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Last Topic's Ratings:
Best of the Best: Championship Karate - AB - 25% (2)
Choplifter 2 - AAGA - 63% (4) (1 SR)
Dungeon Land - AA - 50% (2)
Megalit - GG - 100% (2)
Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break - AAA - 50% (3)
Track Meet - BAB - 17% (3)
I'm actually kind of surprised that the Tiny Toons game didn't do that well. Maybe this was just one of those games were the presentation carried it back in the day.
Games for this topic:
Battle of Kingdom
Ishido: The Way of Stones
Milon's Secret Castle
Monopoly
Nintendo World Cup
Ponta to Hinako no Chindouchuu
A fair number of games here that also appeared on NES. It's sort of nostalgic. I still remember when we covered Milon's Secret Castle for NES, though sadly those reviews have been lost to time.
Battle of Kingdom - A
ReplyDeleteIshido: The Way of Stones - B
Milon's Secret Castle - A
Monopoly - G
Nintendo World Cup - G
Ponta to Hinako no Chindouchuu - A
Battle of Kingdom is a quirky little strategy game. The basic gist of it is that two armies go to war on a 2D plane. Their fighters start at one side and walk towards the other (you can press B on the movement icon to make them move faster) and when they get close you can select commands to make them fight, but most of them cost points, which you also need to hire the troops in the first place. Selecting attack is free, but if you press A while selecting attack you can attack faster, and B lets you do a jumping attack. You can also use a special attack, which also costs points, drink a potion to get health (which costs points) and shove the opponent back, which you guessed it, also costs points. You can hire multiple fighters, and swap them every time an opponent fighter dies, which allows you to try to preserve your fighters and thus save money, and all of them have minor differences in speed and special attacks. It's an interesting setup and there is some strategy to it, but it's also kind of a basic game and it definitely does get repetitive. It's at least an interesting idea that later games like Swords and Soldiers and The Battle Cats would improve upon.
Ishido sucks. It's basically a simple idea brought down by a single terrible mechanic. It's a board game that's played on a board that resembles the one from Othello, though with a set of pieces that vary in terms of shape and pattern. To place a piece, it must connect to an existing piece so that it matches by shape or pattern. By itself, this is a decent idea. The problem is, if it connects to two pieces, it must match one by shape and one by pattern, and NOT both by shape or both by pattern. This is incredibly stupid and makes placing pieces feel extremely unintuitive. You might think "well, obviously you could learn to play around this", but the problem is the game doesn't only have a one-player mode, in fact many of its modes are for two players, where both players alternate placing pieces. The thing is, when you create a spot where a place could theoretically connect to 4 other pieces (the most valuable move in terms of points), you have no idea who will be able to score that move, because either you or your opponent could be the one to draw the piece you need to complete it. As such, once you get a lead, the optimal strategy is simply to strangle the board with placements that cannot possibly result in a big match, thereby denying the opponent any chance to come back, and this is trivially easy to do since the piece placement rules are so restrictive. In order for this game to work properly you'd basically need to let each player place about 5 pieces in a row before control swapped to the other player (probably also letting them choose the order to play their hand of pieces). In any case though, it's simply not fun to play in any mode.
Milon's Secret Castle is a mostly exact port of the NES version, albeit in monochrome and with a lot of slowdown. The NES version is famously cryptic, with you literally being unable to progress at all without knowing a ton of secrets. For example, in the first level, you can shoot two sides of a block (the middle block can't be shot), then push the block and shoot to reveal a hidden shop. This shop sells the shoes, which you need to use spring blocks, without which you cannot progress past the second stage. On NES, the block you need to push is at least a different color, but here you just have to recognize that pattern to know to push it (I doubt you'd figure it out on your own either way). This kind of madness continues throughout the game, but once you sort of generally know what to look for it's possible to make progress. The game actually does control fairly well and it's kind of fun to explore, this is by no means one of the worst platformers on GB even though it does have more slowdown compared to the NES version. There are actually even some small enhancements, like the bosses being a bit easier to damage and the game having a slightly extended ending. There's also password support in this version. It's certainly a cryptic game and you'll need some patience, but it's not terrible.
