To be honest, all the games I've been playing at the moment are stuff that either have massive screenshots that are usually of lousy quality. Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 2, Crash Bandicoot - all good games worth playing (Although Crash 2/3 are a lot better than the first) but aren't worth blogging since a picture tells a thousand words.
Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japan)
Okay okay, there's nothing amazingly special about this one. Essentially it's the first Super Mario Bros. with new levels, newish graphics and a poison mushroom. Nintendo in their super-racist days did not allow this to get to America for fears this game would be "too hard", eventually releasing a re-tuned Doki Doki Panic there instead (and the rest of the world following). 20 years later the real SMB2 can be seen hanging around on our Wii Virtual Consoles and can be downloaded and played legally for the unfortunate price of 600 Wii points. No sign of it in the states yet. Take that yankees!
Although it's not a major win really. SMB2J is basically just an expansion pack to the first game. Not much has changed other than the things listed above - the rest is just a repeat of SMB1, which in comparison to later titles in the Mario franchise, ain't too great anymore. It got released eventually across the world in the form of Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels in SMAS for the SNES along with the other NES Mario platformers. That's easily the better version, but it's unlikely we'll see it again what with the Mario Advance series and the fact Nintendo can make more money releasing the games separately. Still, a nice game worthy of a good blogging, and as it's coming off the VC at the end of September, you better get it quickly.
Sonic Advance 2
I've been using a lot of stuff related to Sonic Advance 3 in SHPDMBGWL4 3 Ex, but Sonic Advance 3 is a pretty weak game when compared to it's immediate prequel. Sonic Advance 2 gets very little love really. It's tossed aside for being too fast and the overuse of the right key, and I can see why - most of the levels are just running to the right. This is only a recent argument against it though, partly because pretty much every Sonic game since has raped the formula and spoilt the 2D franchise slightly. I see Advance 2 as more of a spin-off as it's radically different to any of the previous titles. It's all about speed, and it's the first to do so. It's engine is devoted to showing off the GBA's running speed and it does a damn good job at it.
Things aren't perfect, but they're not bad by any means. Advance 1 beats it in terms of gameplay but Advance 2 is definitely the best looking of the series, and the best sounding. Cream the Rabbit is by definition, a lousy character and way too easy to play as, but she's a lot more bearable than Amy that comes along a while later. There's a lot of pros and cons in Sonic Advance 2 and I can't be bothered to list them all, but lets just say this is also a worthy purchase. Unfortunately Advance 3, being built off Advance 2, fails due to it's mis-use of the Sonic Advance 2 engine. A purely running based engine in an environment consisting of non-pure running based levels has some lousy results, compiled with a poor choice of music/sounds and not so great graphics. I can't see the magic there like with the other two.
Anyway that killed a few minutes. Get both sometime.
Sigh, here we go again...
ReplyDeleteAdvance 2's straight runs have unfair and annoying enemy placements on straights, so therefore this is why I think Advance 2 isn't very good. And also, I have no problem whatsoever with Advance 3, not even its audio.
I sure hope SonicProject doesn't kill me for ripping him off like this by talking down other people's opinions. >>;