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Last Topic's Ratings:
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon - AB - 25% (2)
Black Bass: Lure Fishing - BBBAB - 10% (5)
Fastest Lap - GGG - 100% (3)
Fire Fighter - AAA - 50% (3)
Klax (Hudson) - AGA - 67% (3)
Xerd no Densetsu - AA - 50% (2)
Also a bit of a quiet week. Fastest Lap was kind of a nice surprise though.
Games for this topic:
Aerostar
Godzilla
Marble Madness (GB)
Q Billion
Sports Illustrated: Golf Classic
Star Wars
Once again, we've got another game which has a Gameboy Color version with the same name but it's a very different game, this time we're covering the original GB version. There's also a bunch of Godzilla games on the system, this is the one from 1990.
Aerostar - G
ReplyDeleteGodzilla - A
Marble Madness (GB) - A
Q Billion - G
Sports Illustrated: Golf Classic - G
Star Wars - A
Aerostar is a pretty cool game. It's a shmup, but one with a bit of a unique twist. Rather than controlling a plane, you control a strange tank of sorts that mainly has to stay on the ground, but can take to the sky briefly using a jumping move. Jumping has two main purposes, for starters, it lets you avoid ground-level shots, and it also lets you move between ground segments, which is frequently necessary if the path ends or is blocked by an obstacle. However, there are also enemies that shoot air shots that will pass above you harmlessly when on the ground, but become fatal when you're in the air. You might think this would be hard to read given GB's monochromatic display, but the game makes the smart choice to simply display ground shots as small balls and air shots as big balls, so they're easy to tell apart even when things get hectic. There's also a fairly standard complement of weapons to use, whenever a powerup drops you can shoot it to choose the weapon you'd like, so your choice is pretty free most of the time. I particularly like the laser weapon, which fires a forward beam, but when you release the button the shot splits and goes to the sides. It's a pretty unique weapon to use and it's quite powerful and versatile when used well. There's not really too much else to say about the game other than it makes pretty decent use of its unique mechanics, which each level generally throwing some new kind of wrinkle into the mix. While it starts off pretty easy, by stage 3 or so it can get fairly hectic, but never in a way that feels unfair. Oh, and there's also instant respawns if you die, which is always great. Almost certainly the best shmup we've covered so far on the platform, I feel like with slightly smoother scrolling this would still have been a solid game even on console.
Godzilla has so little to do with the title character I wouldn't be surprised if it originally starred a different character, but it's tolerable. The basic gist of the game is that it's a puzzle game where the goal is to destroy all the rocks on each stage. Godzilla cannot jump, so your only method of vertical movement is vines / ladders, but you can punch, which can both defeat enemies and move boulders one square in the faced direction. To destroy boulders, you have to push them into a spot where they can't move (ie, against another boulder or a wall) and then punch them. This sometimes requires some nuance as you may sometimes need to use boulders as platforms or may sometimes not be able to return from certain sections of the stage, but generally it's not too hard. As mentioned before, there are enemies as well. They don't interfere with the puzzle (in fact you can squish them with the boulders), but they'll drain your energy if they touch you, luckily most of them can just be punched but the flier can be annoying and one of them is invincible and just gets pushed back instead of killed when punched (he can still be crushed). The goal of the game is not simply to clear all the stages, they're arranged in a grid and you have to get to the goal sector which is in the middle. Each time you beat a stage you reveal one or more arrows that let you move a square in that direction, with the eventual goal being to find the center of the maze, though IMO this is kind of an unnecessary mechanic and I think it would have been fine if you just did all the stages in order. There's password save at least. It's an all right game, but nothing mindblowing and it's not really doing much with the license.
Marble Madness is a pretty impressive port to GB. The game is almost totally intact from the NES version, the level maps are basically identical save for a couple removed hazards, and the music is totally intact from the NES version as well. This version is actually easier than the NES version as the control is less slippery and the turbo button seems to make you go a touch faster, and it doesn't hurt that a couple really obnoxious hazards (like the pounders at the end of stage 4) aren't present in this version. Speaking of, I learned something new while playing this version. About halfway through stage 4 there's a section where you have to cross some pegged floors. The pegs periodically spring up and shoot you into the air. There are 3 such floors and after the third there's a gap that you have to use the pegs to launch yourself across, which is really hard. Or at least, I always THOUGHT you had to do it that way, it turns out the if you use the speedup button and are going at max speed you can just fly across. I was so incredulous that this was possible that I immediately booted up the NES version to check, and it works there too. I am shaken to my core. All those years of attempting that jump when it's actually totally unnecessary. Anyway, back to the GB version, there is one big problem with this version, which is that the final stage (the ultimate race) actually isn't in the game at all, the Silly Race is the final stage and it just loops back to the Beginner Race afterwards. I imagine this is because of the disappearing segment at the end, but whatever the case this is a big loss, as the biggest problem with Marble Madness has always been that it doesn't have enough levels, so losing one of the already limited number of stages really hurts. It's a shame too because this is otherwise a super solid port and I'd be tempted to call it superior to the NES version. There is also the GBC version later, but we'll deal with that one when we come to it.