DeleteI'm not a huge fan of Monopoly, but honestly there's almost nothing bad I can say about this port. It's very similar to the NES version, just without colour, but it's a game that benefits enormously from being portable. It's not a game you're probably going to sit down and play for a long time, but playing one game every now and then is an okay way to pass the time. I guess you could maybe complain that it lacks a save feature (it would have been a great addition to the GBC version, but alas), but Monopoly is often a game where you can tell who's going to win a long time before it actually happens so if you can only play half a game before you have to do something else it's often not a huge loss. In terms of the mechanics of the game, it's all reproduced faithfully to the original board game, no issues there. Obviously, Monopoly is a fairly luck-based game where the main aspects of skill involve handling auctions, knowing when to mortgage, and trades. The latter is probably this version's biggest flaw, the AI is not terribly smart with trades, in general they tend to be too stingy and will often reject trades that are potentially helpful to them even when they're behind, while also often proposing trades that there's obviously no chance you would accept. Still, trading with the AI is pretty much never great in any computerized version of the game so it's mostly excusable. Oh, something I guess you could also call a novel feature is that you can actually just watch the AI play the game if you want, by having all of the players be computer players, so if you're really bored on a long car trip and you just don't feel like playing yourself that's also an option. There's not really too much else to say about it. Obviously, later strategy games like Catan and Culdcept are far superior, but for the time this is a pretty solid time killer.
Well, this is a first. Nintendo World Cup is the first game we've ever covered in GAB that is so borderline that I would rate the different regional versions of the game as different grades. Specifically, the Japanese version is G and the US version is A, for reasons we'll get to in a moment. First, the basics. Nintendo World Cup is a slightly changed port of the NES version, which is itself a conversion of a Kunio soccer game. As a Kunio game, you can expect a lot of big hits and pretty much no rules, there are no offsides and no fouls, you can tackle and punch as many people as you want, which is definitely a nice change from those games where you can't press the slide tackle even once or you'll get a yellow card. There are also power shots, but they're a little wonky in this version. You're supposed to be able to do a power shot by simply running long enough before shooting, but this rarely works (I have done it, but it's bizarrely inconsistent). Alternatively, you can do it by having a teammate pass to you and press A+B for the bicycle kick, which works pretty much every time, and is generally the easiest way to score (though it requires the teammate to get into position and not get picked off, which is a challenge in itself). Alternatively, you can also score by simply taking diagonal shots and hoping the goalie gives up a bad rebound. Either way, scoring is not too hard and thus defense is key, though defense is fairly easy since you can just punch people if you get even remotely close. As you can probably tell, there's a fair bit of chaos to the game, and although it definitely looks great and controls well I feel like it's not exactly particularly deep. Now we get to versional differences. In Japan, this game has a full storyline that is told between matches where players progressively join your team. This is axed in the US version, but actually, this barely matters. The much bigger issue is that in the US version, halves last 4 minutes, whereas on the JP version, they last 2:30 instead. Simply put, the change to 4 minutes kills the game, as the game is too simple for matches to remain interesting that long, the pacing feels so much better at 2:30 and I can't fathom what they were thinking when they changed it. Even then, I feel like this is a bit of a low G, and something like Dolucky's A-League Soccer is significantly better, but I feel like there's a good chance this may be your best soccer option on Gameboy. Just try to get the Japanese version, it's not like you really need to be able to understand the text.
DeletePonta to Hinako no Chindouchuu is an interesting but very weird game. The basic gist of it is that it's a platformer where you control Ponta and his bird friend Hinako. Ponta can shoot an energy wave, but generally speaking, he's not very powerful and the enemies are numerous and deadly. The key to survival lies in Hinako, the bird, who normally rides on Ponta's head but can be detached with up + B while jumping. While detached, he will act on his own, and can defeat many enemies by touching them, however, his health will slowly drain, and he needs to return to Ponta's head before it's empty or you lose a life, which can be accomplished either by catching up and jumping into him or pressing down to call him back to you. If Ponta's health is fully drained, he just becomes knocked out and you can mash to have him get back up, but Hinako will be knocked off during this time and if his health runs out you die. As you might imagine, there's a lot of powerups that require you to send Hinako off somewhere to collect them, but obviously doing so leaves you vulnerable. It's an interesting concept, though I don't like that Ponta's main weapon requires you to hold the button and sometimes doesn't come out on a tap. The game also feels somewhat overly claustrophobic, and Ponta will probably be at one health at almost all times due to the massive number of enemies, but the risk of dying is usually reasonably low because you can just mash to have Ponta get back up and grab Hinako and Hinako's health comes back fast as long as he's on Ponta's head. For how hard the rest of the game is, the bosses are also fairly easy. It's certainly an interesting concept, but I feel like the execution could have been a little better.
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