameplay, this game is about trial and error above anything else. Sort of like Telenet’s Valis games, the enemies zoom in at you from off the screen, and if you’re in the wrong place you will get hit. As a result you will die, and die often, and hopefully memorize everything as you do so. This game is reasonable-length, too; this isn’t one of those 20-minute shmups. That will be the only way to survive this frustrating game. When I can manage to stay alive for a while the game can be fun at times, though. You do respawn where you were when you died, but those lives will go away quickly, and you have limited continues, so finishing this game is hard. You lose all of your powerups when you die, which in this game is a SERIOUS setback — you start out quite underpowered, and being reverted to nothing will surely cause more deaths. Try to avoid taking any hits, somehow! In order to add some replay value, the game does have some branching paths, where you can choose between multiple stages. That’s nice. In two player mode killing the enemies will be easier, but you share credits and environmental obstacles and hard-to-dodge enemy fire will still take you down sometimes, so the game is still hard. Overall, I don’t entirely hate Legion. The game has okay controls, decent graphics for its time, and certainly provides plenty of challenge. If you don’t mind frustratingly difficult games, go ahead and give Legion a try if you find it for quite cheap. Otherwise pass. I don’t regret buying it, since there is some fun to be had and sometimes I like a challenge, but it’s definitely not one of the better Turbo CD games.

Mateki Densetsu Astralius (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system. Astralius, from IGS, is a traditional-style JRPG that is pretty much hated by the few people outside of Japan who have played it. I got this as a part of a lot, and unfortunately, here the critics are right: this game isn’t good. I do like the graphics and story, though. Astralius has decently good graphics for its time, good-sized sprites for an RPG from 1991, and the art design and enemies look good enough, when you’re looking at them. The monsters could look better, but it’s not too bad. This game is no Square or Enix title, but it looks fine, much better than I expected given its reputation. The problems are almost everywhere else. First, load times in this game are long and very frequent. Every battle has a long load, and you can’t even see the enemies on screen at first, either — you only can look at them through a menu option, or after you’ve chosen your strategy for the round. Argh. Some people also dislike that the game does not retarget if a characters’ target dies before their turn, but I don’t mind that; the GBA Golden Sun games worked that way, and it was fine, and added some strategy. Still, the slow-paced battles, with their odd menus-only-while-selecting-moves design and load times, slow this game down to a crawl. Your movement speed on the overworld is far too slow as well, and the random battle encounter rate is very high. That is not a good combination, and gets me to either stop playing games, or stop trying to explore in games, which is awful since exploration should be one of the more fun things to do in this kind of game.

As for the story, Astralius uses the classic story concept of having a group of normal Earth people who are pulled into a fantasy world. In this case, you play as a musician guy, and your three musical group members are the other party members. No, not a rock band; the main character is a flutist, and the game starts on an ocean liner where you are supposed to entertain the guests, before you get sucked into another world of course. In the other world, you naturally turn out to be the hero who will have to save the world, as expected. You’ll eventually gain music-based magic attacks for each character, fitting with the games’ theme. The game has a few cutscenes, and some voice acting, but also plenty of text of course. Use the walkthrough ( http://www.unlimitedzigworks.com/149…pc-engine.html ) if you don’t know Japanese, it’s essential. Or just don’t play the game. I haven’t gotten too far into this one, and can’t see myself sticking with it long enough to finish it, but I will get at least a bit farther, I think; I’m not too far into it, and while it definitely is frustrating and I’m sure I’ll lose patience with it eventually, I do at least like the basic story. That “modern person pulled into another world” setup is a good one, and it’s one only infrequently seen in RPGs.

Pomping World (J ver.) [aka Buster Bros.] – Two player simultaneous. Pomping World, or Buster Bros., is a port by Hudson of Capcom’s arcade game of the same name. This game has a US release as ‘Buster Bros. Collection’, but I have the Japanese version because the game is the same and this was cheaper. The original arcade game was called Pang in Europe, so the game has a different name in each region. From the second game in this series on, in Japan the series also took on the “Pang” name, but here it stayed “Buster Bros.”. So yeah, why that title, “Pomping World”? I have no idea. Whatever you call it, though, this game is decent fun. I don’t love this game, but it’s alright to good. Buster Bros. is a single-screen shooting/platform game. Unlike a lot of single-screen platformers from this era, though, this game is nothing like Bubble Bobble. Instead, it’s more of a shmup. Each of the players — and yes, that this game has two player co-op is awesome — can move around the bottom of the screen, or up ladders to higher platforms if there are ladders in the stage in question. Each level is just one screen, but there are 17 stages full of levels and limited continues so the game is plenty long. The attacks in this game are unique: you can only shoot straight up. The enemies in this game are bouncing balls, which get smaller as you shoot them, but much like Asteroids, as they shrink they also break into multiple parts. Instead of a gun, your default weapon is more of a grappling hook gun, or something — if it hits the ceiling or a platform above you, it creates a rope which will damage an enemy (ball) if the ball bounces into it. This will destroy the rope and let you fire again. However, when one of those is out, you can’t shoot, so be careful with your placement! Also, since you have to stand under or right in front of enemies to hit them, the game requires quite a bit of risk, and can be frustrating when you’re down to a few tiny balls which aren’t bouncing very high, giving you very little margin for error. This is a one hit and you die game. There are some weapon powerups that can make things a bit easier, but you still fire upwards only. That’s what makes this game unique, but I do find it kind of annoying sometimes, and I wish I could shoot sideways too. Ah well, you do get used to it. The game has a variety of backgrounds as you progress, and new obstacles and trickier stage layouts appear as you get farther. The basic gameplay stays the same, though. Overall this is a decently fun game, but I do have some issues with the design (always firing up only, most importantly), and there’s no enemy variety either, just lots of balls, balloons, or whatever they are. I also dislike how you can get stuck sometimes if you didn’t do things right in a level. Still, the game can be addictive and definitely is a solid and mostly well-designed challenge, and the two player co-op is pretty cool as well. I can see why this game was successful enough to get a couple of sequels, though they didn’t come to this system. The first three Buster Bros. games were all included in the Buster Bros./Pang Collection for the PS1. All three titles are also included in the Capcom Puzzle World collection on PSP, along with Super Puzzle Fighter II and one other game. There are also European ports of this game on some computers (Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, PC, and Atari ST). There is a SNES port of the second Buster Bros. title, but not the first. I haven’t played that one.

*Prince of Persia – One player, saves to system, Super CD. I haven’t played this yet (Super CD…), but as for PoP in general, it’s not a game I played much of at all as a kid, and I haven’t gone back to it much either. The game seems okay, but that time limit… maybe I’ll try this one someday and actually play PoP for once, I don’t know.

*Puyo Puyo CD (J exclusive) – Two player simultaneous, Super CD. Haven’t played this yet either, but Puyo Puyo is a pretty good series.

Ranma 1/2 (J exclusive) – One player, password save. Ranma 1/2, by NCS Masaya, is a side-scrolling action-platformer beat ’em up game with lots of cutscenes. The game is based on the first season of the classic anime, and many scenes from the anime appear in this game. Or, well, a few do — this game is quite short, in terms of actual content. The game tries to make up for that with long cutscenes and a steep difficulty level, and while that adds frustration, it does work; while this game would be excessively short if you got through it all without dying and skipped the cutscenes, it feels longer thanks to how many times I have to replay each level until I beat it. The cutscenes are entertaining and fun, too. I really liked the Ranma 1/2 anime, so even though this is in Japanese I have a solid idea of what’s going on — there’s nothing new here, it’s all based on stuff from the show. For those who don’t know, Ranma 1/2 is an action/comedy manga and anime from Rumiko Takahashi about a martial artist boy, Ranma, who turns into a girl when water is poured on him. There’s a silly cast of characters, some of which can also turn into other forms when doused with water, his love interest Akane, and more. The anime was very successful and lasted a long time, and I’ve watched almost all of it. In the game you play as Ranma, sometimes only in boy form, sometimes only in girl form, and sometimes, in levels with water present, in either form. Girl Ranma is faster and can jump higher but doesn’t do as much damage, so they are different, which is good. In a nice touch, in levels where you can transform back and forth, the game actually changes the end-level cutscene depending on Ranma’s gender, so you will see the scene with girl Ranma if you’re female, or boy Ranma if you’re male. I wasn’t expecting that, but it’s there! Of course as usual the cutscenes are mostly static, but that’s the best they could do here.

Gameplay is simplistic. In each level or section of a level, you either walk to the right while avoiding obstacles (if there are any) and beating up the enemies which come at you, or do a 1-on-1 fight against a single opponent from the show in a smaller arena. The first type of level generally are short, and don’t go on for very long. These generally seem to be the easier part of the game, at least earlier on that is; they do get harder. The 1-on-1 fights, however, can be hard right from the start. You’ll have to learn the controls well in order to win, since your opponent has more health than you do, and if it’s a fight in a level which also has a first section against normal enemies, you might enter with only partial health. The controls and hit detection are not too well thought through. Essentially, you only hit a specific distance forward with each hit, so you can cheese some enemies by standing on them, jumping up, and doing the “land on head” kick, for instance. And time your high kicks (down+attack) well, because they only hit at a certain distance. In better games you would not have these problems, but Ranma games were not exactly all great — the first few SNES Ranma games are no better than this either. Lose a life and you start at the fight again, but at game over it’s back to the start of the stage. You have infinite continues, but if you choose game over instead, you’ll get your password for the level. These passwords are in the form of a head, body, and legs of various Ranma characters, with three parts each from a different character, so they’re kind of annoying because they’re purely visual. Identifying some of the characters from just their legs can be tricky. I had to memorize what the part looked like then go scrolling through the password screen sometimes, because there it’s easy to tell which part goes with which. Couldn’t they have just supported saving to the system? At least this is better than not having saving, though! This game may be short, but it can be frustrating and I’m happy to not have to replay all the levels every time. Overall, this game really is only for side-scrolling beat ’em up fans and Ranma fans. I don’t like side-scrolling beat ’em ups all that much, but I do like Ranma, so I like this game despite its serious flaws. It’s fun to play a Ranma game which goes through the first and best season of the anime, and the game is playable even if it’s not the greatest. I also like that this is a sidescroller, considering how very few of those there are on the regular Turbo CD. Non-fans may not like this game, though, I would guess. But I think it’s alright. It’s flawed, annoying at times, and could be a lot better, but despite that I find it at least a little bit fun.

Record of Lodoss War (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system. Published by Hudson, Record of Lodoss War is an RPG based off of the popular anime series of the same name. This game may be an anime license, but it’s a big, ambitious game. This game comes in a dual-jewel case, and has a decent-sized manual and a nice spell list/poster as well in the box. The poster is a quite nice image of Deedlit, but that spell list on the other side is also useful (particularly if you know Japanese). Unfortunately, it’s also got a lot of language issues for those like me who don’t speak Japanese. I have watched, and mostly liked, the Lodoss War anime, but apart from the characters, that isn’t much help here; the basic setup is somewhat similar, but the game itself is very different from the anime. So, you play as Parn, a human warrior type guy who will of course end up saving the world. You will eventually gather together a party of six, all of them from the party in the anime. I haven’t gotten nearly that far, but I have played it enough to figure out the basic menus, which took a while because of all the language issues. This game is more complex than Astralius, and doesn’t have any kind of guide online, either; hopefully someone makes one sometime, because some help, particularly for where to go, is badly needed! This game is not linear, you can wander all over the map. If you don’t know Japanese, you won’t be able to read the people telling you where you should be heading, so you’ll end up just randomly wandering around, fighting random battles, until you bump into the right place. That does not sound like much fun. This game has constant loading, too. Loading for menus, loading for the camp screen, loading into and out of each battle, etc. This game is already slow, and the loading slows down the pace even more, that’s for sure. This is a slow, slow game. You’ll need patience for this one.

Fortunately, the battle system is fairly good, and the game has some great music as well. The graphics aren’t as good; this game has small sprites in the overworld, and even Astralius looks better. The art design is good, but everything is small in both the overworld and battles. Battle screens are very bland visually apart from the sprites, as well. Also, as with most of Falcom’s TGCD games, the game plays in a bordered window; there’s a border around the viewing area, and your characters’ stats are permanently on the right side of the screen, as well. The play window is larger than it is in many Falcom games, but still, I wish it was fullscreen. I believe this games’ sequel is, which sounds good. The towns are done as static images, though, instead of regular explorable “JRPG towns”, so they look better; the static-image art in the cutscenes and towns is done well. In the town you have a little map letting you choose which place you want to go to, and then once you go to a location that place appears on the screen. In the first town, there’s a town square where you can access the menu, several houses you can go to to talk to people, a temple where you get Parn’s first ally, Etoh the priest. Then it’s best to go to the market to buy Parn some equipment and get some healing items. Etoh starts with equipment, but Parn doesn’t. In the market, there are six sellers to buy from. The bottom one sells items, of which there are four kinds in the game. The first one heals your LP (health), the second heals your MP (magic), and I’m not sure yet about the other two but I assume at least one is a resurrection item. The five weapon/armor sellers are trickier to buy from, since the game only tells you who can equip each item and not what it is. Either try to translate stuff yourself, or save beforehand and try stuff out until you find what you need then load and buy the right thing, I think. The third menu option on the weapon/armor sellers’ list lets you equip things, and the last lets you give equipment to other party members — handy things to have there. While I wish that the game showed what type of weapon or armor each item is, I do like that the shops at least tell you who can equip each piece; that is handy. Newer games usually also tell you how it’d change your character stats, but this game doesn’t have that unfortunately. At least it has something.

