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Last Topic's Ratings:
Addams Family, The - GAAAA - 60% (5)
Daedalian Opus - GAGAA - 70% (5)
Double Dragon - GGGGGA - 92% (6)
Pachinko Saiyuuki - BB - 0% (2)
Skate or Die: Bad N Rad - BAB - 17% (3)
Tower of Druaga, The - ABBAAA - 33% (6) (1 SR)
A surprisingly solid start for the Addams Family. Spoiler alert, I owned a different Addams Family game when I was a kid that I'm quite looking forward to covering when we get to it, but that's a topic for another time. You might also be wondering if Tower of Druaga is the lowest-rated game to ever get an SR, but it's not even close, several games that scored only 20% have gotten SRs on past systems.
Games for this topic:
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon
Black Bass: Lure Fishing
Fastest Lap
Fire Fighter
Klax (Hudson)
Xerd no Densetsu
Game Boy is at it again, there are not one, not two, but THREE separate games on the platform with the name "Klax". This is the JP-only release from Hudson, not the later Mindscape version or the GBC version. Speaking of GBC versions, there's also a GBC version of Black Bass, but unlike Klax, this is basically the exact same game except with color and minor graphical enhancements, so in this case we won't be rating the GBC version separately. I can already tell this is going to become a confusing mess. However, there's no reason to be confused by Sailor Moon because there's a fan translation available for it.
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon - B
ReplyDeleteBlack Bass: Lure Fishing - B
Fastest Lap - G
Fire Fighter - A
Klax (Hudson) - A
Xerd no Densetsu - A
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon kind of reminds me of Escape From Camp Deadly, though it's significantly worse. The game is essentially divided into 2 parts, the exploration segments where you have to wander around town and talk to people to advance the story, and the action parts where you have to fight generic enemies and bosses as Sailor Moon. To its credit, the game does feature fairly detailed artwork for the characters and it attempts to retell the story of the anime, but the exploration segments are very dull, largely because Sailor Moon walks so incredibly slow. The combat sections are not much better. Initially, Sailor Moon's only attack is a kick, which actually has decent range, but it has a cooldown of about a second after you use it that isn't indicated by anything and makes the game's controls feel unresponsive. From watching a video, I learned that you can cry in certain areas of the action stages to find powerups, including one that gives you a ranged attack, which is much better though obviously this mechanic simply slows the game down more if you don't know where the powerups are. The boss fights are not good either, they heavily rely upon the fact that you can phase through bosses when they're flashing from being hit, which is something that would feel like an exploit in any other game, this also makes them really easy if you have the projectile. At any rate, neither of the sections here feel very good and the downtime between the action stages feels particularly grating if you ever need to continue.
Black Bass: Lure Fishing is a classic bad fishing game, it makes pretty much every mistake possible for a fishing title. For starters, hooking fish sucks. When you cast your line, you can see underwater while you guide the lure along, which is actually not bad for its time. Periodically fish shadows will appear, and you have to line your lure up with them to make them bite. The problem is, the fish will only bite about 25% of the time. I tried savestating to see if anything you could do with the lure affects whether or not they will bite, but it doesn't, it's complete RNG, which also makes the entire lure section of the game totally pointless. When you do finally hook a fish (and it takes a long time as you typically only see one fish shadow per cast), the fighting is an extremely simple one button reel with a tension meter. This is serviceable, but there's no depth to it. Like almost all other bad fishing games, only Black Bass count, and this compounds the game's problems further as not only does it take forever to get a fish to actually bite, that fish might be a useless fish, forcing you to do it again. The game also has a super weird system where the number of Bass you catch actually doesn't matter, only their average size does, so a single large black bass is better than like 5 average ones. This means the correct way to play the game is just catch 1 fish, reset if it's not big, and immediately turn it in if it is. Obviously, this isn't fun at all, and neither is this game. Just wait for River King.
