A Quest for Freedom

Look what I've found, it's the hard-to-find religious game Onesimus: A Quest for Freedom known for using the engine and graphics from Jill of the Jungle. I'd played about two minutes of this thing a decade ago and had to download it from a Spanish website just to have a second try. Needless to say it's not a very common game.

But alas like most religious games the end result was sub-par. Why? Because there's only about four or five levels not stolen from the Jill of the Jungle games, and the original levels are dull. It also loves to throw in unavoidable quotes from the book of Philemon that have little relation to the game at all aside from the title. And would there really be an ICE CASTLE in the time of the new testament? There's also a few sprite changes, probably because the devils/demons probably weren't appropriate, so what better than flying topless men? Oh and don't expect transformations or anything interesting like that.

I think the most embarrassing thing is the ending, in which you go to "Paul's house" who effectively says "believe in god". What a waste of a journey - the apples have been saying that since level one. But at least I can now say for certain now that there is no reason to play this game if you've got Jill's adventures.

It's a good nostalgia trip though I suppose.

Shooting down 48 UFOs

Before Nintendo had any sort of foothold in the video games market, they, like so many others, produced Arcade games. After Taito released Space Invaders in 1978, every video game company on the planet decided it would be fun to... uh... make more Space Invaders, and Nintendo swiftly followed.

Nintendo's first attempt was actually a game called Space Fever, though it never made it outside of Japan. Basically... it's just Space Invaders but with three different options that change the course of the invaders. Oh and there's some colour. Needless to say it was outclassed by Taito's machines, which were all over the globe, but hey, it's close.

Then came Space Firebird (which I'm not picturing because the pixel ratio is nuts) a galaxian/galaga clone which added bombs into the mix and for some reason felt it would be nice to have the player move in an arc, rather than a staight line. Again... not much success here, though it is worth noting that this game was published by Sega-Gremlin (yes, THAT Sega). Gremlin died during the video game crash of 1983, in case you're wondering.

And finally Radar Scope came along. Though it looks a bit like a "tilted" Galaxian, it's actually a very different game. Bare in mind that in 1979 there wasn't much you could do with a Space Shooter without spending too much money, Radar Scope gives the bottom of the screen some health and you're tasked with the job of protecting it. Plus, despite that "tilted" look being a bit dated in this day and age, it too was pretty impressive for the era. Remember, this was all before Donkey Kong and Pac-Man or DigDug or whatever

Unfortunately by the time it reached western shores, people had simply stopped caring about the game, and Nintendo of America were forced to convert 2000 of the machines into Donkey Kong ones (apparently if your DK Arcade machine is red, it used to be a Radar Scope one). But the sad thing is, despite Nintendo's commitment to dig up the past at every given opportunity, they've clearly lost the hole they buried Radar Scope in, because it hasn't been seen, referenced or duplicated since. It didn't even get a port to the NES, even though the less advanced Galaxian managed with no problems at all. Even other games such as Gorf or Phoenix, which I would have cited as being more obscure, have had ports. Exerion, as I mentioned below, nearly got TWO ports to the NES and that arguably aged worse than Radar Scope, which still doesn't look too bad today, and was actually made by Nintendo. Crazy.

So yeah, Radar Scope. Give it a try sometime.

Nintendo World Championships 1990

One of the fabled gold Nintendo World Championships 1990 NES carts popped up not too long ago and sold for a whopping £10800, making it probably the most expensive complete NES game of all time. Why so much? Well, only 26 carts of its type exist in the whole world, (though there's a further 90 boring old "grey" carts) and only 12 of those 26 carts have ever surfaced. Since obviously these things are no longer being produced in any format, demand is very high.

Originally these carts were used in a timed contest, with some fancy DIP switches on the side to adjust the time (the default being 6 minutes 21 seconds... don't ask me why). They were released in small quantities as competitions via Nintendo Power and other events, and are now deemed "the rarest of the rare" as far as video games go (if you discount Nintendo's PowerFest '94 event in which only one sole SNES cart survived and went for thirty times that amount)

But what's a NWC game look like? Well... a bit like this

Yes that's right, some kind soul did dump one of the 116 NWC carts a few years ago. But is it honestly worth £10k? No. Well, not from a gaming perspective anyway. You could probably obtain a large amount of the NES's game catelog for that price, but if you do feel the need to invest... probably wise to hang onto the game once you've received it, because every time one pops up on ebay it sells for more than its predecessor.