As for the camp pause or town square menu, the first tier of this menu has a heal/item view option as the top option, go to Camp screen as the second option, and change party order as the third option. In the Camp screen, it shows how much of each of the four items you have and your money total on the screen. You can save in this menu at any time, so you don’t need to go back to town or something — very handy! This makes the game playable, I think. I strongly prefer RPGs to let you save anywhere when not in battle, and this game does. Just know that Save is the THIRD option on that screen; the second is Load. Don’t mix them up. The first option is Equip, I’m not sure what the fourth does yet, the fifth and last is for battle options. I don’t know what they do. In battle, the game goes to a top-down map of the single-screen battle area. Instead of your standard “you stand on opposite sides of the screen and hit eachother” battles, Lodoss War have a strategy element, as you can move around the battle area at will. Very nice! I always have preferred strategic battles to just plain “stand on opposite sides” stuff. The pathfinding for movement is sometimes iffy, and the game doesn’t tell you movement ranges, but you’ll get used to it. It’s kind of like Lunar, except you can tell people to move to a specific point on the field, something not possible in those games. Like Lunar though, the parties generally start out out of range for melee attackers, so you’ve got to move first. I like it better this way. Those tiny sprites are kind of hard to make out much detail on, though… ah well. At least they are well drawn. In the battle menu, the top option goes to the attack menu. Below that (in order) you can change your character turn order, ???, use auto-battle (note: you can’t disable this once selected until the battle ends!), go to that battle options screen here too, or last run away. Once you choose to attack you can use your normal weapon to attack the selected enemy (you will move towards them automatically if out of range), move to a selected spot, use a spell or item (menu: spell, item, item? Not sure what that last one does, yet.), or defend. Each character has different spells, so try them out and figure out what they do. Enemies can take a little while to kill, but they, or you, will go down eventually.

Naturally, being an old RPG, this game is all about fighting lots and lots of battles. Save often, because this game is hard; I’ve gotten killed not too far from the first town. You basically have to grind right from the start… argh. If this wasn’t a Lodoss War game, I’m not sure if I’d try; sure this game is good, but it’s not usually a kind of game I stick with, grindey top-down old RPGs that is. But it is, so yeah, I will play this more, until I run into a wall of not knowing where to go, I imagine. Overall though, while the graphics aren’t the greatest, the gameplay here is solid. The game has a fairly good battle system, a large world to explore, and more, and it’s mostly playable once I figured out the menus, too; the main issue is just not knowing where to go. Even just a basic guide telling you where to go at each point would be fantastic… I want one! Ah well. Even as it is though, for Lodoss or classic RPG fans, this game is definitely worth a look, and shouldn’t cost much either. The game has a sequel, which is on the Turbo Super CD, and is different from the other Lodoss games at the time on Japanese computers and the Sega CD.

Road Spirits (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system. Road Spirits, from Arc System Works (then Arc Co.), is a good-looking but sadly vapid racing game. This game was clealry inspired by Outrun, as just in Outrun you drive towards the horizon in a “scaler-style” linescroll racing game. You have several sports cars to choose from, and there are over a dozen tracks in this game beginning to end so it will take a good while. The graphics are quite good, as well. The menus and interface look decent, the game saves your best time on each track (nice!), the cars are large, the environments beautiful, and trackside objects are present as well. There are very, very few racing games on the Turbo CD, and this is just about the only behind-the-car one (apart from the scattered racing bits in Zero 4 Champ II, this is about it I think), but visually it makes a good impression. The music is pretty good as well, and is nicely varied. I like it. The gameplay, however, is seriously lacking. Specifically, this game is brain-dead easy. Your only opponent in this game is the clock; other cars are just traffic to avoid, and avoiding them is not difficult. Staying on the road is just as easy, as it won’t be until almost the end of the game that you finally reach tracks that even begin to challenge in terms of the actual turns! Most of the game consists of about two minute long races that are absent of any serious chance of failure. You’re given plenty of time, and the track won’t turn beyond your ability to easily respond. There aren’t any difficulty level options in this game either, of course. It’s really sad, because the game could have really been something, but by making the game so excessively easy, it makes this game kind of hard to recommend. It’s a cheap game though — import-only, but cheap — so it might be worth a pickup because of how few racing games there are on this system, and for something easy to play through sometime you want to play a game but not actually have any chance of losing. I just wish that they had made the game a bit tougher. Something in between this and the extreme challenge of Victory Run (TG16) would be perfect, I think. That’d probably be Outrun, but OutRun (HuCard) costs a lot more than this game does. Anyway, Road Spirits is okay, I guess, but could have been a lot better if it wasn’t near-impossible to lose.

Rom Rom Stadium (J exclusive) – Two player simultaneous, saves to system. This is a baseball game from NCS Masaya, and sadly it’s not a very good one. Rom Rom Stadium is an early TCD release, and it shows: like most of the earlier HuCard baseball games on the system, this has a strictly overhead view and looks barely improved over NES titles visually, too much of the time. The sprites are very small, and the field is too. There also isn’t a full season mode here, just a pennant-chase as you try to beat the other teams with the one you select. At least the game will save your progress between games. You can also create your own custom team, and load it to another persons’ game by a ridiculously long (like, hundred-plus-letter) password you can view… though with passwords that long, it’s not worth it. The teams in this game are based on the real Japan League baseball teams, but I doubt it has a real license so it’s just clone teams. I love baseball, and it is interesting to see what has to be one of the first ever CD-based baseball games, though, so I do find the game kind of interesting, even if objectively it’s definitely a bad game. The graphics are only the first problem with this game. It also barely makes use of its CD medium, and the baseball mechanics are flawed as well. The only things reminding you that this is on a CD are clearer voice samples than you’d find on a cart or card game, some little “cutscenes” where an anime-style girl wearing various outfits, who is watching your game on TV, cheers or criticizes you during and after games (depending on how well your team is doing), and… well, that’s about it. There are no cutscenes here apart from those bits with the girl.

As for the gameplay, the game has the overhead field view, and a behind-the-batter view for the pitcher/batter duel. Once you manage to get the timing down to hit the ball, the main problem is that runners are much faster than the ball. Good luck trying to keep people from getting, or staying, on base… the computer may do fine at it, but human players will find that difficult. There is no field indicator as later top-down baseball games have, either, so you’ll just have to watch the ball to figure out where it’s going. Good luck trying to line up fielders who are off the screen with the ball flying towards them… or getting ground balls that get past your infielders, since who knows where the outfielders are. I don’t care for those later top or isometric view with minimap baseball games much either — Hardball III (PC/Genesis) completely spoiled me and I just can’t get used to any other kind of classic baseball game — but those games are at least a lot better than this. So, yeah, this game is challenging, and the computer probably cheats. It does make some mistakes, such as frequently throwing away the ball while trying to throw to first, though… but that’s more bad than good, when you think about it, because of how stupid it is. Exploit this anyway, though, because scoring in this game can be tough. Find a human to play against if you want to have “fun”, and even then the slow ball will annoy both of you, and the ugly graphics won’t impress anyone. Rom Rom Stadium may be one of, or maybe the, first CD-based baseball games, but that doesn’t make it good.

Shanghai II (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system (scores/settings), passwords (for direct access to puzzle layouts). Shanghai II, by Hudson, is the second version of this classic solitaire game using the Mahjoing tileset. It’s a good game with outstanding music but limited variety. I first played Shanghai clones on the PC back in the late ’90s, and it’s a great fun concept which can be challenging. There are four of each tile type somewhere in the field, except for special tiles like the dragons, flowers, and such, which you match with the others in their category. With a little practice you get used to what is what. The game works by matching similar tiles, but you can only remove tiles which have a fully uncovered (not touching another tile) left or right side; tiles in between other tiles cannot be touched. Because the tile patterns have multiple layers, luck is a huge factor in this game; losses will not always be your fault, there’s no way to know what is underneath the stacks. Of course, card games always have a luck factor, and mahjong tiles are essentially the same thing as cards in terms of function. This game has six different board layouts, each named for a different animal, and each one has probably a thousand possible tile layouts within it. Later Shanghai games have many more than six board layouts, and add new game modes, multiplayer, and more, but this is one of the earlier ones, so it doesn’t have any of that. The Saturn and Game Boy/GB Color Shanghai games I have do have those options (I review both in their respective system summaries), so I wasn’t sure if I would really find this game worthwhile because of how much less content it has than those games. Well, it is. The graphics are simple but effective, but I really have to say how incredible this games’ music is! I read that the Turbo CD Shanghai games (Shanghai III also has a TCD release) have great music, and that is absolutely true. Even if the gameplay here is lacking options and features compared to newer games like this, the music is so great that I’ve been playing game a lot, and surely will continue to.

The basic gameplay here is classic Shanghai done well, and that’s good. The game has four different tileset options, though it doesn’t have the number or symbol options you commonly see in newer Shanghai titles and clones; all four in this game are standard Mahjong characters only. I recommend the fourth one, since it has some color, which really helps differentiate the tiles. I also would hightly recommend using the fastest cursor speed; in the timed game, every second counts. There is also a difficulty level option, but Easy is hard enough, I haven’t tried the harder ones. Once you choose your options, the only other thing to do is start the game. The game sends you to the Tiger board first, but you can access any of the six from the menu, which you open by hitting Start. The middle menu is the board select. The names there are in Japanese, but once you choose a board it says the name in English on the table, so it’s easy to figure out.). The lefthand menu lets you take back a turn or reset the board. Again the menu is in Japanese, but it’s no problem. The righthand menu lets you start the timed challenge game (top option), view your high scores in timed mode, or enter a password to go to a specific table layout. There is no scorekeeping in the main game, unfortunately, only timed mode. Newer Shanghai games or clones would keep track of your best scores whether or not you won the game, but this game is more basic. It is disappointing, but at least the timed game has a leaderboard, and that high score table is saved to the system. The timed game is quite difficult, as the time limit is tight and finishing each table before you run out of time will be a real challenge. Also, actually getting a good score will be even harder, given how much luck is involved in this game. Takebacks are limited too, so you can’t just take back every mistake. You can retry tables if you fail, but your score resets if you do so, so the only way to really beat the game would be to complete all six tables without any failures. After completing each table, there’s a simple but nice little congratulations scene, slightly different for each tables’ animal. I haven’t managed to beat all six in one go yet, it’s quite hard. I’ll keep trying for sure, though! As for the passwords, the first two digits set the table (TI for tiger, etc.), the next is difficulty I believe, and the last group is the table layout. This lets you access any of the many, many variants, if there’s some specific one you want to try; by default the game randomizes which one you see. Overall, Shanghai II is great, and I love it. The featureset may be limited, but what’s here is done very well. Other versions of Shanghai II are on plenty more platforms, but none have this versions’ awesome soundtrack. I’ll have to get Shanghai III for Turbo CD (the first game wasn’t on CD, just HuCard, or Sega Master system, for console releases). The third game looks like it has a lot of nice additions.

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective – One player, saves to system. See my Sega CD summary of this game — this is the exact same Icom FMV-heavy detective game as that one, just on Turbo CD instead of Sega CD. This was the first console port of the game. Yes, Sega was so desperate for a game with video in it that they included as a packin with their new Sega CD a third-party game which had already been released on the competitions’ system the previous year. The Sega CD version changed the graphics some, and might look slightly better, but the gameplay is the same, and overall the visuals are just a bit different, more than anything. This version looks decent, just about as okay as the Sega CD version. Unfortunately this means that the video is very low quality and plays in a small window. I was hoping that maybe the higher-color Turbo CD could put some more colors in its video, but if it does, I can’t really tell. Ah well. I guess it was probably hard enough to manage to squeeze video playback into the regular TCD’s 64KB of RAM. Unlike the Sega CD, the Turbo CD has very, very few games with live action video in them, since most such games, including this one, were Western-developed and the Turbo CD of course was quite the failure here. As such, while the game isn’t the most exciting thing, it does stand out more on the Turbo CD, which has so very few games with live-action video, versus the Sega CD. As for the gameplay though, this is a video adventure game. You watch videos, read newspaper articles, book segments, and the like, and slowly try to figure out what is going on in each of the three cases on the disc. You can’t pick up items in this game, but instead have to figure out who to talk to or where in London to go at each point in the case. Time matters, as the faster you finish the case the better your score at the end, but along the way this is a slow-paced game which requires careful reading and viewing in order to uncover the truth in each case. The game can be fun, once you get into it and take your time. I did enjoy trying to figure out what had happened. However, there is almost no replay value since each case is always the same, so this game won’t take long. Still, this is an okay game. Also on PC (DOS), Sega CD, and iOS/Mac/PC (Win6+). The latter three releases are a modern re-release with better video quality than the old ones.

