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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Aerostar - AGAG - 75% (4)
Godzilla - GAA - 67% (3)
Marble Madness (GB) - AAAB - 38% (4)
Q Billion - GAB - 50% {3}
Sports Illustrated: Golf Classic - GBB - 33% (3)
Star Wars - AAAA - 50% (4)
I'm pleased that every game in this topic got at least 3 ratings. I guess it helps that there were no import-only titles here, but there's still some pretty obscure titles here.
Games for this topic:
Altered Space
Ayakashi no Shiro
Bases Loaded
Q-Bert (GB)
Super Bikkuriman
Trax
Once again, we have to clarify that this is the original GB version of Q-Bert, not the GBC version, which is a completely different game. What was it with developers and reusing titles on Game Boy, anyway?
Altered Space - A
ReplyDeleteAyakashi no Shiro - A
Bases Loaded - B
Q-Bert - G
Super Bikkuriman - A
Trax - A
Altered Space is an interesting but somewhat flawed game. It is essentially a pseudo-sequel to Solstice on NES, having the same developer and generally similar gameplay. In case you're not familiar with Solstice, it is an isometric platformer where you have to explore a labyrinth filled with enemies, puzzles, and a whole lot of spikes. Unlike Solstice, which takes place on a single large map, Altered Space is divided into levels, with the goal of each level being to find the elevator to the next floor. Floors are quite large, consisting of dozens of rooms, so one of the primary challenges is simply to find the exit. You have an air meter, which acts as your health and a time limit mechanic. It very slowly decreases, but more significantly you lose a big chunk of it every time you get hit. You can refill your air by finding air tanks, which are not that rare, but you can collect each one only one time. There are also other items you can pick up that can help you in various ways, like the circuit jammer which can disable enemies in the room and the key which opens locked doors, but both only once. The core setup has some appeal and it works reasonably well on game boy, but there are some issues. For starters, this game absolutely loves cheap shots. There are many rooms in the game where you will instantly be killed if you don't move immediately, as well as many rooms where you will be instantly killed if you DO move immediately (generally because there are spikes like an inch from where you spawn in). To add insult to injury, these are often dead-end rooms that basically exist just to screw you over. Secondly, the game's puzzles rarely make sense. For example, on the first floor, you can obtain a key, and by meticulously exploring the floor you can find the door that it goes to, and behind that door is a fork, one of which leads to an immediate dead end, and the other leads to a long path that has only a single item that you probably don't care about. Alternatively, you could just go to the elevator, which is in the middle of the floor and you passed it like 15 rooms ago. Something else I have to mention is that obviously, something that would really help in this game is a map, and actually, there is a map available. To obtain the map, you first have to get your hands on a computer interface item, which enables the map for the rest of the game. There is one of these in floor 1, but it's locked behind a tall wall that I believe is literally impossible to pass. I checked multiple video playthroughs of the game and no one could figure out how to get in, and I checked every room on floor 1 and tried every item and none of them can get you in there. I even hacked the game to create a moon jump code to get me over the wall, then checked the other side to see if the room might have a hidden exit, but it doesn't seem to (though the computer item does at least work if you can get over there), so you probably have to pick if up on the second floor. In any case, once you have the map, it still kinda sucks. See, even though the game is isometric, the map is not, and it's orientated oddly so that right is down. It also doesn't show how rooms connect to each other, but it is a little helpful in that it at least shows the location of the elevator so you can see if you're on the right track. Still, it does kind of perfectly sum up the game's haphazard design. Oh, and the game also has no password save or anything and it's quite long. It is playable and kind of unique, but it's also quite frustrating and would likely require a lot of patience.
Ayakashi no Shiro is a fairly typical first-person dungeon crawler. Mechanically, it's very simple, with you controlling only a single preset character, so there's no party creation or customization here. The simplicity extends to many of the game systems as well. Equipment exists, but when you find a new piece of equipment, you simply equip it right away if it's better than what you have. There's also no towns or shops, when you leave each area you instantly heal, and can save, access the storage, or warp to one of the other dungeons. Thankfully, the game does have a map system, you have to find the map in each area, but it's generally pretty close to the starting point. Random encounters are very infrequent, but you will encounter a battle every time you enter a new room, which in theory makes for effortless grinding as you can just open the first door in each area, retreat the the save and heal point, and repeat. You also have magic, and you get quite a lot of MP in this game, which is also totally recovered every time you either level up or return to the save point, so you can make fairly liberal use of your healing and attack spells. I do appreciate the game's simple and fast-paced gameplay loop, but there are some issues. For starters, the visuals are very minimal. They don't even bother to display treasure chests on the map, you simply have to step on every tile in case there might be a treasure chest there, which is not greatly problematic but feels lame. More of an issue is the difficulty curve. In battles, you can encounter up to 3 enemies at once. In general, if you encounter 3 enemies, you're usually dead unless you're way overlevelled for that area, the only option is usually to run, which thankfully works fairly often but it does sometimes fail. The second area is a massive difficulty spike that is essentially impossible until you get Fuujin at level 5, and even then if you encounter 3 enemies you're almost certainly dead unless you escape, and due to the game's simplicity it feels like there's not really much you can do about it other than grind a ton. Later mazes also start to become somewhat inordinately complex with a bunch of one way walls, teleports, and other nonsense that muddies the game's otherwise simple design. This is still quite a bit better than Wizardy Gaiden if only for the fact that you can freely check the map whenever you want, but it's still not quite polished enough to be a strong recommendation.
