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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Adventure Island - AGGG - 88% (4)
Bionic Battler - AAAA - 50% (4)
Dig Dug - BAAA - 38% (4)
Racing Damashii - ABB - 16% (3)
Sanrio Carnival - AAA - 50% (3)
World Bowling - BBB - 0% (3)
20 topics down for Gameboy. It might not seem like it, but it's already been almost a full year since we started. Get comfy though, we've still barely scratched the surface of the system.
Games for this topic:
Fist of the North Star
Hyper Lode Runner
NBA Jam
Painter Momopie
Race Drivin
Saint Paradise: Saikyou no Senshi Tachi
Fist of the North Star seems to be everywhere these days (Kenshiro was recently added to the new Fatal Fury game), so covering the GB game seems timely. Also, I'm morbidly curious to know how NBA Jam and Race Drivin will be on GB, as both games seem like they'd be quite hard to port to the device.
Fist of the North Star - B
ReplyDeleteHyper Lode Runner - B
NBA Jam - A
Painter Momopie - A
Race Drivin - G
Saint Paradise: Saikyou no Senshi Tachi - B
Fist of the North Star is an extremely primitive early fighting game that sort of looks okay but doesn't really get anything right. For starters, this game has no blocking. There are also no special moves, except for the fireball, which most characters have access to, which is done by holding down punch until a meter builds up, then letting go. Your primary form of offense will be kicks since kicks have the most range. This game has a kind of "hyper hop" which you can perform by rapidly mashing up and down, which allows for extremely fast pressure with jump kicks, but due to the game's weird hit detection this isn't quite as good as you'd think. There's also a levelling system where you get exp after fights, and you're probably meant to grind this as some of the opponents are very OP, but there's a cheese strategy that easily handles any hard fight. Simply charge fireball and hold it, and the opponent will start doing the same. Release your fireball just a bit before they're about to fire theirs, and they'll get hit during their fireball animation and you can just jump over their fireball and repeat. I beat the game fairly easily on my first try, and there's basically no replay value since most of the characters are basically the same. You can just play one of the tall guys (who have more range, which is dominant in this game) if you want it to be a total cinch.
Hyper Lode Runner immediately falls prey to the same problems as most Lode Runner games, which is that it's just a billion times too hard. I think most people will try this game out, see the first stage, then immediately quit playing, as the first level already has near-endgame level difficulty for a typical puzzle game. The game does not teach you its tricks in any capacity, even for the first level you already have to know everything about the game and execute it all perfectly. For example, I believe the first level can't be cleared without walking on an enemy's head, which has to be done precisely to drop him off a ledge, and depending on how you do the level you may have to pull this trick off twice. Enemies instantly respawn the second you take them out, so you can never get a moment to breathe unless you trap them somewhere, and areas where you have to precisely remove a ton of bricks ahead of time to avoid getting stuck later and then move really fast so you get there before the blocks respawn are everywhere. I actually did clear a few levels (admittedly I occasionally had to consult a guide), but it's so crazily tedious that I'd never be willing to touch this without save states, since one mistake will reset the entire puzzle and they often take 10+ minutes to solve. Playing this game is basically just torture. They could certainly learn a lot from Catrap about how to make a game like this that is actually fun to play.
NBA Jam is almost a godlike conversion to gameboy, there's just one big problem. NBA Jam is a 3 button game, Pass, Turbo, and Shoot. Gameboy only has 2 buttons. As you've probably already guessed by now, this means one of the buttons has to be mapped to Start, and this is just as bad as you'd think. By default, start is turbo, but this is totally unworkable, if you want the game to be playable you need start to be Pass. This still requires claw, but you simply can't use the start button as a button that needs to be held down, the start button on Gameboy simply isn't functional enough for that. At any rate, this is at best "playable", but it's undeniably very awkward. It's a shame too, because pretty much everything else about the game is really solid, it looks good, animates well, and runs fast, and the gameplay is indeed clearly NBA Jam, if it controlled better this would be an easy G. I feel like the correct choice was actually to cut out Turbo as a concept entirely and basically just have turbo be always on, as the only mechanic you would lose this way is the regular steal, which you almost never need (maybe you could make it so pass + direction = shove and pass + no direction equals steal or something). Oh, also, obviously the announcer is totally axed, which is understandable, but I kinda wish they had found some way to put him in there. At any rate, it's pretty close to being good, they just needed to be a little more creative with the control scheme.