Side Arms Special (J exclusive) – One player. Side Arms Special is an enhanced CD edition of the TG16 HuCard version of this NEC-developed console port of Capcom’s arcade horizontal shmup Hyper Dyne Side Arms. This game was an early release for the CD system, and it shows, but it is a pretty interesting game even so. The HuCard version got a US release, but this CD edition did not. Side Arms is one of Capcom’s shmups which lets you fire in multiple directions. First was Section Z, then Side Arms, and then last Forgotten Worlds. Forgotten Worlds lets you rotate and fire in any direction, but this game is simpler: I fires right, and II fires left. It’s simple, and it works. Just make sure to turn up both of those turbo switches for this one, most of the time, it’s needed. When you die you respawn right where you were in the main game, but have almost no invincibility so one death will often become three, or five, before you recover. That’s painful, when you’re only given two continues to complete the game with. Memorization is key! I’ll go into more detail about the original mode in this game when I do a TG16 summaries thread, but Side Arms is a great shooter with a few annoying issues. The game has five different weapons, and in the main game you can switch between them on the pause screen. Apparently in the arcade game you are just stuck with the last weapon you got, but here they improved things by letting you switch. The three-way gun and shotgun are my favorites, though the MBL is best against most bosses. There are hidden powerups, so shoot the walls and memorize their locations! These include point orbs, extra lives, and most importantly the super-mode powerup. When you get that, an orange ship (the player 2 ship from the arcade game) come in and merge with your ship to form one stronger unit. Now you’re in robot form, and shoot eight shots at all angles with every shot you fire. This will last until you get hit and lose the powerup, and the extra shots will really help keep you alive so try to avoid that. Normal powerups appear from one specific enemy type, and give you more weapons and increase their power; change the pickup by shooting the powerups to cycle through the options. Note that POW actually increases your ship speed, not weapon power. Odd choice of words there, that confused me for quite some time. The reverse POW decreases your speed. Apart from the respawn problems, this is a very good game. The game feels a bit lacking in color, but the arcade game looks the same way, so this is just being accurate to the original. Unfortunately the original arcade game’s two player mode is absent in both TG16/CD releases. Another issue is that the bosses repeat a lot — you’ll fight the same three or four bosses over and over, until finally you reach a new boss at the end of the game. Ah well, it’s fun anyway, and I did finally manage to beat the HuCard version of this game earlier this year (in 2013). I do like that bosses have health bars on the screen, it’s very handy. When compared to the HuCard version of the game, there are two major changes in the CD version. As in Daisenpuu Custom, there aren’t any cutscenes in this game, despite it being on a disc. There is a CD audio soundtrack though, and it is a great CD-audio version of the games’ music. It’s very cool to hear CD versions of the songs.

The other addition is even more interesting: in addition to a perfect (exept for the added load times and change to CD audio) copy of the HuCard game, there is also a second game mode available, called B.C. mode. In B.C. mode, the levels are shorter but harder, since in this mode you are sent back when you die; no respawn-where-you-died this time. While the levels are cut up versions of the original modes’ levels, the enemies in B.C. mode are mostly new designs, and the bosses are all new here. The weapon-switch and boss fight mechanics are different this time as well. You cannot switch weapons at will in this version; instead, you’re simply stuck with whatever weapon you last pick up. Instead of shooting the powerup orbs to change their powerup, they will now cycle between the different options automatically. This is as much good as bad, as it can take a while to cycle. There are only four weapons in B.C. mode, and all four are new. The best one feels like a hybrid of the shotgun and 3-way laser from the original mode, as it has the shotguns’ short range and many shots, but does not destroy enemy bullets, unlike the original mode shotgun but like the other weapons. There is again a straight laser as well, and a weird ball shot which rebounds forward and back. I think the original game has stronger weapons, but some of these are interesting. The powered-up robot mode is gone, and with it the 8-way helper fire as well. Instead, you can pick up some helper ships, which will protect you from hits (that is, act like a limited shield) and shoot out a bit, Gradius Options-style. Keeping these is important, as they’re your only hope for staying alive later on in the game. As for the bosses, bosses in B.C. mode do not have health bars anymore, so you’ll just have to shoot them until they die. They are more varied than in the original mode, though, which is good, and once again all of the boss designs here are new. You have to fight these bosses differently from the original mode bosses, though: B.C. mode bosses will only take damage from charge shots, not any normal fire! You’ll have to charge up and fire at their weak points to hurt them. This can be quite difficult by the later levels, and as a result B.C. mode, while being shorter than the original mode, is much more difficult. With new enemies, new weapons, new bosses, and perhaps slightly altered background graphics too, though, this is a very interesting game that any Side Arms or classic shmup fan should play! Despite the wealth of shmups on this system, Side Arms Hyper Dyne is a fantastic game and is one of the better US-released HuCard shmups. On CD it may not stand out quite as much, but the B.C. mode is great and makes this game definitely worth a purchase, whether or not you have other versions of Sidearms. No other version has B.C. mode in it, after all. The original Sidearms is on arcade and PS2/Xbox in one of the Capcom Classic Collection discs, but the TG16 version is TG16/TCD only, and B.C. mode is TCD exclusive.

Splash Lake – Two player simultaneous, saves to system. Splash Lake is a puzzle-action game, and it’s nice looking and plays great too. In this interesting title from NEC (and distributed by TTI in the US, since this was a later 1992 release here apparently), you play as a pair of cute, cartoony, legless ostriches which for some reason have to walk… er, bounce, rather… over floating pathways infested with hordes of monsters. This game is entirely playable in two player co-op, which is really awesome! One button jumps and the other button pecks. You can jump one or two spaces forward, but as you’re an ostrich, you can’t fly of course. You can defeat the monsters by pecking the bridge’s floor tiles. There are two main types of tiles, bridge pillar tiles and bridge floor tiles. Pillar tiles cannot be pecked, and will always be on the map. Floor tiles, however, can be destroyed. When you peck a bridge tile once, it cracks. Once you have cracked all tiles in an area which touch a solid tile, cracked two tiles next to eachother, or cracked enough tiles to cut off an area from the rest of the level, that area of the bridge will collapse, sending anyone on it into the water, both player or enemy. After a couple of seconds, the dropped bridge will reappear. Early enemies are easy enough to drop into the water with simple traps by pecking tiles behind an enemy and then waiting for them to approach you. Later on, however, enemies will get trickier, gain their own limited flight, and even require you to peck out long stretches of bridge all at once in order to kill them. There is also a boss at the end of each of the games’ six 10-level worlds. As a result, the game has a good difficulty curve, starting easy but gradually getting more challenging as you go along. Even so, 60 levels isn’t that long, and the game may seem to be short. However, there are two full additional hidden 60-level sets in this game! Yeah, they should have unlocked each after beating the previous, or told you abot this in the manual, but the only hint to their existence is a cryptic line in the story section: “We can even discoer items hidden behind teh pillar which will be a bonus point for both of us.” “Behind the pillar”? Huh? That’s not a very useful clue! How it works is that in order to unlock the second set of levels, you have to find the hidden fruit in each level in the first set. You find this by pecking three times on each bridge pillar until you find the one with the hidden fruit in it, and picking it up. Do that again in the second set of levels, and you unlock at third and final one. It’s great that there is more to this game, because Splash Lake is pretty good and can be a lot of fun. The game saves your progress as you go, unlocking levels in the level select as you reach them. Your best scores and options are also saved.

Splash Lake has a lot of options, on that note. You can choose from four ostrich colors, two bridge-drop types (all at once or one tile at a time), the number of lives per game (3 to 10; you have infinitne continues of course, but this matters if you’re playing for score!), whether you have 3 hit points per life or one (the game is much harder with one hit deaths!), whether you can pass through the other player in two player games or if you have to jump over them, how much time you get per level (the default is generous), the background color and bridge pattern, music on/off, and finally whether you want to view the amusing little in-between-area “ostrich theater” scenes which appear after you beat each boss. They’re all silly and amusing, so don’t turn them off, I would say. The options menu is great, I like being able to choose the menu background color and ostrich color. The music in the game is reasonably good as well. This isn’t one of the most memorable soundtracks around, but it’s a light, fun soundtrack that perfectly fits this kind of game. However, the CD audio is pretty much the only reason why this game is on a disc. Unless the game data takes up more than 8KB, which may or may not be the case, this game otherwise would be fine on a HuCard — there aren’t any videos, voice acting, real cutscenes, or anything in this game. Just fun gameplay. However, the good music is good enough excuse to put this on a disc, I think. Overall, Splash Lake is a pretty good game which I highly recommend anyone with a Turbo CD should track down! The game is great with either one or two players, and has lots of levels too if you find the hidden fruits. The game has a US release, too, which I have; it shouldn’t cost too much, for a Turbo CD game, but there’s also the import version of course. Either way, play Splash Lake, it’s good.

Super Albatross (J exclusive) – Super Albatross is an early CD golf game. By Telenet’s Laser Soft division, Super Albatross tries to use its CD format well, but has some seriously questionable gameplay mechanics. I generally find golf games very boring and almost never play them, but I was willing to give this one a try after looking at how it wasn’t just a golf game, but also has a story mode with cutscenes and everything. There are several modes in this game, including a single game on one of the courses in the game against several human or computer opponents, solo practice, or the story mode. In practice or single game modes, you can play as any of a variety of characters. In the story mode, though, you play as the guy on the cover. The intro cutscene explains his tragic past; the voice acting may be in Japanese, but it’s easy enough to see what’s going on. As usual animation is limited, but I like the effort — golf games did not have things such as this back then! Even now, a full character story mode in a sports game is uncommon, I think. The story explains how our hero’s sister (I think) dies of something or other, so he’s taking up his golf club to continue what she started… or something. I haven’t gotten past the intro, because this game is hard and I’m awful at golf games. One of the playable characters in single game/practice mode is a cyborg, so later on this game must go in a sci-fi direction.

But as I said, this game is not quite a normal golf game. Unfortunately, that isn’t a good thing. As with most golf games from the 1980s, this is a strictly top-down game, and does not have a behind-the-character viewpoint like most later golf games have. The graphics are okay, but apart from using more colors, this isn’t too much of a step over what the NES can do. In that respect this isn’t much different from other early HuCard golf games on the TG16. What is different is how you hit the ball in this game. Normally, golf games have a meter. You press the button several times with the right timing in order to swing. In this game though, there’s no meter; instead, how hard you press the button down determines how hard you hit. Yes, really, and it doesn’t work very well because without a meter, hitting the ball precisely, as is of course required, is quite difficult. It will take quite some time to get used to exactly how hard tyou have to press the button in order to go each distance you need. There is some essential help for this in the manual: the back cover of the manual shows you the maximum hitting distance each of the characters in the game will get with each club type. You’ll need the manual for this, because this is not told to you ingame, but have the manual and use that chart if you want to hit the ball the distance it needs to go! It’s the only way to have a chance. I couldn’t find anything of note about how this game plays online in English, but yes, this is how it works. Overall I can’t really say what I think of this game because I’m awful at golf games in general, but the odd, simplified control scheme makes me think that it probably isn’t exactly some lost classic. I do like the inclusion of a story mode, though.

Ultra Box vol. 6 (J exclusive) – One player, some games save to system (see below). Ultra Box was a digital magazine series. I think this is the last ‘issue’, unfortunately; it’s interesting. Really though, while it calls itself a magazine, this is more of a mini-game collection, or magazine cover disc but full of of original content instead of demos. The disc has five games on it, plus a variety of extra stuff. I’ll cover each of the games separately. All games are one player only though, so I won’t list that each time. They are all surely short games, though the length varies somewhat from title to title.
–Jangken & Fairies – Saves to system. This game is a rock-paper-scissors RPG. Rock-paper-scissors is called “jangken” in Japanese, and I believe you have to rescue some fairies, so the title is descriptive. This game looks like a very basic NES-esque early TG16 RPG, as you start in a town and are on a quest, except you do rock paper scissors for battles. Yeah, it’s weird like that.
–Alice in Flagland – Saves to system. This menu-based adventure game stars a girl named Alice in a weird somewhat Alice in Wonderland-themed world. The game plays like Snatcher, so you don’t move a cursor around, but instead just select options from the menu. The game is entirely in Japanese, of course, so I didn’t get far before hitting a game over screen, but there are amusing pictures and some voice clips that made me want to keep going anyway. I imagine this game isn’t that long, but it’d probably be fun if you know the language. And yeah, it’s weird!
–Dokikoki Driveland – No saving. This is a little minigame of sorts, and is shorter than the three main games on the disc (above and below). This game is a topdown racing game, and it’s a pretty fun one; I wish there was a full game based on this engine, but I don’t think there is. This game is also a bit “ecchi”, in that if you’re successful in the game eventually the two girls on the games’ title screen will remove their clothes one piece at a time. The game is a timetrial title, so you have a set, tight time limit to get through each course. It’s tough, short, and fun.
–“Henai” Lecture – No saving? This is a little dating sim/quiz game, I believe. I can’t get anywhere in it, given that it’s a game where you have to answer questions in Japanese, but you control some guy who seems to be trying to date a girl, maybe? Anyway, a girl is asking you questions. Given that ‘Henai” is in the title, I imagine that it’s some kind of love-related thing. I don’t know though.
–Cusuto Special – Saves to system. Cusuto Special is probaby the longest game on this disc; I played it for maybe an hour, but didn’t finish the game. This game starts with a long, fully-voiced sequence of cinema scenes. This part features an archaeologist and his daughter, I belive it is. The animation is limited as always on the system, but given that there is so much other stuff on this disc, it’s impressive that this could all fit. There’s the expected nude bath scene with the girl, badguys chasing them, etc. Eventually you end up in a maze with a first-person view, and have to get them through. Fortunately it’s not too hard. After that, the game shifts to a different guy, and becomes a menu-based conversation/adventure game. You’re going around town, looking for the now-missing archaeologist I think, and have to talk to quite a few people along the way, all in text-only Japanese. I don’t know if you can actually fail this, as I didn’t despite just choosing stuff at random, and eventually I stopped playing during this section. I don’t know how long the game continues on after this, but I’m sure I’ll try it sometime, since this seems like a fairly ambitious title, and the graphics and voice acting are high-quality stuff for a regular-CD title.

