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Last Topic's Ratings:
Custom Robo - GGG - 100% (3)
Dual Heroes - BBB - 0% (3)
Duke Nukem 64 - GAGAGAAAGA - 70% (10)
Fox Sports College Hoops '99 - BBABA - 20% (5)
Glover - BBBGBBBG - 25% (8)
San Francisco Rush - BGAGGAAG - 69% (8)
This topic was all over the place. It's kind of surprising that no games got the squiggle bracket here.
Games for this topic:
Pachinko 365 Nichi
Paperboy
Snowboard Kids
Waialae Country Club
WCW/nWo Revenge
Yoshi's Story
Paperboy is another one of those games that I remember liking but I got sidetracked from it for whatever reason and just never went back to it. It'll be interesting to see how it holds up.
Pachinko 365 Nichi - A
ReplyDeletePaperboy - G
Snowboard Kids - G
Waialae Country Club - B
WCW/nWo Revenge - G
Yoshi's Story - A
Pachinko 365 Nichi is another Pachinko game. It's similar in structure to some of the ones we did for SNES GAB, where there's a sort of "quest mode" where your goal is to make as much money as possible by visiting different pachinko parlors. I appreciate that the parlors are modeled in 3D and you can actually walk around them and talk to people, but there isn't really a lot going on inside them, this isn't Vegas Stakes or anything like that. Still, you can see when the people sitting beside you hit the jackpot and that does kind of enhance the experience in a way. What sets this game apart from most other Pachinko games is that it's actually based on retro Pachinko machines. In the later SNES games we reviewed, we were starting to get to the more modern Pachinko machines that have video terminals in the middle and various payout events and stuff like that, but there's none of that here. The most advanced they get in this game are the ones that have simple slot reels in the middle, but there's actually even some very oldschool ones that are purely mechanical and don't even have slots, including one where you have to pull the handle to launch each ball. This is kind of nostalgic for me because I actually own an old-style pachinko machine of this type, and the one in the game very similar to the one in my basement. The machine with the handle is also by far the easiest one to win balls on, so I guess we know the dial launcher thing was a gimmick to make you waste more balls. Overall, this game is not bad, if I wanted to play a Pachinko game it would probably be this one, but I still feel that there's more that could be done with the Pachinko concept than this.
Paperboy is a fun game. I think you can easily argue that design-wise, it's not nearly as tight as the original, having full 3D movement, a health bar, and being able to stop on a dime makes the game vastly easier and removes a lot of the nuance from the NES game. There's also a new progression system where you start each stage with only a portion of the houses subscribing and more join after every attempt, which is a pretty cool idea, but it doesn't really get any harder as more houses join so you're unlikely to ever fail a stage, which results in the game not taking very long at all to finish. Based on this, I could see how you could argue the game is A, but I still think the game does a good job of capturing and enhancing what made Paperboy fun, which is all of the creative mayhem you can wreak upon the unsuspecting populous. Compared to the original, the N64 game sees a huge upgrade in animation and sound, no longer do people simply stop when you hit them with a paper, they now go flying and say funny voice clips, and this is always super satisfying. I also like the new targeting system, lining up long throws on mailboxes is fun, even if the points it gives you are largely useless. Ultimately, while this one is probably a bit of a short ride and I don't think it's a classic in the way that the original is, it's still a fun time while it lasts.