DeletePainter Momopie is an arcade-style game about a witch who paints floors. Each stage is a maze shown from an overhead perspective, and you have to paint every accessible floor tile to win. Of course, there's also enemies that try to get in your way, but as you're playing a witch you also know some spells. Some, like Speed Up, are mostly utility (but it's still very powerful), while others, like Pyon, are used to remove enemies, but either way you have a limited amount of MP per stage so these must be used carefully. It's kind of fun in a simple sort of way, but the game's biggest problem is its level design. The stages that are reasonably open and have multiple routes are fun, but as you get further you get more and more stages that are very closed in and are mainly composed of hallways, which basically just force you to follow the track and pyon every enemy, which is kinda dull. This is especially annoying because pyon fires in the direction you're facing, but you can't change your facing direction without moving and you can't use powerups until you come to a complete stop, so fighting enemies in tight spaces is always kind of annoying. There are also slimes that mess up the spaces you've already cleared, which effectively forces you to pyon them, and these can create for some pretty annoying stages that don't feel like they involve a lot of skill. You can progressively earn new spells by clearing stages, but these are generally too expensive for what they offer. It's a decent general formula, it just could have used a bit more polish. This is still way better than Dig Dug, though.
I have no words. Race Drivin is famous for running like complete poopcrap on every system imaginable, so surely the Gameboy version will run at like 2fps and be totally unplayable, right? NO!!! Somehow the Gameboy version runs 30fps!!! I ran it across multiple emulators and checked footage of the real game because there's clearly no way this is possible. BUT IT'S TRUE! It even looks good! The 3D track designs have a lot of verticality and it's totally readable on gameboy thanks to smart colour usage! Whoever ported this game to Gameboy is a ****ing genius! Why were they not in charge of every other port of this game?! Even the handling system seems to be somewhat improved compared to the other versions. This game makes NASCAR Fast Tracks look like total garbage. Anyway, shockingly, with the game running properly, it's actually kind of fun, and it's incredible to see something like this running properly on Gameboy, especially considering it runs like total trash on every other system. The only issue is that when racing against other cars, the framerate is halved, but even then it remains somewhat playable, plus most of the game doesn't involve racing against other cars anyway. I still can't believe this is real. I almost want to give this a SR.
DeleteSaint Paradise is probably one of the most boring RPGs ever made. It's an incredibly basic and easy RPG with very little story and even less gameplay. By far the best think about it are the visuals, which are pretty high quality for their time, both on the overworld and in battle the characters are represented by large sprites that look pretty good. The game's encounter rate is insane, with you getting into a battle every few steps, and there are no towns here, you simply enter buildings from the world map so encounters are literally everywhere. The biggest problem, by far, is the absolutely pathetic enemy variety. In the entirety of the first act, there is only enemy group, which you will fight at least 50 times. They have 3 health and will never get an attack off after you're level 2, but you'll have to fight them over and over. You will not see a second encounter until you're in the caves, and it's almost identical to the first one (by that point I was level 4 and was still easily one-shotting them. The game uses the most basic attack magic item system possible, so you will simply mash A through these encounters, but the game has detailed animations for every attack so it still takes long. When you finally get to a boss, you just dump all your CP to use special attacks on them (all CP-using techniques just deal damage, there are no heals or buffs), as your normal attacks do basically no damage to bosses. You will then either have to go back to the first town to heal or grind to get a level up because there's usually a bunch of bosses in a row. There is an item system in this game, where items are cards, and there's a decent variety of effects, but annoyingly the cards are named after characters and there's no indication of what the cards actually do so you have to use a guide. Cards are also expensive and regular battles don't yield money so you won't be using them much, the entire game basically just boils down to regular attacks against normal enemies and techs against bosses, with a thousand easy regular encounters in the middle. It's technically playable, but there's absolutely nothing enjoyable about it.