There are also a few non-interactive things on a second screen of the menu. First, there’s a huge software database with information on 340 PC Engine (HuCard, CD, SuperGrafx, etc.) games that had been released up to December 1991. It has cover art, game information, and I think a little review (from a magazine I assume?) for each title, and you can sort them by price, format, genre, release date, and the like. From here you can also access a menu with some images that have voice clips behind them. A few seem to be previews for upcoming games, such as the never-released Marble Madness, but I’m not sure about the rest. Second, there’s a large fanart gallery with REALLY weird, crazy art on its title screen. Going through this (press “down” to go to the next picture) takes a while, and getting through the whole thing was tedious, but the ending was interesting — the last three, probably the winners, have little voice clips with them. Also it’s not just PC Engine fanart; you’ll also see Sonic (yes, really), Goku, and Dragon Quest art, for example. Last, there’s a menu with a text message from the editor and a few other text blurbs. Overall, Ultra Box 6 is interesting. Most of the games have major language barriers, but even so this is pretty neat stuff to look through, and I”d like to get the other Ultra Box volumes in the future. I only have this one because that’s the one that came with the game lot I got.

Valis IV – The Fantasm Soldier (J exclusive) – One player, saves to system. Telenet’s Valis II, starring Japanese-schoolgirl-turned-magical-warrior Yuko, was one of the earliest platform-action games to release on the Turbo CD back in 1989. The series started on Japanese computers (and the NES), and there are also Genesis and SNES cartridge versions of all four Valis games, but the Turbo CD releases are probably the best known. They aren’t just platformers, but are games full of voice-acted cutscenes, something very new at the time. Valis IV is, chronologically, the last Valis game. After 1992’s Valis IV they made the SNES port of this game, a TCD remake of the Genesis remake of Valis 1, and then the series died, as Telenet stopped making platformers after ’92 and then broke apart a few years later. Because of how big of an impact the idea of a game with a story and fully voice-acted cutscenes was, though, the Valis series is at least somewhat remembered. Valis IV’s story is okay. It tells a new story with new protagonists, but is connected to the earlier games as well. It’s mostly cliche stuff as usual, as you will have to defeat the evil forces and such, but has some good moments in it. As usual on the Turbo CD the cutscenes have minimal animation, but at least there is some, unlike some games. Ingame graphics are great — this game has parallax-scrolling backgrounds in many levels! On the SNES or Genesis that would be nothing, but on this sytem, it’s impressive. Sprite work and bacakgrounds all look good as well. The soundtrack is also good. The voice acting is in Japanese, so I don’t entirely know what’s going on, but that doesn’t affect the gameplay, and you do get some sense of it.

However, all of the games have gameplay design issues, and this one is no exception. As usual with Telenet, the games are definitely not without their flaws. One constant in the Valis series is that the designers love to have enemies zoom in on you from all directions, necessitating either good reflexes, or memorization. Valis level designs can be very annoying due to the constant traps and flying enemies that you won’t be able to predict until after you’ve seen them already. You have a health bar, but it’ll frequently be being chipped away. Valis IV does have some good-sized levels with solid layouts, though. Most levels are linear, but some let you explore along the way as well. The game has decently good controls, and there are powerups to collect that increase your health, increase weapon power, and fill your magic meter, which can be used for special attacks or charge shots. When you get a game over you can continue, but from the beginning of the level, and with weapon power reset. By the middle of the game, this is a significant setback. Even so, it is great that the game saves your progress as you go. The previous two TUrbo CD Valis games also do so, but the rest of the series do not. Saving helps immensely in this game, and makes it much more bearable! At least after getting through a level in this version I don’t have to replay it if I give up later on in the game, unlike the SNES or Genesis Valis games… or TCD Valis 1, I think.

The game has three playable characters, much like Valis III did, except all three of them are new here; none of Valis III’s characters return in playable form. The game also has the Valis series’ only male playable character, though the guy is a large alien thing, not a human. The other two are girls, the main character a warrior-type and the other more a magic-type. The main character in this game is kind of weak, though; her attacks aren’t that strong, and the other girl has a great double-jump too. I much prefer to use her, and fortunately this game lets you switch between all three of them (once you have them all) whenever you want… most of the time. There are some areas where, annoyingly, the game forces you to use the main character. I wish it wouldn’t, but it does have a story to tell. Overall, Valis IV is a decent to good game that is definitely fun for a while. I do think it’s well worth getting. Even so, when I think of playing Valis games, ‘frustrating’ is probably the first word that comes to mind. This might be the best Valis game I’ve played, but it still can be frustrating. Still, the game has decently good graphics, a fair amount of levels, multiple characters, and more. Valis IV also has a SNES port which also got a US release, but that version removes all story cutscenes except for the intro and ending, and only has the main character playable, not the others; they aren’t in the game. Also of course you can’t save your progress. Levels have been redesigned, making them larger than they are in this version, so the game might take longer, but being stuck with that weak weapon of the main characters’ won’t help either. The game does have an enhanced powerup system which lets you pick up, and switch between, multiple weapon or ability powerups, and it’s a great addition, but it’s not nearly enough to make up for the cuts. This is the better version.

Ys Books I & II – One player, saves to system. Ys (‘ees’, not ‘whys’) I & II is probably one of the Turbo CD’s most popular, or at least best-known, games. The two games on this disc, which you must play in order, are both top-down action-RPGs from Falcom. The game uses Falcom’s signature combat system, where instead of having to press a button to attack you simply run into enemies to attack them, as with most all TCD Falcom titles. It is a simple game, focused on combat, exploring, and grinding above all. Some people compare Ys to Zelda, but the two games have very little in common — Ys has almost no puzzles. It does have save anywhere, though, as in all Ys games I know of, which is fantastic. You get five save slots. In this game, and in the Ys series in general, you play as Adol, a red-haired warrior who goes around from place to place and ends up saving the day and discovering every local mystery in every place he seems to visit, as usual for a videogame hero. In these games he saves several places while discovering the mystery of why, as the subtitle goes, “Ancient Ys Vanished”. Ys is a lost ancient civilization, you see, but there are rumors that it’s still out there somewhere, hidden away. Ys I & II has okay graphics, but not great. As with most Falcom-derived TCD games released into 1994, the game runs windowed, for some reason or other, and I find that annoying, as the game window is a little small. There is a large status bar on the bottom with your health, experience, enemy health, and money, and a thick border around the rest of the screen. This leaves you with a vertically narrow play window. I know that the regular Turbo CD has only 64KB of RAM, but why is the play window on the Sega Master System version quite a bit larger than this next-gen port? It has smaller status bars and a much thinner border. The ingame graphics in the Turbo CD version are improved compared to earlier versions, but still are small and limited in detail. This game looks okay for 1989, but it doesn’t look great. Of course though, the main new feature in this version, visually, are the CD elements. The game has a few cutscenes, high-quality voice acting, and some great CD audio music. Ys always had a great soundtack, and you see that in every version of the game I’ve played (even the SMS version sounds good), but this is one of the best renditions. NEC did the US release of this game, and unlike most titles after it, actually got good voice actors for this one. I’m sure that in 1989 this was amazing, but even now the game sounds great and has a good intro. The voice acting adds to the story during the game, as well.

Gameplay in all Ys games is grind-heavy, and this one set the standard, though this version is easier at the beginning than earlier versions are. The game does have some basic objectives along the way, and occasional story scenes, but the “quests” generally amount to excuses for you to grind and that’s about it. You need to grind enough money to get item X for person Y, explore/grind in the dungeon in question until you find what you need, and then go to the next location to grind in. Until you find the heal ring, you won’t recover health in dungeons, and will have to go back outside to heal; there, just stand still to do so. The game is a bit nonlinear at times, so you will need to explore, and I found myself looking at a guide a few times because I didn’t know where to go next. Sometimes going down in the current dungeon isn’t the right path, but instead after getting to a certain point you need to leave and go elsewhere next. That’s alright, though, as you’ll figure this out quickly — the harder areas will kill you fast, and it gives this simple game a little complexity. As for the level designs, level layouts get mazelike quickly, and this game does not have a map. That dungeon where you can only see a few feet in front of you is an interesting challenge! The TGCD version redid the dungeon maps versus older versions, so the game is not exactly the same as it was before. Future remakes would do the same thing again. On the whole Ys is no Zelda, for sure, but it is somehow fun despite its simplicity. On the issue of levelling, Ys I & II on TCD has maybe ten times more character levels than the Master System version had for the same amount of experience, so you level up significantly more times, but the end result, that you will spend most of the game grinding, is the same. You spend most of your time with this game working your way towards the next level so that you can go a bit farther and fight the next tier of enemies. Combat in Ys works by running into enemies, and it’s actually a pretty interesting system. You don’t want to always just run into them, but should pay attention to where you are running into the enemy, or vice versa — enemies are much more likely to hit you in head-on collisions than when you hit them on the sides or back, and you will probably take a hit if you get hit on the sides or back, so protect yourself. Now, I first played Ys seriously in the Sega Master System version, which I got a couple of years ago. That game has a much lower gameplay speed than the Turbo CD version, changing the feel of the game so that everything takes longer and carefullylining up angled attacks is easier, and vital. The game works at either pace though, so I don’t think speeding it up made the game better, just shorter. On TG16, you run around rapidly ramming enemies. On that note, the SMS also seems to punish you much more for head-on attacks. The basic combat is the same on both systems, but I just played the beginning of both games. In the SMS game, I died twice, in a hit or two each time, when I tried to ram front-on-front into the swordsmen on the first screen. On the TG16, I wiped them out no problem, and only took about a third of a healthbar of damage. At first I thought the difference was that the higher game speed made off-angle attacks more difficult, but no, they still happen; it just doesn’t punish you as much for running straight into enemies, it seems, and that really disappoints me. I like the challenge of having to be careful when approaching enemies! It adds strategy into the game. There still is strategy on the TG16, as if they hit you on the sides or back it’ll hurt, but from the front it feels different. I could be wrong about this though; what do people who have played the game a lot more than I do think? The first boss is definitely much, much easier on the TG16; it went from hard to a joke. Probably the designers wanted to get Ys I out of the way more quickly to make room for the bigger and more varied Ys II, but going through the game so quickly feels unsatisfying in comparison to how it is on the dedicated releases. Ys I & II is not an easy game though, to be sure, and starts getting harder in the temple, once you have to watch your health. And anyway Ys I may be quite a bit shorter than it is on SMS, but there’s also Ys II on the disc. Still, my first reaction to the TCD version’s combat was not good.

Overall, Ys will never challenge Zelda, but as Zelda is my favorite videogame series that’s kind of too bad; anyway, Ys doesn’t try to do that, and instead does its own simpler thing. I haven’t gotten far enough in this game to say anything definitive about it, because I stopped playing partway through Ys I out of disappointment and hadn’t gone back yet until I played it a bit for this summary, which actually would have been much more negative if I hadn’t done so. Between the too-easy early gameplay, seemingly reduced strategy in combat, and smaller gameplay window, I might like the SMS version of Ys I better than this one. Even so, Ys I & II for Turbo CD is a pretty good game. Ys I & II has decent graphics, great music and voice acting that were groundbreaking at the time, and good gameplay that still does hold up alright. Gameplay matters the most in games, and Ys’s gameplay could be better, but it is fun to explore around and run into enemies. But which version of Ys is the best? I don’t know, I haven’t played most of them nearly enough. There are many newer versions of Ys I & II, each with its own differences. Ys I & II, in various revisions, is available on the TCD (this one), PC (several versions, one US-released), PSP, DS, and PS2 (Japan only). I have the PSP version; it adds some new stuff to the beginning of the game, and has all-new graphics, but at its core it’s still Ys. Overall that might be the best version of Ys I/II that I’ve played. The original Ys I was released on the NES, SMS (only US version), and many Japanese computers. Ys II was on all of the same platforms sans the SMS. Ys II saw its first US release in this TCD compilation.

