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Last Topic's Ratings:
Adventures of Star Saver, The - AAABB - 30% (5)
Crystal Quest - AGAAA - 60% (5) (1 SR)
Jordan vs Bird - ABAA - 38% (4)
Kininkou Maroku Oni - AG - 75% (2)
Turn and Burn - BBBBB - 0% (5)
Yoshi - AABAAAG - 50% (7)
A solid set of ratings. I'm always happy to see obscure games getting a decent number of votes.
Games for this topic:
Atomic Punk
Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly
Monster Maker
Mortal Kombat
Motocross Maniacs
Spot: The Video Game
I have a long history of hating on Mortal Kombat here at GAB, but I feel like Gameboy could be the one system where its excessively simplistic gameplay might actually be a good fit. Also, we have the first of many Bomberman games here. I was ready to make fun of them for changing the IP to make it more "cool", but actually they did this in the Japanese version too.
Atomic Punk - A
ReplyDeleteBart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly - A
Monster Maker - A
Mortal Kombat - B
Motocross Maniacs - G
Spot: The Video Game - A
Don't be fooled by Atomic Punk's awful name, this game is actually just Bomberman. Well, to be more precise, it's a combination of 2 Bomberman games, Bomber Boy and the original Bomberman. Bomber Boy plays very similarly to Bomberman 1, with the biggest added feature being that you can now store powerups. When collected, rather than being applied immediately powerups are added to your stock, which you can equip before levels. You lose the equipped powerups when you die, but you earn money so you can buy more. The game is divided into various worlds, and clearing each one unlocks a new powerup for purchase. Powerups also rarely appear within stages, but unlike Bomberman 1 there isn't guaranteed to be one on every stage. Like later Bomberman games, later stages have gimmicks like warps or blocks that have to be bombed twice. There are still no bosses or anything like that though. Bomberman 1 is largely identical to the NES version, though the maps are smaller, which IMO improves it quite a bit since it speeds up the pacing. Both games have password support. VS Play is also supported, though you can only play against another person. IMO, Bomber Boy is kind of dull. There's an absurd number of stages, but they're very similar to each other, and the inventory system has the unintended side effect of making many stages play very similarly. You can progress quite fast once you get remote bomb, but some of the stage gimmicks are fairly annoying (especially the warps) and in general I just feel like Bomberman 1 plays better. The bigger issue for this game is that GB has like 10 Bomberman games and all of the others are better than this one. This is still by no means bad, but it definitely feels a little lacking compared to some of the other titles.
By the standards of early licensed titles on the platform, Escape from Camp Deadly is not terrible. The graphics are pretty decent for their time, certainly Bart and Lisa are easily recognizable, it controls decently well, and it's also not impossibly hard. The game is a fairly basic 2D platformer with a few occasional twists and turns, for example at one point on the first stage there's a lake you can't pass, forcing you to climb into a treehouse and fight a miniboss before continuing on. The game's biggest issue is that it can get repetitive, stages aren't really that long but they typically involve doing the same thing repeatedly, like how the first stage requires you to get 3 flags or the second stage requires you to do 3 food sections. The game's biggest issue is the rate of enemy spawns, though, the generic campers often spawn again instantly the second they're killed, forcing a Robocop-esque "shoot constantly so you hit things as they appear onscreen" strategy. At least they sometimes drop health pickups and ammo is generally fairly abundant. There's not really too much else to say about it. It's playable and if you got this because you loved the Simpsons (which everyone did at the time) it wouldn't be nearly as bad as if you were a Rocky and Bullwinkle or Ren and Stimpy fan, but we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves there.