DeleteQ Billion is kind of a weird game. It's a puzzle game involving stacks of blocks. The stacks have different heights, and your goal is to push the blocks so that all stacks have height 1. The trick is you can only push a stack that's one higher than the one you're currently standing on, so you can push stacks of height 1 from the floor, stacks of height 2 from a 1-stack, stacks of height 3 from a 2-stack, and so on. As such, if there's a 3 stack you need to push, you need to preserve a 2 stack, but if you push a 2 stack into an empty space, the block will fall, creating a 1 stack, so you may have to push the 2 stack onto a 1 stack so you maintain the 2 stack. It's simple enough at first, but eventually they start introducing icon blocks, which work somewhat differently. When you connect 4 icon blocks with the same icon, the top block from each stack disappears. Sometimes you won't want to do this (like if you need to use a stack to push another, non-icon stack), so you have to avoid matching 4 blocks. With icon blocks, simply dropping them to a stack of size 1 isn't good enough, you have to eliminate them completely. Oh, and there might be a different type of block underneath an icon block, for example you might clear a star icon block only to find out the block under it is a heart. As you can probably figure out by now, it can get complicated, though the game tends to mix in some fairly easy puzzles with the hard ones. I'm not sure if this is deliberate or just a wonky difficulty curve but it is sometimes nice to get an easy one that you can solve instantly. Luckily you have infinite lives and can instantly restart a puzzle whenever you want, and there's also passwords, so it's not particularly frustrating. I'm kind of torn between A and G for this, it's reasonably unique, but I also feel like it's kind of basic and the presentation certainly isn't much. Still, I did kinda get sucked into it for a while and I guess it's not a bad fit for the system.
Sports Illustrated: Golf Classic is a pretty decent golf game. It's kind of similar to Golf, which we covered before, it's also a purely top view game with 2 courses, though it has a bit more complexity because you can do spins. I quite like the way aiming works in this game, you just move the cursor to where you'd like to hit, similar to modern golf games, and it even tells you exactly how far the cursor is from your current position, this is quite ahead of its time. The swing meter is a little more awkward, it's a three-click swing, but the meter is invisible, you have to gauge it based on an animation of your golfer. I was getting pretty good at it after a while, but I would have rather had the meter be displayed, particularly because guessing exactly where full power is (you lose power if you go too far) is pretty tough. Still, at least putting is pretty straightforward in this game, so even if your approach shots aren't the best you can make up for it on the green. There's not really too much else to say about it, compared to Golf the visuals are definitely a little sharper and it looks pretty nice with the Super Gameboy support, but it's still nothing terribly fancy, and it doesn't really have much progression, but it's still a solid portable option for your golfing needs.
DeleteStar Wars is a port of the NES game. Easily the most impressive thing about it is that this is an exact port. Unlike DuckTales, which was massively cut down for the GB version, every level map is shot for shot identical to the NES version, even the flying sections make it through intact. It's so exact that I was able to use a video walkthrough for the NES version and everything was an exact match every step of the way (it's not like playthroughs for the GB version don't exist, but I was trying to compare the two versions). Unfortunately, this means all of the issues with the NES version are carried over, which I suppose is really just one major issue, being the needlessly confusing speeder bike overworld segments. The overworld looks even more samey with the loss of colour and finding where you're supposed to go is basically impossible without a guide. It's too bad, because otherwise the running and gunning action is decent for its time. You can even play as Han and Leia as well after they join, and in general the plot of the game is a pretty close match for the movie. One new issue is that on the GB version, there are some blind jumps that aren't blind on the NES version, due to the reduced screen size. It doesn't happen very often and usually if you go the wrong way you just hit spikes for a little damage, but it is definitely a bit annoying. I guess if you really want to play this game, the version you want is the Gamegear version, which totally axes the speeder bike portion for some more on foot levels, which is a huge improvement, but this version is still kind of impressive for an early GB title, and it's clearly a lot better than Amazing Spider Man and such.