Posted in Classic Games, Game Opinion Summaries, Turbo CD, TurboGrafx-16 | Tagged game opinion summaries, Hudson, NEC, PC Engine CD, Turbo CD, TurboGrafx-16 CD | Leave a comment

Game Opinion Summaries & System Review: Magnavox Odyssey 2, my first 2nd gen system. Especially featuring UFO! and Turtles!

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Brian

I got a Magnavox Odyssey 2 in August 2012. I only have seventeen carts, with 21 games on them total, but it’s a start at least. It’s an interesting system; I’d never had a working second gen machine before the O2, so it was a new thing for me. I got an Atari 7800, which I’ve played many 2600 games on, in 2013, but I got the O2 first. I’d been unsure for years about how much I really wanted to get into pre-NES gaming — the NES is the console I knew as a kid, so this stuff is somewhat foreign to me. Games were different before the NES, with so many endless games, multiplayer-only titles, and extremely short games… very different styles of gaming from what would develop starting from 1985 and afterwards. Overall I have mixed feelings about this system; it does have a pretty small library, and a lot of really short or not so great games. Still, the few good games are interesting enough that I feel like it was worth the purchase. You can’t play O2 games anywhere else, legally, either — there are no collections of O2 games on newer systems, something not true for the 2600 or Intellivision. That’s unfortunate, since some of these games are good.

Table of Contents
—
Hardware Review and Background History

Favorite Games
Some of My Top High Scores So Far

The Summaries

Alpine Skiing!
Bowling! / Basketball! (2-in-1 cart)
Blockout! / Breakdown! (2-in-1 cart)
Computer Golf!
Football!
K.C. Munchkin!
Out Of This World! / Helicopter Rescue! (2-in-1 cart)
Pick Axe Pete!
Pocket Billiards!
P.T. Barnum’s Acrobats!
Speedway! / Spinout! / Cryptologic! (3-in-1 cart)
Thunderball!
Turtles!
UFO!

Very cool box, wish mine came with one!

System looks okay to good. There are several revisions, but this is the model I have.

Hardware Review and Background History
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The original Magnavox Odyssey was of course the first ever home videogame system, released in 1972 and designed by Ralph Baer. This system wasn’t designed by Baer, however, but it was the first videogame console that is a successor to an older one. After making some dedicated Pong-style systems in between the two consoles, the Magnavox Odyssey 2 was Phillips Magnavox’s second videogame console and their first with true rom cartridges. It is a second generation machine and released in 1978 in the US, so it released over a year after the Atari 2600 that was its main competition. In the US, it was supported from 1978 to 1983. In Europe, where it was called the Phillips Videopac G7000, it lasted from 1980 to 1984. During that time, the system amassed a small, and almost entirely first party, 45-50 game library; the O2 had minimal third party support. In fact, even the first party stuff was mostly by one single guy — Magnavox didn’t have a large staff to make games for its new system to say the least, so basically this one guy had to do a lot of them. He ended up making 24 games, a majority of the games released for the system during its lifespan. This results in a lot of games with definite similarities — there’s a reason for that beyond the hardware design, many are by the same person. The system has one addon, the voice addon The Voice. It was only released in the US, and adds English-language speech effects to the nine games that support it (plus homebrew titles; most of them support it too). No games require it, however, unlike the IntelliVision’s IntelliVoice voice addon; it’s optional, flavor-speech stuff.

The Odyssey 2 has somewhat unique hardware inside the box. The O2 was the first, and one of the only, consoles ever to use an Intel CPU. Programmers were unfamiliar with it at the time, so it probably hurt in terms of getting third party support, but I think it’s pretty cool that it has Intel in the box. The CPU is faster than the Atari 2600’s, but it isn’t nearly as hackable. As a result, O2 games have little graphical variety. First-person or behind-the-car/ship viewpoints are impossible on the O2. Sprite “scaling” effects such as in Solaris or even Outer Space on the 2600 cannot be done, and nor can third-person racing games. The system also has some limitations on sprite variety, as I will explain. However, what you get for this is zero flicker. Unlike the 2600, which has many games loaded with flicker, O2 graphics are rock-solid and never flicker. What it can do, it does flawlessly. O2 games don’t seem to ever have any slowdown either.

To go into more detail about graphical variety on the O2, the system also, uniquely, has a built-in character set that includes a lot of graphical elements. You can see many of them in the screenshots posted throughout this article. It is not a coincidence that so many of the games have the same “small person”, “large person”, “tree”, and such sprites; instead, those are all taken from the system’s built-in character set. The system is designed to easily use sprites from that character set. Using custom sprites is more limited; I think that it can only display a few of these at a time. If you look at O2 games, you’ll notice that you never see more than a couple of sprites at any one time that aren’t from the standard character set. Some games get creative here, such as how O2 Demon Attack uses the “tree” sprite for your spaceship, or UFO! and Turtles blinking between two symbols, such as a circle, X, or +, quickly in order to represent an enemy. It works, actually. It is unfortunate, however, that the O2 has such limited graphical variety. It’d be nice if it could do things like Solaris or Enduro on the Atari 2600. Still though, it’s a good console with good games, and you get used to its graphics after playing the system for a while.

http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/AVERETT.HTM – An interview with Ed Averett, the guy at Magnavox who made 24 of the O2’s games

The Odyssey 2 was supposed to have a successor in 1983, the backwards-compatible Odyssey 3. However, because of the videogame crash that started that year, the US release was abandoned while the system was still in testing. Some prototype O3s exist, but it was not released. This system was released in Europe, however, as the Phillips Videopac+ G7400. I’ll call it the Videopac+. The Videopac+ has three exclusive titles, and twelve more games that were released in Europe as dual-mode titles. These games play the same on either a Videopac or Videopac+, but have high-color backgrounds behind the playfield on the Videopac+. Those three exclusive games use the upgraded graphics hardware in the foreground too. Unfortunately Videopac+ systems and games are all entirely PAL region, so you can’t play them in the US unless you have a PAL television to play them on. Many O2/Videopac games do work on either PAL or NTSC, but the Videopac+ console itself will not. O3 prototype systems cannot run Videopac+ games without modification, either. Homebrew O2 releases often have Videopac+ backgrounds, but I don’t know of any that require it; that’d cut off almost all of your American audience, after all. The system does seem a bit more popular in Europe than here, but still, homebrew games just support it, and The Voice, they don’t require either.

So, the Odyssey 2 may have a small game library, and only a relative few of those are good, too. And on top of that, many of the better ones are games inspired by more popular arcade or Atari titles. Even so, I find it an interesting system with some fun games; I don’t regret buying this, actually. The system’s graphics are simple, but actually in terms of hardware power it’s actually more powerful in many ways than the 2600, even if you can’t always tell by looking at the games. The system uses an Intel CPU, rare at the time, so programmers weren’t too used to it. Some of the homebrew titles released in recent years show that the system is actually capable of much better visuals than are seen in most of the titles released during its life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcD6qczYIJY – Here’s the trailer for the 2012 release Mage: The Enchanted Crystals. This trailer has the Videopac+ background, but apart from that it’d look the same on O2. The music might be from The Voice. Looks like a decent game, and it’s in a genre that the system doesn’t have much of, action/adventure games. There’s a cancelled and thus unofficial-release-only release of Tutankham, this, and not much else.

As with was normal for the era, many O2 games are two player only titles. This is, of course, frustrating today, but that’s how games were. This means that some games are more playable than others with only one person, excepting the one player only games of course which are fine. Also there’s no saving of anything, so it’s vital to write down your scores for the games — apart from sports games everything else here is score-based, and without any other form of saving, writing down scores is the only way for the games to mean anything.

Beyond those usual basics, though, O2 gameplay has some idiosyncrasies, some of which surely result from one guy making so many of the system’s titles. Most (first party, but almost all O2 games are first party; there are only 5-8 third party releases anywhere) O2 games seem to fall into one of five categories. First, sports games (Football, Baseball, Bowling, what have you). Second, games which use the keyboard (there are analogs of Simon, Hangman, Concentration, and more.). Third, action games where you have one life, and start a new game after dying once (the KC games, UFO, Pick Axe Pete, etc.). Fourth, competitive games where you play to ten points (usually against a human, sometimes a computer; examples include Alien Invasion Plus, Out Of This World, etc.). And fifth, timed games, where each game is 2-3 minutes long. Few games don’t fall into any of these five categories, though I guess a couple of the racing games could be a sixth category, racing games that aren’t timed but instead end after you go through enough laps/gates. Yeah, the O2 has some unique game design elements, most notably in the one-life stuff.

The system also has three boardgames with O2 videogame components. I am very interested in two of these, Conquest of the World and Quest for the Rings. Both sound pretty interesting, regardless of how good they are. The games have a boardgame element, where you move around or strategize on an actual, physical board, and a videogame element, where you avoid enemies, fight eachother, and what have you. Obviously these are multiplayer only games.

As for hardware design, the system looks like something out of its time. That is, it looks very late ’70s to early ’80s. I love some of the box art design — the flying letters and logos look really cool. The box art of the system and games is a real highlight of the system, and is one of the reason I’d always recommend getting complete copies of games, or at least copies with the manuals (all of which have the box art on their covers) — it’s great stuff! Sometimes the box art and manuals are better than the games, that’s for sure… I’ll post some examples of box arts here. Really cool stuff. The cartridges themselves all have handles, which preclude the use of end labels, but the boxes make for good storage devices anyway, with the flap covers, so that’s alright.

The system itself is well enough designed. It’s nothing amazing looking, but it’ll do the job. The built-in flat keyboard is a nice touch. Some games play on the keyboard, so you’ll need the system close. Of course, with controller cords as short as second-gen cords all are, you’ll need the system close anyway. On that note, the controllers are basic, Atari-inspired controllers, but they’re not the same as Atari joysticks. Unlike those these have more throw, so you can move them farther in each direction. They’re eight-direction sticks, too, with notches cut out of the sides of the well, so that you can lock the stick into any of the eight directions. This is handy in many titles. It is a digital stick and not analog, but that’s okay. Like with the Atari, though, the system has only one button. One more might have been nice… oh well. The system I have has black, hardwired controllers, and a flat keyboard. Six models of O2 systems were released in the US, but the one I have seems one of the most common kinds. I just got it a few weeks ago, and it’s working fine. The system attaches to the TV via an RF box. It has twin leads on it, but fortunately they are attached to a small box with a normal (UHF) cable plug on it, so I don’t need to buy a special adapter to use it with my television, since of course no TVs from the last 25-plus years have those two-prong plugs on them. It does have one of the old-fashioned slide switches, though, so you need to manually switch it to game mode; it won’t autoswitch like the NES and beyond can do. The antenna out part on the switch IS twin lead, so instead of using an adapter I don’t connect this system directly to my TV, where the cable input is, but instead hook it up to the VCR. That works well, and I can leave the switch on “on” that way too and not have to keep messing with it. Unfortunately the RF box is hard-wired, so I do need to remove it when not using the system — and unlike all my other consoles, I can’t keep this one plugged in all the time. The system is pretty large and needs to be right at my feet, where my pile of controllers for other systems is… The power supply plug is removable, but the RF and controller plugs are not. (except for inside the system, of course.)

I got the system locally and paid $50, which might have been a bit too much, but I thought it was worth it because it was guaranteed to work, returnable, and came with six games (mediocre games mostly, but games), and all of the games were complete, too. Not bad, I love the boxes as I’ve said. Honestly with less cool boxes, I might well have passed… but it does. The manuals are all in full color, and are printed with white text on black paper, just like the boxes. They look very stylish, and are full of art, full color screenshots, and very detailed descriptions of how to play the games. The writing is often silly stuff — whoever worked in O2 marketing and manual-writing were marketing geniuses! Seriously, O2 games trumpet things such as “digital scoring”, and the sports games all talk about how “extremely realistic” the simulations of their sport they are. It’s great stuff. O2 game boxes are cardboard in the US, plastic in Europe. The cardboard ones are fine, I think. They have flip-open covers, sort of like the IntelliVision. This makes accessing the game in the box easy.

Wow is that amazing boxart!

I have seventeen games as of the writing of this article, those six, plus some others I got from EBay. All are complete. I want to have the great boxes for these games!

Favorite Games
—
1. UFO!
2. Turtles!
3. K.C. Munchkin!
4. P.T. Barnum’s Acrobats!
5. Blockout! Breakdown!

Honorable Mentions: Speedway!, Alpine Skiing!, Out Of This World!, Pick Axe Pete!, Spinout!

(Oh, before I begin, yes, all titles have exclamation points at the end of their names. It’s just a thing Magnavox did.)

Some of My Top High Scores So Far:
UFO: 170
Pick Axe Pete: 99 (starting from screen 1)
Acrobats: Mode 3: 657. Mode 0: 637. Mode 6: 430. Mode 6 (I think; could be wrong): 897. With moving balloons, modes 0-2 are no shield, 3-5 are a stationary shield, and 6-8 are random shield. The first of each listed range is for is one player, the second is two player team, and the last is two player alternating. Stationary balloons are modes 9-A-B, C-F, and F-H, in the same order as the others. I prefer moving balloons. And yeah, the game actually is kind of fun with a random shield.
Thunderball: 38,840
K.C. Munchkin: Mode 1: 317. Mode 2: 144. Mode 3: 189. Mode 4: 110. 1-3 are the easy, normal, and hard preset maps; 4 is normal random maps.
Turtles: 8590 (reached screen 5 of 8, loop 1)

The Summaries
—

Box

Game. The left player has missed gates, the right hasn’t yet.