Snowboard Kids is a really fun game. I remember when I first played this, I didn't totally appreciate it, it was fun, but it felt a bit short and somewhat random, which I suppose it is, but it's still got a lot of things going for it. For starters, it feels very unique, being sort of a cross between a Kart Racer and a Snowboarding game. I particularly like the way tricks are handled, tricks give you money to buy powerups, so they feel more integrated into the racing experience than they do in most snowboarding games. The powerups themselves are quite varied and fun to use, though the weapons can feel a bit superflous if you're out in front since there are none you can fire behind you. I also really like the lift mechanic at the end of each lap - Only one person can ride the lift at a time, so if you get there as someone else is getting on you fall down, potentially allowing someone else to steal your spot. It's total bullcrap, but it's hilarious, which honestly describes the entire game pretty well. Despite this, there is a decent amount of nuance to playing well, particularly when you learn the superjump move (hold jump for a while, then let go), which can be used to get a burst of speed on the straightaways. Something else I have to bring up is the fact that there's also a not particularly well-known PS1 port of this game, which is very different. Compared to this game, it adds a ton of new content, most notably the fact that there's now a story mode for every character and there's a bunch of new characters as well, and there's also some nice system changes like being able to fire Bombs backwards (they're now the best weapon!). However, the PS1 port's framerate is very spotty, especially when other racers are onscreen, and it's also a lot easier, which is a bit of a mixed bag. Overall, I like both versions, but the N64 one is easily the safer version to get, especially if you want to play multiplayer.
DeleteI had hopes for Waialae Country Club, but it still sucks. The 3D graphics are nice, but it really fails in terms of camera and controls. For starters, the camera is missing the all-important "landing point" cam, all you really have is the "pin" cam, but even if your shot will land near the pin you won't be able to see it from there. The camera is also terrible while putting, making it very hard to read the distance and slope of the green. Even worse than this though is the shot meter. The control of the actual shot meter is tolerable, the big problem is that it's not linear in terms of power. If you want to hit a ball that goes half the distance of your club's power rating, you'd think you'd go for half the meter, right? Nope, it's somewhere around 65% or so because a lot of the power is in the last little portion of the meter, and this is even the case while putting, which is super frustrating and unfun. I haven't even gotten to the fact that the game has only one course, but to be honest that barely matters because even the one course it has is so lame to play that you wouldn't even want another one.
WCW/nWo Revenge is a solid improvement over its predecessor, though my thoughts about it are still mostly the same. Compared to World Tour, the biggest change is that it feels like it has more energy, which is appreciated. There are now real venues, more detailed intros, an announcer who shows up during certain animations, and the new match interruptions are a lot of fun. As with the previous title, control remains very solid, even when there are multiple wrestlers in the ring at once everything feels great to control. As with World Tour, the Wrestlers are all still fairly similar to each other, but I think there is a bit more moveset variation this time around. Really, it's basically just bigger and better than World Tour in pretty much every way, the one big downside is that there's still no real commentary, and with all of the crazy things that can happen in this game you do really feel its absence. Overall, I think I still prefer No Mercy, but this is a really solid game in its own right.
DeleteYoshi's Story is a really weird game. I imagine to some degree it was probably inspired by Star Fox 64, in that it also tries to take a more arcade-like approach to its gameplay, giving you one of a number of stages to choose from for each world and being heavily focused on earning a high score, but it's missing several of the components that made Star Fox 64 a success. We'll start with the branching nature of the level progression. In Yoshi's Story, you unlock levels by finding hearts. Each level has 3, and for each one you find, you can select from one more level in the next world. In my opinion, this is not nearly as interesting as the way the branching paths work in Starfox 64, where they are tied to certain, often tricky conditions and have a significant effect on the game's story. Here, as long as you play well, you can basically pick whichever levels you like, and your choice ceases to matter once you get to the next world, which simply doesn't have the same impact. As for the point system, this too is a bit lame, the entirety of earning a high score in this game is "only eat melons", as eating anything else massively hampers the amount of points you can get, even eating the lucky fruit, so this actually kind of makes the entire fruit system feel pointless. The fact that the time it takes you to clear the stage doesn't have any effect on your score only further compounds this issue, if time was a factor perhaps sometimes it would be ideal to eat other fruits, but since it doesn't matter you can feel free to hunt around for melons until the cows come home. On top of all of this, the game also has basically no unlockables, there's no target score for each stage or anything like that, the only thing you can earn is the ability to play the levels in the score attack mode, which is identical to playing them normally. On the plus side, the game does look and sound nice and the controls are spot on, but I agree with the previous comment that the game kind of feels unfinished. I'm not sure if they were trying to rush this one out or if they just didn't quite understand the appeal of Starfox 64 but either way this game definitely doesn't quite live up to its potential.