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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Amida - BBB - 0% (3)
Battleship - BBBBB - 0% (5)
Blades of Steel - ABAA - 38% (4)
Catrap - GGAGG - 90% (5) (1 SR)
Chibi Maruko-Chan Okozukai Daisakusen - BB - 0% (2)
Mega Man - BBGGBBG - 43% (7)
This was a much more interesting topic than I expected. I thought Catrap might be the game with some back and forth, but it was actually Mega Man where there was a lot of disagreement. Even though these are still the single digits there's been some interesting results so far.
Games for this topic:
Bill Elliott's NASCAR Fast Tracks
Caesars Palace
Pachinko Time
Parasol Henbee
Prince of Persia
Zoids Densetsu
This topic looks like a fascinating one to me. First of all, we have the showdown between American and Japanese gambling games with Caesar's Palace and Pachinko Time. We have some PC-centric games in NASCAR Fast Tracks and Prince of Persia, and also the first game in the Zoids series, which I've long been interested in because my friend had one of the Famicom titles when we were kids. I really love the diversity in the Game Boy library. Incidentally, I believe the GB and GBC versions of Prince of Persia are identical except for the GBC version being colourized, so if you've played either one you can probably rate it.
Bill Elliott's NASCAR Fast Tracks - A
ReplyDeleteCaesars Palace - A
Pachinko Time - B
Parasol Henbee - G
Prince of Persia - G
Zoids Densetsu - B
I'm not sure which madman looked at Gameboy's hardware and thought "this seems like a system that can run a fully 3D racing game", but the second I found out about Bill Elliot's NASCAR Fast Tracks I had to see if it would work to any degree, and surprisingly it actually kind of does. First thing's first, this game runs at like 5fps. I guess the developers really just wanted to make sure you had time to appreciate every frame, because it's clear the Gameboy didn't appreciate rendering it. Surprisingly, this is slow enough to the point that it's not visually painful to play, like games that run at 15fps or so can be, and after 10 minutes or so I had kind of adjusted to it. In terms of the racing gameplay, despite the very slow speed of the game it's actually not bad. They made the wise choice to not be too harsh with you hitting the sides of the track (you just lose a little speed), and the turning control is actually pretty decent once you get used to tapping it. Surprisingly, the developers weren't content to just get this running on GB, there's also car damage and pitting as well, though pitting is very slow so you want to avoid damaging your car too much if possible (Pitting is also, hilariously, the one part of the game that is a flicker-fest). Track design is also not bad, there are four tracks, notably including Sears Point and Walkins Glen, which you might recognize as "the two NASCAR tracks that aren't ovals", which gives the game reasonable track variety and the street tracks actually play fairly well. There's not really too much to say about it, it's a visual spectacle / interesting conversation piece backed up by reasonably competent driving mechanics. It's probably not something you'd play a whole lot, but I respect the ambition and this is easily better than something like F-1 Race.
Caesars Palace is a basic gambling game consisting of 5 games: Blackjack, Roulette, Video Poker, Slots, and Big Wheel. The general interface for the game is decent, placing bets is easy and quick, as is choosing to hit or stay in Blackjack and picking the cards to discard in Video Poker. I appreciate that the Video Poker machines and Slot machines have different bet values, so these remain a viable way to earn money even when you're rich. The game's presentation is also not bad for its time I suppose. By far the game's biggest issue is there's absolutely no way to save. I thought this game had passwords but apparently I was remembering Super Caesars Palace on the SNES instead. You can get a very marginally different ending if you earn a ton of money, but unless you're using savestates you're probably just going to quickly lose all your money, which is fine I suppose because it's really just here to be a time killer. There's not really a lot else to say about it, it's a very basic game but there is some timeless appeal to these games and it wasn't a bad option for a game to offer in portable format. These days you'd probably prefer to play the GBC sequel instead, which has saving and a bunch more features, but this was okay for its time.
I remain hopeful that there will one day be a decent Pachinko game but Pachinko Time isn't it. The basic idea behind the game actually isn't terrible, the goal is to progress through the game world by entering various parlors and beating their pachinko machines. This is a potentially decent setup, the problem is that beating a machine requires you to run it out of balls, and the earliest machines have 2000 balls, which will take at least 15-20 minutes of mindless repetition to beat. The game's most notable (and annoying) mechanic is that the amount of power with which you launch the ball is not displayed, and it gradually decays over time, presumably to stop you from finding the optimal spot and just holding the A button, but the fact that they had to put in this kind of "anti-AFK" mechanic shows you how engaging this game is. I actually feel like if the ball limit had been way lower, like maybe 200-300 balls per table instead of 2000, this actually could have been kind of a decent setup, but 2000 is just way too much and I don't doubt it gets higher as you progress. Plus, even after you win a table, you don't actually get to go on, as you have to beat at least 3 machines from every parlor to get to the next one, which basically just involves doing the same thing over again. I feel like you can see the beginnings of a solid gameplay concept forming here, but it needs a lot more work. There are a ton of games in this series on the console though so we'll see if they're ever able to build it into anything decent.