Alpine Skiing! – 1979, Two player simultaneous racing game. Alpine Skiing is a very simple ski racing game where two players ski down a mountain. One player is on each side of the screen, and this is a two player only game so either you play on your own, or against someone, but either way both skiiers will be on screen (even if the other is doing nothing). There are three courses in the game, Slalom, Giant Slalom, and Downhill. Each course has a different gate layout, with different spacing between gates as you’d expect from those different events. There aren’t really any turns in Alpine Skiing; instead, you just go down. The only turns will be to get through the gates. That doesn’t mean that the game is easy, though. Quite the opposite, Alpine Skiing is a hard game. The primary reason for this is that if you miss one gate, it’s game over. The only way to get a finishing time is to go through all 44 gates on the course; otherwise, all you’ll be told at the end is how many gates you missed. As usual on the O2, once both players are down the hill, the game will lock, requiring a press of the Reset button to continue. The graphics are extremely basic, with the usual O2 “man” character, on skis this time, as the players. The gates look like gates, and that’s all there is to the visuals. You have good control of your skiier with the stick, as left and right turn while up and down adjust your speed. Alpine Skiing is a simple game, but if you want to finish in a good time, you’ll definitely need practice in order to finish without missing gates. Alpine Skiing isn’t a great game, and it is too bad that there’s no computer opponent (of course, such things were normal back then, but still, it’s too bad), but at least you can play for time with one player. This is an alright game, really simplistic but not too bad.

It’s another classically awesome O2 cover… and it reflects the gameplay well, too!

Ingame screen. The left player (on the top bar) is currently the paddle, as that “-” indicates (no, it isn’t a negative score), while the right player is the wall guardians, as the little guy indicates. The ?? spaces by them will be filled in by their best scores once there are some. The timer is in the middle.

Blockout! / Breakdown! — 1980, One or two player. Blockout! / Breakdown! is, as the name suggests, a Breakout-inspired game with its own twist: it’s all two player! Despite the unique elements, it is clearly Breakout-inspired at a glance. Notice how “Break” is in one mode’s name, and “Out” is in the other… clever, huh? Anyway, as the name suggests there are two modes, but the basic game mechanics are the same in both. Released in 1980, this game is from before the Challenger Series, but, despite its simplicity, it is one of the better games from the first half of the O2’s life, that is, the 1978-80 part, when the games were simpler and often not as good as the later ones. This game is an exception to that. The game also has both single and multi player support, so this is NOT a multiplayer-only game, fortunately — there is AI. You can even have the computer play itself if you want.

And on that note, yes, the most unique element in this game is that the game is a versus game. It’s not one paddle against another like Pong, though; instead, one player is the paddle, and the other one defends the wall. So, even though there are a million Breakout clones out there, and many are on systems that Well, this game is limited in longevity, as both modes are timed — there are 60 seconds max per round for one mode, 90 max for the other. Now a full round really is twice that, as you play two separate phases, each that length, but still, each “game” is 2-3 minutes long, or less. That’s all you get here. Fortunately the game is pretty good, so the replay value is high, but still, there’s no Breakout-style infinite score-based mode, only these two timed versus challenges. The games graphics are decent, but are good enough. I like that the blocks are large, and close to the paddle; the original Breakout’s huge field of tiny blocks, far from your paddle, is tough to deal with, and the fact that you’ll only ever hit one block each time the ball goes up the screen in that game makes playing it VERY tedious. I love Arkanoid, but find Breakout incredibly boring. Fortunately, this game entirely avoids that issue. It does have its own block-hitting quirks, as I will describe, but it is a fun game.

There are two different modes in this game, as the title says. Each game in either mode consists of two parts, where each player plays one round as the paddle, and one as the wall’s demon guardians. Both modes are endless — this game has no defined end, unlike the “to 10 games” O2 multiplayer games which do end. As usual in such O2 games, the manual tells you to decide on a number of games to play to, and call that the “end” once you reach it. Oh Magnavox writers, you’re so good at what you do…

Anyway, Blockout! is the main mode. In this mode, the ball bounces off of the blocks when it hits them. The way this works is quirky, though — the ball only bounces away if it hits a block from the bottom. If you hit blocks from the top or sides, the ball will continue through the blocks as if they weren’t even there, though yes, they will be destroyed as it passes through. It’s interesting and makes the game a bit different; I don’t mind this. It’s better than Breakout’s “passes through and goes down without breaking them” tedium, by far, and it’s fun to destroy more blocks. The round ends if the player controlling the paddle gets through the wall and reaches the top of the screen. Yes, in this mode you don’t need to destroy all the blocks to progress, you just need to get through. You have 90 seconds to do this. If you succeed, your best time so far will be displayed on the screen, with the other player (or computer)’s best time on the other side. Note that these scores are for the player as the paddle only — the player as the wall demons doesn’t get an individual score, but instead is trying to make the paddle player fail to get through. I will address how, exactly, you defend the wall below, but essentially, as the picture shows, each of the four rows of blocks has a separately controllable demon on it. Move to the edges of the screen to start blinking and get the power to fill in a space, and move into a gap while blinking to replace that missing block. If a demon is knocked off the screen, that line will be without a fixer for a little while, before a new one comes on. The defense controls are confusing and take getting used to, but work reasonably well once mastered.

In Breakdown!, the goal is for the player as the paddle to break all the blocks on screen. Unlike in Blockout, in this mode the ball doesn’t get stopped when it hits blocks; instead, it passes right through them. So yeah, it’s like one of those Arkanoid bonus stages, or when you get the powerup of that same effect. The ball, and the demons, both move twice as fast in this mode as they do in Blockout, so it’s a much more frenetic game. You have 60 seconds to clear all of the blocks on screen. The controls and visuals are largely the same as the other game, though. The game’s tougher than it may sound, as hitting every block in such a short time isn’t easy, when the wall is also being rebuilt at the same time. Destroying a row doesn’t get rid of it for good, either; after a little while the block on the right, and the demon in it, will respawn, so you’ve got to hurry to win this. Your score is based on how many blocks remain when time runs out.

One of the most important issues any blockbreaking game is how the paddle controls. Now, as anyone who knows the O2 (or has read my summary above) would know, the O2 has only one controller, its digital joystick. It’s a good stick, but it isn’t a rotary or mouse/trackball controller, it’s just a digital stick. Don’t expect analog precision from the controls. However, you do get used to it, and paddle controls here work about as well as they could, given the limitations; the paddle is a bit slow, but it works otherwise, and the game does have the ball bounce off the paddle at different angles depending on where on the paddle it lands, which is great. There are also some design elements that help out in making the game work better than it could have. Most notably, you have infinite balls; the only limit is the timer, not a life counter. As a result, if you miss the ball because you couldn’t get there because of the slow paddle or poor paddle positioning or what have you, don’t worry, just press the button and get a new ball.

When playing as the demons defending the wall — and yes, the manual makes clear that they are called demons, even though it’s the usual O2 “little person” sprite — as I’ve said above, the controls are odd. First though, remember that the O2 joystick has notches cut into all eight corners, so that you can easily hold the stick in any one of the directions. This game relies heavily on that fact. In order to move the lowest-tier demon, push the stick to the lower-left or lower-right corners to move left or right respectively. To move the second from the bottom level demon, push left or right. To move the third row up demon, push up-left or up-right. And to move the top row demon, press left or right while holding down the button. Yeah, it’s about as complex as one-button-and-a-stick controls can be, but thanks to the notches in the joystick well it does make sense, after some practice. Expect to do badly at first on defense, but you will get better. Just remember to always go to either edge of the screen to get a block; walk out with one of those guys while not flashing, and you’ll just fall off and lose that row’s guy for a while.

Overall, Blockout! / Breakdown! is a simple, short, and fun game. I know I wrote a lot about a very simple game, but it’s pretty fun, and a unique and original take on one of gaming’s most popular second gen era game concepts, so it’s worth the time. This game is cheap, too.

Okay cover, though somewhat average for the system.

Bowling.

Bowling! / Basketball! – 1978, 2-in-1 cart.
Bowling! – One to four players. Bowling is a horrible bowling game, and might be the worst bowling game I’ve played before. The graphics are extremely simplistic, but worst is the physics — the pins don’t move around after being hit, in this game, so there’s almost no possible way of dealing with a split, for instance. To play, the ball moves back and forth along the bottom of the screen. Press the button when you want to roll the ball. Once it’s moving, you can adjust its movement with the stick. The game is for one to four players, but of course in one player mode you’re all by yourself, there’s no computer opponent. The gameplay certainly isn’t anywhere near good enough to be something you’d want to play with others, either, not with this complete lack of physics or graphics of note. Don’t bother with this one.

Basketball

Basketball! – Two players required. Basketball is a two player only side-scrolling basketball game. I haven’t played it properly yet, but it looks like a pretty mediocre game that might be amusing for a few minutes. The graphics are extremely, extremely simple; this is an early O2 game, and looks it. The baskets are barely recognizable as such. The game is side-scrolling 2d, and the controls work like this: So, one player starts with the ball. The other player will take the ball if they pass through the first player. You can shoot, however, with the button. You can’t adjust the shot power or trajectory; it’ll be random, pretty much. If it goes in the basket, you get 2 points. The takeaway ability is kind of amusing, and that’s the only hope that this game has to be any fun at all, I think… I’ll have to try it. I’m not expecting much to say the least.

Box. Note the map of the course.

Gameplay isn’t quite as bad as it might look.

Computer Golf! – 1978, One to four players. Computer Golf is a simple topdown golf game. The game plays on a nine hole course. Each hole has a different design, and you’ll have to avoid the sides of the hole and the trees as you try to hit the ball towards the green. Trees and the sides are the only obstacles in the game, but it’s enough. Once on the green the screen will zoom in to a green view, where you try to hit the ball into the hole. The game is slow paced, as your character walks slowly and the ball isn’t too quick either. Hitting the ball also will take a little practice; read the manual and practice, because it explains which direction the ball will go in from each character position on screen. It’s not entirely intuitive just by looking at it, but you’ll get used to it. You’ll often have to rotate around in order to hit the ball in the direction you want.

Overall, this is a bland game, but I don’t like golf in general, so considering that it’s not too bad. I do like how the cover of the box (and the manual) have a map of the nine holes, showing how they actually arrange into a connected course that you never see in the game — nice touch! The manual also gives you par numbers for each hole and the course, which is good to know. This is a slow, simple golf game, and of course you’ll only have opponents if you’re playing against another human, but it was entertaining to play through once, at least.

Nice box.

Gameplay

Football! – 1978, Two players required. This is a very basic single-screen football game that I haven’t yet played. I don’t like football, and this isn’t exactly the two player game I’d want to play for sure. The players are all your usual “small person” O2 figures. Decent box though.

The box is really cool looking! I love this box.

Gameplay is just as good.

K.C. Munchkin! – 1981, One player. K.C. Munchkin is the Odyssey 2‘s best known, and most popular, game. The game is most infamous for being banned from sale after Magnavox was sued over how much the game is like Pac-Man. Magnavox lost, but ironically, this game actually has some real differences from Pac-Man — it’s not just a straight clone. I think the courts got it wrong. Fortunately the game was on sale for long enough before being banned that plenty of copies are out there, so this is not a rare game.

K.C. Munchkin is indeed a game working from the Pac-Man playbook, but it does some of its own things, as I said. First, the game plays on a strict, 7×9 grid. This really is a tile-based game. Press the stick in a direction, and K.C. will move one space that way. You can’t stop moving halfway into a space and turn around if enemies have moved into it; you’re doomed if that happens. This is somewhat restrictive, but it does work. The upside of this is that this grid system allows for any possible wall configuration — unlike Pac-Man, this game does not have only one maze, it has near-endless mazes, within the rules. But more about that later. The other major difference from Pac-Man are that there are only twelve dots to eat in each level, three in each corner of the map at the start, and they move. And not only do the dots move, but as you collect more dots, the remaining ones speed up. The last dot on each level will move at the same speed you do, so you’ll have to strategize a bit and cut it off. Nice. After a couple of screens, the game will speed up and dots will occasionally go through walls, making things tougher, so it does get more difficult over time.

As you’d expect, there are enemies trying to get you, called Munchers, though only three instead of four like Pac-Man has. With the small playfield, it’s plenty. Four of the dots are power pellet analogs which allow you to eat the Munchers. Once you do this the Munchers will change color, and can be eaten. Eaten Munchers will flash white and won’t be a threat again until they go to the center block and stay there for a few seconds; only then can they return to life. This takes a while, so often you’ll finish the level before they return. Munchers you don’t eat will turn back to their normal dangerous state after a couple of seconds, though, and this game is one of the O2 action games where you only get one life (like in reality!), so one slipup and it’s game over. K.C. Munchkin has three built in mazes, an easy, medium, and hard one. It also has a random maze option which creates a maze for you. Unfortunately this maze won’t change between stages, so once you’re playing on it it’s set, but still it’s a very cool option. The other four game modes are for invisible maze versions of the first four options. In the invisible modes, the map can’t be seen while you’re moving. If you stop or hit a wall, the walls will appear. Needless to say, this adds quite a bit of challenge. Cool feature.