DeleteBases Loaded is a fairly poor baseball game. Structurally, it's extremely similar to Baseball, having nearly identical menus and content, and although it graphically looks a little better, its gameplay is quite a bit worse. Like Baseball, this is a simple retro baseball game, but defense is much too strong here. For starters, pitches are very fast and hard to read visually, and the zone to contact the ball is very small. Even if you do get a hit, almost all hits will either ground out to the pitcher or be slow fly balls that are easily caught, even getting a single is a rare event in this game. This results in an overly slow game where basically nothing ever happens, you probably have to play a full 9 innings for anyone to ever get a single run in, and you'll have many, many innings that are just 3 up 3 down. I feel like this is clearly a full letter grade weaker than Baseball, and as I gave Baseball an A, that suggests that this game is likely B. I feel like I've almost never played another baseball game where the offense / defense balance is worse than this, so I guess it makes sense.
I expected Q-Bert for Game Boy would be a fairly barebones port of the arcade original, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's a massive expansion of the concept that heavily resembles Q-Bert 3 on SNES (in fact, this game is likely the game they considered to be Q-Bert 2, as no such game was ever released with that title). Q-Bert 3 is a good game, and this version of the game actually might be even better than it, due to generally having snappier controls and somewhat fewer annoyingly-designed levels. This is actually a very impressively well-made game for its time, it looks great, the controls are spot on, it has a ton of enemy types (every enemy except the pipe from Q-Bert 3 is here), the levels are quite well-varied, and there's even a lot of cosmetic variation to the blocks which is pretty impressive given the hardware. About the only real issue is that the game is fairly long and there's no way to save. Still, this is a very solid game and a pretty easy recommendation to any fan of the original or arcade games in general, especially if they haven't played the SNES game.
DeleteSuper Bikkuriman is an anime-style platformer that reminds me quite a bit of the Sailor Moon game we covered a couple weeks ago, albeit without the exploration segments, so that's already a significant plus. Like Sailor Moon, you control an anime protagonist who initially has access to only short range punches but can upgrade to having access to a projectile attack, though virtually everything about the game is executed better here. For starters, character movement is faster and snappier. Using the punch attack doesn't actually feel that awful here, unlike in Sailor Moon. You also don't have to guess where the powerups are, they're simply visible, and you don't actually even need them to transform. When you damage enemies, you build up a spirit meter, and when it's full enough, you can press Start to transform. You can also perform a super attack if you gauge is high enough (again with start), though it consumes a lot of the gauge. You can also fly by pressing up in the air while transform, which can allow you to skip some platforming sections. There are still some issues though. One of the biggest ones is that just like Sailor Moon, your character sprite and thus your hitbox is enormous. Later stages are frequently quite cramped and many enemies take multiple hits, making damage often feel nearly unavoidable, and health recovery is really rare. This is especially problematic in boss fights as the bosses also have huge sprites and are fast, making it very hard to avoid taking at least a little contact damage. Thankfully there are passwords and continues, but it can be a bit frustrating. The game also features a strange bonus mode that resembles Beyblade, where you spin tops around an arena, though it feels like you have little to no control over it besides being able to launch a powerup if your top happens to go over it. This mode isn't much, but I'm very curious about how it's connected to this anime. Overall, it's an all right game. I feel like the focus on having massive sprites clearly hurts the game compared to something like Parasol Henbee (another game which features a flight mechanic), I wonder if this will be a common trend in anime-inspired games.
Trax is a cutesy shmup involving a tank. Throughout the entire game, I kept thinking "this feels like HAL made it", as the aesthetic is very similar to Kirby, and it turns out they did, even though Electro Brain published it. In any case, the basic gimmick of the game is that your tank has a turret, and you can press a button to rotate it, affecting the direction in which you shoot. Obviously this mechanic can be fun, as seen in the excellent Guardian Force on Saturn, but annoyingly here you can only rotate clockwise, so rotating it from up-right to up requires you to press the button 7 times. There are powerups you can find that change your weapon, with my favourite being the one that fires both in front and behind you, because this effectively cuts the number of rotations you need to fire in any direction in half, but this only partially mitigates the games issues. The first major issue with the game is that there's a TON of slowdown. This is actually one of the worst-performing GB games out there, with it having slowdown near-constantly when any enemies are on screen. Secondly, while the game looks good, it's also extremely short, having only 4 levels, and it's also very easy, since you can take 3 hits per life and destroy enemy bullets with your own shots and life recovery is fairly abundant. This tends to result in a fairly forgettable game that has little replay value. I also feel like obviously the control scheme this game should have had is that you always fire in the direction you're moving in but you can hold a button to strafe, as this would have made the controls vastly more responsive and thus probably allowed it to be somewhat harder.
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