Fastest Lap makes a very poor initial impression but it's actually a pretty decent game. It's a top-down racer, similar to something like Micro Machines, but unlike something like Sunsoft Grand Prix it controls properly and has reasonable track design. The game has a significant focus on qualifying, unlike some F1 games you're forced to do your qualifying lap and finish under a certain time or you're not allowed to participate in the race at all, though even if you do get the top position it doesn't really matter because the other cars will instantly blow past you in the real race anyway as there's no collision and the rival cars accelerate way faster than you do. Initially, races seem totally impossible, but this is because you have to understand the race settings, in particular the tire selection. There are 6 types of tires available, given the extremely unhelpful designations of B, C, Q, RB, RC, and RQ. The B tiers are completely nonviable. I have no idea what the B stands for ("bad"?) but they make your car so slow that you'll never get anywhere. The Q tire is the fastest tire, but it makes steering harder. This is usually optimal for the qualifying lap (which I suspect is what the Q stands for), but if you try to use them in races they'll wear out too fast and you'll have to pit, which loses a ton of time. The better choice is to use the C tire, which is a little slower but lasts long enough to go through the whole race, at least on most courses. The game always defaults you to the B tires though so you must change before every race or lose instantly, which is stupid. The R tires are probably for rain, though I never encountered it on any of the races I did and they're super slow when the weather's dry. There are also different settings for your engine and such which do make a difference, but the default one is usually good enough. At any rate, once adequately set up the game plays fairly decently. The edges of the track are kinda just a suggestion and you can cut corners quite liberally in this game, but you'll still need somewhat good racing lines to get fast times. It's not bad for an early title.
DeleteFire Fighter is an interesting game, but I feel it strays too far from its core concept as it goes on. The basic gist of the game is that you have to enter burning areas and save people, which is actually kind of cool. You have to explore rapidly deteriorating environments, put out fires, grab people, and carry them to safety. The core mechanics work well and the first stage is pretty fun. The problem is that as the game goes on, it becomes less of a firefighting game and more of a standard platforming game, as other hazards become the main threat and the fire takes a backseat, after a couple levels there's barely any fire at all anymore and you're instead avoiding spikes and giant spiders instead. One of the big issues with this is your fire hose only affects fire and nothing else, you can sometimes find a fire axe that allows you to attack (though only a few times), but it only works on a handful of enemies and of course there's no indication as to which ones are vulnerable to it, leaving evasion as the only option the majority of the time. It still controls pretty well and looks decent, but I wish actual fire fighting had gotten more of a focus.
Hudson's version of Klax is all right. I actually think this is better than the later, US-released GB version of Klax, largely because the tile patterns are much more clearly readable. This version axes the faux-3D playing field, which perhaps loses some of the visual spectacle, but I think it's a fine tradeoff for visual clarity especially given the size of GB's screen and limited colours available. There's not really too much else to say about this version, the basics are perfectly intact from the NES version, including the level goals and warps. If you're a big fan of Klax, this is a fine version of it, though to be honest I've always considered it to be something of a mid-tier game. I think a lot of the problem is that the way each level forces you to make matches of a specific type makes it feel limited, the game doesn't even have an "endless" mode where you just make combos and such, which limits its potential appeal. I also still think that the Klax variant included in 4-in-1 volume 1 is superior to this game, and of course it comes with 3 other games as well. Still an alright puzzler, but wouldn't be near the top of my early puzzle choices on GB. A superior version of this game will also eventually be available on GBC if you really want portable Klax.
DeleteXerd no Densetsu is a fairly typical RPG with a few weird mechanics. On the surface it plays fairly similarly to Dragon Quest, the map, town, and battle scenes are all very similar. The first thing that needs to be said about this game is that the encounter rate is extremely high. The map is enormous for a game of this type and encounters happen every few steps, so you're likely looking at a dozen or so encounters to even get to the first town. Enemies hit hard, too, so you'll need tons of healing items. Luckily, healing items come in stacks, for example you can buy a stack of 10 holy waters which only takes up one inventory slot, which is important because you'll be using a lot of them. As long as you have heals battles are not especially tough and you level fast so it's not too hard to make progress, and the second character has an infinite use healing ability the makes the game fairly easy while you have him (he's a temporary party member, though). You eventually get a spellcaster, and spells in this game are also items, albeit ones that only the spellcasters can equip. Thankfully these do not use up your limited inventory slots once equipped, but once their limited casts are gone you'll have to buy or find more of them (you do get a fairly decent number of casts per stack, though). Graphics and presentation are fine for their time. Enemy battle sprites are all right and the music is actually pretty decent, even if there's not a ton of it. Enemies also have a digitized death scream, which is kinda hilarious the first few times but loses its appeal after you've killed literally hundreds of them. The game is also kinda famous for its storyline being somewhat wacky, which I won't get into in too much depth but no one is really sure if it's intended to be a parody or not, at the very least it's a bit different from the norm. Overall, it's an all right game, I'd probably put it below Kininkou Maroku Oni and Monster Maker but above Aretha. It's probably not something anyone would be rushing out to play but it was probably fine when it came out.