Lastly, the game has a map editor, so you can create your own map. You cannot remove the rotating thing in the center of the screen where the ghosts start (and on that note, this rotating block is interesting and makes for some great game mechanics in some stages; too bad you can’t move it or add more of them), you can’t change the one warp (where you travel from one side of the screen to the other), and the dots will always start in the four corners of the screen, but you can put the walls wherever else you want. Of course you can’t save custom maps, so the random map mode is probably more useful, but still, for 1981 this has to have been a very cool feature. K.C. Munchkin deserves its reputation as one of the O2’s best games; this certainly is a very good game. It’s better than I was expecting, too, after having watched some gameplay videos of the game. It may not look like too much in videos, but it’s actually a lot of fun to play. Since you have only one life per game games are short, and the game keeps you coming back for more, trying to get a bit higher score next time. All the different maps mix up play quite a bit, too.
Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J0jrd_kuHI

Box. Great cover art! And note how it only reflects one of the two games in the package… that’s saying something.

Out Of This World is decent.

Out Of This World! / Helicopter Rescue! – 1979, 2-in-1 cart.
Out Of This World! – Two player simultaneous. Out Of This World, completely unrelated to the other Out Of This World game released much later, is a two player gravity spaceship sim game. It’s in the “first to ten wins” category of O2 games. In this quite challenging game, your goal is to connect your spaceship with a floating command module ten times. Think Apollo moon lander modules taking off and connecting to their command modules above before the return to Earth, that’s the idea here. However, you have very limited energy (fuel), so getting anywhere near ten connections, and winning the game, won’t be easy. You start with just 50 energy, which the manual says is measured in megajoules. When you hold down the button, you’ll burn energy at a rapid clip. However, you need to do this, because you have to land very carefully and slowly, or you’ll crash. Crashing takes away 10 energy, while landing successfully will score you 20. Meanwhile, the Command Module zips by overhead again and again. You need to touch it again, just right, in order to connect and score a point. If you miss, and you will… well, too bad. You’ll probably be too low on fuel to continue, so get your timing just right, every time! That’s easier said than done of course. If either player does connect, both are reset to 50 energy (provided that they are alive that is, and the process starts again until either one player scores ten points, or, more likely, both players run out of fuel and lose. If one player runs out of fuel the other can keep going, but scoring a point won’t bring back the one who has failed.

The game has three modes of play, each with a different gravity level. There’s a very low gravity mode (the Moon), a medium gravity mode (Mars), and a high gravity mode (Jupiter). The manual says that higher gravity should be harder, but I found it a bit easier, because it’s a bit easier to hover in place with the tighter controls you get in higher gravity. Of course fuel will burn more rapidly, but control is better. Overall, I liked this game. It’d be fun to play against someone, I think, but even with one player it’s got some play value, until you’re good enough to connect ten times of course that is. It is of course very simple, but well, second-gen games are like that. This game could be better, but it’s not too bad.

Helicopter Rescue, however, is atrocious.

Helicopter Rescue! – One player only. Unlike the other game on this cartridge, Helicopter Rescue is a completely atrocious, abysmal waste of time. This game is one of the timed games, and it has no modes or options — there’s only one mode of play, and it’s brain-dead simple, two minutes long (literally), and has almost no replay value, either. Yes, this game is that bad. You can tell that it’s kind of just thrown on here, because the game box and cartridge only have Out Of This World art on them. Even in the manual, there’s no Helicopter Rescue art, only spaceships and such. Even marketing knew that promoting this game didn’t make sense… but really, they probably shouldn’t have released it at all.

The problem here is that the game has nothing to it. This is a single screen rescue game where you fly a very large helicopter across the screen, pick a person up from the other building that is apparently on fire (you can’t tell, ingame, that anything’s wrong with it), fly back to your base, drop them off, and repeat until the two minute timer runs out. Each pickup or dropoff is accomplished by raising or lowering a basket, and this takes some time. You’ll probably score about five or six points in this game. The scoring shows double digits, but I don’t know if it’d be possible to score ten points. I don’t think it’s worth trying out. There’s absolutely no reason to play it any more and try to get better. The one and only draw here is the rotating chopper blade, which is nice for the second gen I guess, but the “game” is so, so limited that it’s kind of amazing that this was actually shipped.

I know it’s from 1982, but it’s so ’70s it hurts!

Simple graphics, okay gameplay.

Pick Axe Pete! – 1982, One player only. Pick Axe Pete is a challenging platform action game. It’s an okay game, but not great. It clearly took its largest inspiration from Donkey Kong, but it goes off in its own direction in several ways, so this is not just a clone. At a glance it might look like one, with a screen made up of lines, spheres bouncing around you have to avoid, and a little guy with a swinging weapon, but the actual gameplay is quite different. This isn’t a game where you just go to the end of a level; instead, it’s a more freeform title. The game is difficult and has a fairly high learning curve for a second-gen title; this isn’t one I was good at right away. The 16-page manual is essential, too, as it goes into detail about all of the game’s systems.

Essentially, this is a score-based game. As you’d expect, yes, you get only one life per game, so expect short games and low scores, like in other O2 action games. That’s alright, the one-life thing is more unique than bad, I think. The graphics here aren’t anything new; as usual on the O2, most of the sprite work is reused from other games. I’ve certainly seen this “person” figure before, multiple times. Passageways are just colored squares, too. Yeah, bland graphics. Oh well, it’s not too bad. As for the gameplay though, there are six ways to score points in Pick Axe Pete. First, avoiding a rock via jumping or ducking will score you a point. Next, hitting a Gold with your pick gets 3 points. Getting a new pick gets 5 points. Getting a key gets 10 points. Last, going through a door gets 20 points. While you have a pick, you’ll destroy rocks with ease. However, the picks are timed, so after a fairly short amount of time you’ll lose it. At this point, you’d better polish up your rock-avoidance skills. To jump in this game, you press a direction with the stick, and then hit the button. Pete will jump, or duck, in the direction you pointed. So, diagonal up will make a flying leap, left or right a longjump, or straight down to flatten yourself to the floor. Pete will point his arms in the direction you’re going to jump, before you press the button. The manual shows all the signals. This gives you a lot of different moves, but using them well, and effectively avoiding the rocks, is quite challenging.

In order to get keys, or new picks, you’ll have to wait until rocks hit each other. When two rocks run into eachother, there’s a chance that the collision will create either a pick or a key. Picks will fall to the bottom level of the field; keys will go to the top one. Both will only stick around on the screen for a few seconds, so the best way to get one is either to stick around the top or bottom of the screen, or to try to get in position to grab it as it goes up or down the screen towards its resting place. If you do get a key and go through a door, you’ll go to the stage that the color you went through represents. The game has ten different stages. You can start from any stage, by pressing different keys (0 through 9 will start on each different level), but you won’t stay on the one you choose; the keys warp between levels. The levels are all similar, except for the placement of the holes in the platforms, but still, it’s a nice touch. Oh, and unlike Mario, Pete doesn’t die if he falls; you can fall down holes no problem. Also, ladders appear regularly, but at random, for you to climb up or down levels. The manual suggests that if one appears right under a door, you can get up to the next level anyway (since you cannot pass through doors without a key but have to jump over them) by getting on the ladder and then doing a diagonal jump, which will take you to the next level. This does indeed work.

Overall, Pick Axe Pete is a somewhat complex scoring-based, Donkey Kong-inspired platform action game. It’s tough, and I don’t know how much fun it is, but it certainly isn’t a bad game, anyway, once you get used to it.

Decent box.

The gameplay however is may be even more bland than it looks.

Pocket Billiards! – 1980, two players required. Pocket Billiards is another pretty awful O2 sports game. As usual it has a great cover, but the contents sure aren’t great. This game is a basic game of pool for a couple of players. You have to play with two people, unless one player plays as both players of course. This is a slow, and extremely bland, pool game — rotate around the white ball, press the button to hit it, and watch it inch along at a slow speed. You don’t get much speed control here, and hitting the balls into the pockets is neither easy nor fun. Really, play a different pool game instead of this one, on some other system. The basic graphics have some charm, but the game is so slow, bland, lacking in ball physics, and tedious that it’s not really worth playing. It’s fairly comparable in quality to Bowling, except here the balls at least do move around when hit, unlike those pins, so it’s slightly better than that one.

Box. Very ’70s costumes…

Good fun game, with decent graphics.

P.T. Barnum’s Acrobats! – 1982, one or two players, The Voice enhanced. Acrobats is, in a few words, a Circus Atari clone with some almost painfully ’70s acrobats on the cover. Just like that game, in Acrobats you play as two acrobats on a seesaw springboard in a modified game of Breakout. One starts on the seesaw and the other on a platform. You have the one above jump down, land on the empty part of the seesaw, and send the other one flying into the air. Your goal is to break as many balloons as you can before you run out of tries. There are three rows of balloons in the air, and if you pop all ten in one of the rows, that row will be replenished. Where the acrobat lands on the empty end of the seesaw determines how high the other one will be flung into the air — the closer to the end he lands, the higher the other one goes. Watching the little guys bounce around is fun.

Unlike most O2 action games, this one actually gives you ten tries, so it’s not another one-life-and-done game. This is perhaps because of how tricky the game is — in Acrobats, or Circus Atari, in order to keep the game going and not lose a life the clown in the air has to land exactly on the end of the empty, raised part of the seesaw. If you miss, and he lands on the ground or too close in on the seesaw, you’ll lose a try and the guy will climb up the side back to one of the starting platforms and you’ll continue from there (though, again, this will NOT reset your score, the game won’t end until you’ve missed ten times). So yeah, it’s exactly like Circus Atari, as far as I know; I haven’t played that one myself, but this game is an obvious clone. The game is pretty fun, and the graphics are solid — unlike in Circus Atari, the balloons in this one actually look round, and not square, because the O2 does have better graphics than the 2600 when programmed for well. This game is one of only nine officially released titles that supports the uncommon, and US-only, The Voice speech unit addon, too, for some voice bits here and there. If I ever get one, I’ll have to see if it adds anything. It’s the only The Voice game I own so far.

Acrobats has a good number of modes, too. You’ve got six basic modes, with two basic variables. First, there are either stationary bubbles, or moving bubbles. Second, there can be no shield, a static shield, or a shield which appears in a new, random location each time one of the acrobats springs off the seesaw. This last one is quite tricky, needless to say — the shield is a hindrance, not a help, as it creates a platform somewhere above the field that the flying acrobat might hit. And if he hits it, he’ll bounce down, and probably then land on the ground and cost you a try.

The game has two two player modes, too, in addition to the one player game, and each can be played in any of the six modes. First, you have a standard mode, where each player plays until they lose a guy, at which point it switches to the other one. Second, you have a much more challenging sounding co-op mode where play switches every time that an acrobat springs off of the seesaw. So yes, after every hit the other player will get control. Might be interesting, might just be frustrating. Overall, while Acrobats is just a clone (a clone with a well-known license, but a clone all the same), it’s a good one. This is one of the best O2 games I own — I’d probably put it in fourth, after UFO, Turtles, and K.C. Munchkin.

All three games are represented on the boxart.

Speedway. Simple but fun.

Speedway! / Spinout! / Cryptologic! – 1978, 3-in-1 cart released as a pack-in with the system at launch.
Speedway! – One player only. Speedway! is a timed game. Each game is two minutes long, no longer. The game has two modes, Practice (1) or Race (2). On the slower speed, the game’s pretty easy. In this game, you control a car which is driving along a straight, endless (until time runs out) road. Your goal is to avoid hitting all of the cars coming down the screen at you. On difficulty 1, this isn’t too hard; max speed isn’t too high, so getting a perfect game, getting through two minutes without hitting anything, won’t take long.

Difficulty two is another story, however. This one is clearly the main game, and it’s a lot more challenging. Speedway has about the simplest graphics around for a racing game, with no animation on the cars and only dashes on the sides of the road to show the environment, but it’s a fun game that I enjoyed playing. This is a fun one to put in and play a couple of minutes of. Of course, the game ends after two minutes, but you can always try again and try to master it. Maybe if I manage a perfect game at the faster speed (should be somewhere around 6,000 points, I think) I’ll stop playing, but that’ll probably take a while… it’s hard to avoid all of the cars coming at you at the high speed, and when you crash you stop getting points until you start moving again, so each hit results in a sizable point reduction. Oh, and your score is tied to your speed, too — you get points based on distance, so the faster you drive, the higher your score will increase. Speedway is an incredibly basic racing game, but it’s fun. As usual on O2 games which end, once time runs out the game freezes. You’ll have to press Reset to try again, but I guess it’s nice to give you a chance to write down your score first.

The basic Spinout track.