Monster Maker is not at all what I expected, but it's all right for an early title. Despite the name, this is not any kind of monster summoning RPG, it is instead based on a Japanese pen and paper RPG of the same name. The game starts with you choosing 1 of 4 characters to be the main character, though this choice seems to barely matter as they're all very similar (notably, none of them are spellcasters, unless you don't get MP until late in the game). You are then given a task by the king to investigate a strange noise near the castle. You can buy weapons and armor with the initial money, but you won't get anywhere without hiring some allies, which you do by selecting the top option at the Inn. These allies are temporary (they leave any time you stay at the inn with the bottom option) and they can never level up, but they're totally essential to make any progress at all and you'll make the money back fairly fast. Spellcasters have access to a fairly unique magic system, MP in this game represents magic capacity in a manner similar to D&D, to actually use spells you have to go to the magic shop and choose which spells you want casters to memorize, giving them one cast of the spell for each amount of MP consumed, ie, for 2 MP you can get one cast of Flare or 2 casts of Vitals (the healing spell). The MP is freed up after you cast the spell, though you'll have to visit the inn and sleep to refill it (which will force you to hire the person again and reassign their magic), in any case this is an interesting system for its time. After setting up your party, you can go to the dungeon on the left side of town. Dungeons are also a little weird in this game. They're divided into tiles and you can't see anything in front of you until you uncover the next tile, which might have an event or a battle on it. Encounters occur in typical dragon quest style and unless you plan to use spells the autobattle is how you'll handle most fights (you can cancel it to regain control if healing is required). Battles reward money and possibly items, but not EXP, you only level up by progressing the game (for example, after beating the first boss you return to the king and he promotes you to level 2). It should also be noted that the game's presentation is quite good for its time, sprites are large and detailed and enemy illustrations are also pretty good. The gameplay can get a bit repetitive as the encounter rate is high, but it seems like running from battle is nearly guaranteed so you can use that to avoid most of the non-scripted encounters if you need to. Probably the biggest issue is that the need to flip over the tiles makes dungeon exploration fairly slow, this feels like it was kind of an unnecessary mechanic. In any case though this is a decent early take on a western-style RPG, and it's certainly much better than Wizardry Gaiden.
DeleteI had some hopes for Mortal Kombat, I feel like its extremely simplistic gameplay actually could translate to Gameboy, but this certainly isn't it. The GB port of Mortal Kombat runs at like 5fps and is virtually impossible to control. Many moves have only one frame of animation (but are still super slow), special moves are nearly impossible to do, the uppercut takes like a year to perform, there's no Johnny Cage, and just generally everything about this port is total garbage. It runs so atrociously I was like "this has to be a problem with the emulator because no one would ever allow a game to be released in this state", but no, it really does run this badly. This is a pretty strong contender for the worst fighting game of all time. Still, there's more Mortal Kombat games on the platform and the later ones will almost certainly be better than this.
DeleteMotocross Maniacs is pretty fun. It's a simple racing game that somewhat resembles Excitebike, though without the ability to move into and out of the screen, instead there's more verticality and a focus on using turbo boosts to make jumps. A key part of the game is collecting powerups, from more nitros to increased speed or more time to complete the course, which often require you to use boosts to reach alternate sections of the track such as loops. Just like in Excitebike, you also must rotate your bike to land properly from jumps or wheelie off various things. The gameplay is simple, but it controls well and the rotation mechanic adds a sufficient degree of precision to the experience to keep it interesting. A little mechanic I like is that if you don't need the powerups on a loop, you can often save time by not boosting and thus skipping the loop, allowing for faster times if you know exactly how many boosts you'll need. About the only mechanic I'm not a huge fan of is that on most tracks there are some sections where you have to have nitros to progress, so if you run out you're just screwed, and there's not even a way to give up and quickly reset the track as far as I know, you just have to wait out the timer, which is silly. I feel like it probably should have been the case that your nitros would slowly regenerate to 3 or so if you ran out, so that you could eventually complete those sections at the cost of a lot of time. In any case though, it's a pretty fun game. I'm pleased to see that so far most of the games that I remember being popular in my childhood have held up fairly well.
Spot: The Video Game is all right. It's a strategy game that somewhat resembles Reversi, but with some unique mechanics. Each player starts with pieces in two of the four corners. Each turn, you can take one piece and move it either 1 or 2 spaces. If moved one space, you create a new piece in the new location, if moved two spaces, it moves the existing piece. After placing the piece, it captures any opponent pieces that are adjacent to it, then the opponent takes their turn, with the goal being to have the most pieces of your colour at the end of the game. It actually plays somewhat differently from Reversi because the ability to move two spaces (and leave a gap behind) can result in areas which would be "safe" in Reversi like the corners becoming vulnerable, you have to think pretty carefully before you do some of those jumps. Its biggest flaw IMO is that placing the last piece is very powerful, whomever plays last almost always wins. Players can stall out the second last move by only making 2 jump moves (since these don't place an extra piece on the board), leading to the game often becoming somewhat dull near the end, I feel like they needed a better way to resolve this. You can also edit the board so some of the spaces are unusable, which arguably adds some replay value, though blocking off too many spaces causes the game to not really play properly from a strategic perspective. At any rate, its an all right game to play for a few rounds and it works reasonably well on the platform.
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