DeleteParasol Henbee is a cute little platformer that kind of reminds me of Kirby's Dream Land. The game's main mechanic is that you have an energy bar that is filled up by collecting food items, similar to Adventure Island, though it doesn't decay over time like in that game. The energy bar serves as your health, as being hit removes some of it, though it has significantly more uses than this. For starters, your only form of attack is a spinning move, which requires one unit of energy to use. More importantly though, Henbee has 3 "states" which depend on how much energy you have. In your normal state, you can press up in midair to open your parasol and slow fall, but if you get the energy meter nearly full, your parasol instead becomes unlimited flight, though it slowly drains your energy while in use. If the energy bar instead gets nearly empty, you enter a weakened state where you move slower and don't jump as far which is extremely detrimental, though thankfully you begin each life with enough energy to be safely out of this state. Obviously, the flight state is extremely strong and much of the game revolves around maintaining it. You'll lose if if you take a hit, but you can quickly collect food to get it back. Even just flying around and using the spin attack might put you at risk of losing the state so you will want to continue grabbing food as often as possible, though a nice touch is that if you run through your energy while flying you don't immediately lose it (which would usually cause you to die), you can instead maintain it for a little bit before you fall. In general, it's a fairly simple and easy game, food is abundant and the flight state is strong, and levels are also short and there's tons of extra lives. The game does have some fairly tricky platforming segments involving small moving platforms, particularly later on, but of course you can avoid these entirely using the flight power if you can keep your health up, which feels like a nice reward for playing well. There's also surprisingly a few boss fights near the end of the game, but these are not difficult either. Still, it's a very cute game with nice presentation and it controls well, and it's actually a bit longer than you might think (you can't see the entire map from the start), so it makes for a decent playthrough even if it probably doesn't have a lot of replay value.
I've never been the biggest fan of Prince of Persia, but it is undeniably sort of a classic and this port is extremely solid. In case you're not familiar with it, Prince of Persia is basically the first "cinematic" platformer. The game is extremely well animated for its time, featuring very realistic animations for the main character. The game is sort of a puzzle-action mix where you have to escape the castle dungeons, which are full of traps, falling floors, spike pits, puzzles, and a ton of guards, all within a one hour time limit. It's kind of a finnicky game and it can be quite frustrating, but at least you get infinite lives (albeit with time not being refunded if you die). The game makes the transition to Gameboy totally intact, the visuals work just fine with GB's limited colour pallete, and the controls are also fairly well implemented on the platform, in particular I feel like sword fighting is less annoying here than in some versions. The game features password saves, which makes it reasonable to play in short bursts, and also reduces the frustration factor somewhat because you can simply grind your way through each level until you know what to do, then restart from your password to get all your time back, beat it cleanly, and get a new password. There's not really too much else to say about this than that it's a good early port of a game that was pretty popular at the time. This doesn't apply to the GBC version, though, which is just a lazy recolour that came out way later. This version clearly should have been based off of the SNES version (which adds a bunch of stuff), but it's a straight re-release of the existing GB version with added color and nothing else. It's still certainly an okay version to play but by this time there were better options. I would probably have rated that version as A if rating it separately.
DeleteZoids Densetsu is a very basic horizontal shmup that has some interesting ideas but isn't well-executed enough for them to amount to much. For starters, the basic gameplay is incredibly dull. Stages go on way too long and are way too repetitive, with you progressing at a very slow pace and fighting the same tiny handful of enemies over and over. Probably the most notable thing is that there's multiple playable Zoids, which effectively act as your lives, with a different one taking over when you die, though annoyingly it forces you to restart the current level from the beginning. These zoids differ only in terms of their weapons, with the first having a 90 degree spread shot, the second having a horizontal shot, and the third having a 45 degree spread shot. They also each have a different special weapon, but you get these so infrequently that they basically don't matter, especially as their effects are generally unimpressive. At the end of every second level you fight a boss, which are actually the same zoids you have access to, which is probably the high point of the game as these battles have some complexity, though it takes much too long to get to them. The game also allows you to play as either of the two factions from the TV show, but they have the same zoids and the campaign is completely identical except for the graphics being switched out, which is incredibly lame. If they at least had different zoids (which would in turn make for different boss battles) this might have moved the game a little closer to A (though realistically it would probably still be B because of how boring it is most of the time). There's really not much else to say about it, it's an incredibly dull game which isn't in any way well-optimized to the platform. I'm glad to have this out of the way so we can get to the RPGs.