Spinout! – Two players versus (required for anything other than time-trial). The box claims that this is a one or two player game, but it isn’t; this is a two player only game, unless you’re just trying for a lap time or something, and don’t mind having to race as both players for the race to actually end. Spinout is a top-down racing game, along the lines of an extremely basic Super Sprint. There is one track with four variants. The base track’s a loop with a bump on it; it will always be the same, underneath. The variants add some walls you’ll have to go around, and obstacles to avoid. There are two different modes in this game, three lap or 15 lap. I haven’t played it in multiplayer yet, but it seems like an okay, if unexciting, topdown racing game. I like top-down racing games, of course, but without anyone to race against it’s a bit boring. Of course, it doesn’t help that there’s only really one track. This game doesn’t have car controls either, really — instead, the car goes in the direction you point the stick. Holding the button down gives you turbo speed. When you hit the other car, it spins out, hence the title of the game. This game is alright for 1978, but there’s little reason to play it for more than a few minutes over other, much better top-down racing games. Still, I would say that this 3-in-1 cart is worth getting; at least you’re not paying for this one on its own.

Cryptologic has … basic … visuals.

Cryptologic! – Two players required. Cryptologic is the only game I own that actually uses the keyboard. There are a bunch more that do, but I don’t have them yet. As I don’t have another person to play with I haven’t tried this game yet, but it’s an extremely, extremely simple Hangman-style game, except without a visual hangman. To play, one player types in a word. Then, the computer scrambles the letters, and the other player tries to guess what the word is. The game keeps track of how many tries it took to guess it, and displays which parts you’ve got right too. And that’s really all there is to the game. Yeah, give this one a pass. I mean, anyone with the system surely has it on this extremely common cart, but don’t bother playing it, I don’t think.

The promise

The reality

Thunderball! – 1979, One player only. Thunderball is a subpar pinball game. You get five balls per game in this title, and can score in the tens of thousands of points, so it breaks all the rules of O2 games, probably in the name of being more accurate to the type of game it is supposedly representing. Unfortunately, the actual pinball table in question isn’t anything to speak of. The game has a rectangular “table” that fills the screen. Various targets are arrayed around the screen, and you whack the ball up and try to keep it going as it randomly bounces off of them. There’s virtually no skill here that I can tell; the only real “strategy” is “keep the ball alive, and hope it hits stuff for points”.

Thunderball has one unique element, which of course the O2 marketing people trumpet on the box. (I mean, if “Digital Scoring!” is such a big point, this is sure to make the box!) That is that you can move the paddles left and right slightly, within the center of the screen. This is somewhat helpful, but certainly not enough to make this game interesting or all that fun. Oh, the button activates both flippers at once; you don’t have independent flipper control. The best thing about Thunderball by far is the very cool box art; the actual game’s boring and not very fun at all.

Decent box. The art is silly.

Game screen, the first map. The player is on the right. The six ? spaces are marked. The small x in the center is the bomb refill spot. Placed bombs are also xes, but differently colored. There are three beetles, in blue mode, on screen. Bottom bar, left to right: Lives Remaining, Bombs, Points, Turtlets Saved (total), and Level (that you are currently on).

Turtles! — 1983, One player, The Voice enhanced. Turtles is one of the last US-released O2 games, and it’s Magnavox’s only internally developed arcade port, too. That is, this game really is a port of a Pac-Man-style arcade game from Konami, not a game inspired by, but not a port of, an arcade game, like the rest of their arcadelike games are. The back of the box claims that it was a “superhit arcade game!”, but that’s a blatant lie; Turtles is quite obscure, and like many people, I’d never heard of it before looking into the O2’s library. If Turtles was such a “superhit”, then why is the game only on home consoles on the O2, Arcadia 2001, and Entex Adventurevision, and not on any of the most popular consoles (2600, 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision… no for all four.)? Heh. So yes, there are several ways that Turtles stands out among Magnavox’s O2 library: it’s their only direct port of an arcade game, it’s one of the only arcade-style O2 games where you get multiple lives (you get four lives per game here, plus an extra life every 5000 points), too. And on that note, scores here will be much higher than in your usual O2 game. It’s also got a different intro from anything else they did on the system, as I will explain below. And of course, as one of the last releases for the system here, it’s interesting for that reason as well.

Fortunately, though, even if it was not popular, Turtles IS a quite good game. This game is easily in the upper tier of O2 games. It’s a classic example of second-gen game design across the board: it’s simple, repetitive, addictive, challenging, and fun. The game has very little variety, but more thank makes up for it with its high challenge and fun factor. This is the kind of game that second-gen fans love; I’ve never been one before, and I do find this game very repetitive, but I must admit that I can see the attraction. And while it’s in the Pac-Man genre, this is its own game; the goal isn’t just to pick stuff up, but to get things (turtlets) and bring them to the houses that randomly appear on the sides of the map. Also, you can drop bombs (mines, really) behind you to attack the enemy with. Only one bomb can be on screen at a time, but still, being able to fight back like this is great, and the strategic thinking of where to place the bomb at any given time helps add to the fun, and the challenge.

In Turtles, you play as a mother turtle who has to go into a large house, or hotel, or something, in order to rescue the many kidnapped baby turtlets which have been brought there. In your way are evil bugs, which are trying to stop you from rescuing them. The building has eight floors, so each loop of the game is eight levels long. There are simple little “going up a floor” scenes between levels, too, a nice touch. Getting to the end of a loop will be no easy task, though, that’s for sure — this game is hard! Hard but good, though. It even starts with a little intro scene, something almost never seen on this system. It’s a very simple one where your turtle walks across the screen and into the building, but it works. That intro is here in lieu of a “Which Game?” screen; yes, this game doesn’t have that. Just press any direction on either joystick to play. It’s a one player only game, but you can play with either controller.

One important note: Unlike KC Munchkin, this game is NOT tile based. That is, you have free movement, and aren’t stuck with that game’s simpler “press the direction to move to the next square” design. This is great, and really helps with your control over the action. So yeah, in the game, your goal is to navigate the maze, dealing with enemies along the way, as you try to rescue all the baby turtles. The game starts with three or four enemy bugs on screen, but more can be added later. The six questionmark spaces are always in the same place in all four levels, so your goal locations are the same. Similarly, the bomb refill item is always in the center. In order to play, first you go to a questionmark space, then quickly retreat — some contain enemies! If there is a turtlet there though, go back and pick it up. Now, a house will appear somewhere on the edge of the screen. You will need to get there, without dying, in order to rescue the turtlet. If you do die, it will be reset to its space. You clear the level once all turtlets in the current stage have been saved. The map changes every other level; the second map is quite similar to the first, but the new stage design in level 5 will really be quite a shock, the first time you get to it — it’s a very different, and MUCH more challenging, layout. Good luck getting through the second half of the game, you’re going to need it! Unfortunately this game does not have a map editor, unlike KC Munchkin,

One more unique element is the way the enemies work. They start out blue; blue enemies will just move around randomly. After a little while, though, they will turn yellow. Yellow enemies can now see you along straight lines, and will usually chase you on sight. Finally, they will later turn red. Red enemies can see around a corner, to home in on you from even farther away. If you hit a bug with a bomb, though, it’ll be reset to blue, and will be momentarially stunned so you can pass over it. You cannot permanently kill enemies. When there are five enemies on screen, all moving around in different directions, some chasing you, as you try to get to a house, the game gets crazy. Fun stuff.

For graphics, your turtle does look like a turtle, and the green background is decent, but the bugs leave something to be desired. They’re just circles, which occasionally blink over with +es. That’s it. I know that enemies like this are common on the O2 (see UFO!, etc.), but still, come on, couldn’t they have drawn something with legs at least? The graphics definitely are basic; the maze looks about on par with KC Munchkin, but the circle/+ enemies aren’t as visually interesting as that game’s baddies. Your turtle does look nice though, and does animate, which is cool.
Also like KC Munchkin, this game uses a 9×7 map, as far as the wall layout goes. The original Turtles arcade game had a 9×9 square playfield, but the O2 version is cut back a bit. The level maps are different from the arcade game, though. Other than the smaller field, there are also now only six questionmark points where turtlets can be, instead of eight like the arcade game, and the level designs are all altered as well. They are recognizably similar to the arcade levels, but are not the same. At least it does still have four different mazes, like the arcade version, though; this game isn’t one of those cut-back arcade ports, like the O2’s single-screen-only version of Popeye. There are two different basic floor layouts, with two variants of each, but the arcade game is similar in that respect.

As for the sound, the audio is your basic O2 stuff, as expected. The “Warning!” tone when you have no bombs is annoying, but helpful — it’s good to know when you’re out. There is one interesting thing here, though: Turtles makes innovative use of the O2 The Voice addon to make music. Without it there’s no music, as usual on the O2, but with it, the game actually does recreate the arcade machine’s music. Very cool!

Overall, Turtles is a great game with plenty of challenge and depth. As it was a late release this game isn’t cheap, but it’s not overly expensive, either; be patient and you should be able to get a copy for as little as $10, maybe $20 on the high end. Turtles is highly recommended! This game may be obscure, but it’s a great game, and this is maybe the best home version of it around.

Cool box

Simple graphics, but it’s a very good game! There are usually more enemies on screen than this. Also, you can’t really see the circle around the player’s ship; it blinks, so screenshots won’t catch it.

UFO! – 1982, One player only. UFO! is a space shooter, and my favorite O2 game of the ones I have. UFO has only one gameplay mode, simple graphics (pluses, ovals, and such represent enemy spaceships), only three enemy types, and absolutely no options, but fortunately the one mode it does have is incredibly fun and addictive. (Oh yeah, and the box art is amazing too, as expected from the O2!) The game’s a “one life and you die” game, as expected, but you do have a shield on your ship, so there is some protection. This game is an original and unique take on the single-screen shooter genre.

The game is always mentioned as having been primarily influenced by Asteroids, and I see the comparison, but that comparison ends with the basic visual look of the screen. In terms of actual gameplay, this game is entirely different from Asteroids, and in fact is well ahead of its time. Indeed, if it hadn’t been completely forgotten, I’d say that later titles like Robotron 2084 or Every Extend Extra might have been taking a few notes from this title. Yes, essentially this is an arena shooter. Now, in Asteroids, you control a spaceship which flies around a field of rocks, and you shoot them. Alien ships appear every so often, and shoot back, but the regular rocks just fly around. Shooting rocks breaks them up into smaller rocks, which fly around faster and are harder to hit. Your ship has momentum when you move, and you rotate when you press turn instead of moving directly in the direction you press, so careful movement is required. You also have a warp which places you in some random location on screen.

UFO! takes a few ideas from that, but not many. First, in UFO you have a shield. When you press fire, or when an enemy hits your ship, the shield goes down momentarily. You only have one life of course, as I said earlier, so be careful while firing — you’re vulnerable during the moments after shooting. Second, in UFO, your ship moves in the direction you press — no Asteroids-style controls here. Firing is entirely different from the norm too, and that’s why I mentioned the later title Robotron — while UFO does not have full twin-stick controls, it has something about as close to that as I’ve ever seen from a pre-Robotron title — you shoot not just in the direction you’re pointing, but in the direction that the white dot on the shield ring around your ship is pointing. The dot rotates, one point at a time, clockwise only, towards the direction you are currently moving in. This takes a bit of getting used to, but once you get it, it’s easy to hit targets. The key is understanding which direction the firing cursor is currently pointing in versus where you’re trying to hit. If you’re moving left and it’s full left, it won’t move. If it’s one point south of left and you move left, though, it’ll spin all the way around the ship until it reaches left. If you stop moving, it’ll stay where it is until you move again, so you’ll be able to fire in the direction it’s pointing as much as you want while standing still. This is, of course, really, really handy, and incredibly unique. I love this single-stick take on a twin-stick control method, and this is from 1982 too, several years before Robotron! Really cool stuff. And also, there’s one more thing — when you kill an enemy, they shoot out three small pellets, one each at a diagonal up left, diagonal up right, and straight down direction. If those pellets hit another enemy ship, it’ll destroy that ship too in a chain reaction. You don’t get bonus points for these beyond the regular score for each kill, unfortunately, but still, it’s really cool to set up chain reactions (and yes, this is what made me think of Every Extend).

For the three enemy types, the first one are randomly drifting shapes which simply float across the screen, the analog of Asteroids’ regular asteroids. One point to kill one of these. The second kind are Hunter-Killers, which follow you and try to ram your ship. Three points each. Last are the Light-Speed Starships. These nasty guys come out of the corners of the screen and shoot straight at you with fast-moving bullets. These guys can be hard to avoid getting hit by, so most games of UFO will end when you get ambushed by some Light-Speed Starship fire.

The game will speed up a bit as you stay alive, so it does get somewhat more challenging over time. There aren’t any more enemies, or modes, or anything, though. That is disappointing — this is a great game, but some alternate play modes would have been cool. The game is certainly lacking in variety, no question. Still, UFO is incredible for a game from 1982. I love arena shooters, and this is a very early, forgotten arena shooter that most people have probably never even heard of. Well, now you know. Go play it! Oh, the European version has Videopac+ support, so it’s got a color background. The background is black here, but the gameplay is the same.

Here’s a gameplay video. It shows the game off well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIplxrAVouU

Posted in Classic Games, Game Opinion Summaries, Odyssey 2 | Tagged game opinion summaries, magnavox, odyssey 2, phillips, system review | Leave a comment

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