So the contest was simply to "get points", but in order to do so you need to play Nintendo games. After the time is up, the points are totalled and... that'll be your overall score. There's not much use for these carts unless you're competing with someone, as you'll see, but with scheduled events such as these you have to admire Nintendo's efforts in the late 80s/early 90s. Shame they didn't continue that outside of America and Japan. "World" Championships this isn't.

First up, Super Mario Bros. Yes, a third of your money would be going into purchasing one of the most common NES games on the planet, and it's a gimped version at that, obviously lacking the two player mode and giving you 99 lives. Your task? Get 50 coins, making it the most time consuming of the three titles. As soon as you get 50 coins you'll move on, but if you don't bother, I'm assuming you can probably beat the entire game as per normal, as long as you do it within the time limit (which by the way, is never shown on screen so you better make sure you have a stopwatch if you're wanting to be strategic).

Second, Rad Racer, a game by Squaresoft from the days where they weren't afraid to make games outside the RPG genre. Simple stuff this time around - finish the track. Personally, I don't see what's so "Rad" about Rad Racer. Sure it might have been "rad" for the hardware, but it was originally released in 1987, a year after the the hugely successful OutRun, and by the time 1990 had rolled along, there were plenty of better racing alternatives. There's been some minor changes to reflect the NWC, and some modes have once again been dropped.

And finally, a forced game of Tetris's A-type mode from the gimped Nintendo version. This game goes on forever, and is just an extra way to score points. As usual, we'd have been much better of with Tengen's offering, but to give them credit, at least they had the sense to assign the rotate commands to buttons this time around. I would expect that normal kids probably wouldn't have been able to get up to this round (or at least stay here long enough to get some lines). Might have been better to have split those six minutes into three equally timed sections in which players have to score as much points as possible.

And that's it. So if you're interested do note that you're paying ten grand for what is essentially some gold coloured plastic. But to give them credit, the concept of 26 golden NES carts scattered across the world is quite fun... it's just a shame that the internals of those carts are worth nothing.

Moonwalker

If you somehow haven't heard Michael Jackson passed away. A tragedy to say the least, but I suppose what's also a tragedy is the fate of his video games - whereas his music will live on through the ages, chances are games such as Moonwalker, Space Channel 5 (with the MJ cameo), Ready to Rumble etc. will never see a re-release with the celebrity in them. Aside from the fact that obtaining the rights will be damned-near impossible, chances are Sega won't be jumping on the idea of having a dead man as the main character, even though they are pretty cool games, even by today's standards.

So how about the Arcade version of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, a game that few people seem to remember, and is often overshadowed by the very different home console versions? It's an isometric beat 'em up, developed by Sega, in which you're Michael Jackson saving children from... some guy. It's based of that scene/music video in the movie of the same name, probably because it was the only decent section of the film, but as the film made no sense, neither does the game. But it has Michael Jackson in it!

In fact, as it's actually a 3-player game, it means you can also have two other Jackson clones walking about killing people too, so it's three times the Michael Jackson-ness. And if you find your chimp, Bubbles, you transform into a giant robot. It's very much like the home console ports, except that it's more linear, shorter and not quite as deep. In the MegaDrive/Master System game, MJ had a decent variety of moves, but was let down by the fact you spend most of the game opening doors and going around in circles. With the Arcade, you're on the move much more often, though since you've only really got one form of attack, that may not be a good thing (though at least it can be "charged up"). Thankfully the enemies are rather stupid, but there's a lot of them, and they've got guns while you haven't.

You can perform a special move, just like in the home console versions, which will make everyone on screen dance before exploding. The problem is, it's not quite as randomised as the home console version. For a singer/dancer, there's not a lot of singing or dancing, or that much of MJ's music (despite the graveyard level there's no sign of Thriller). Because it's on Arcade hardware it's a lot more pleasing on the eye and ears, and you're often faced fighting different enemies rather than the same guys in suits (such as dogs and robots, who will also dance).

It's a very basic beat 'em up, and it could still be considered a bit repetitive, though the same could be said for many games of the same genre. I didn't find myself getting bored with this one, but then again, it is incredibly short. And difficult if you're not armed with credits. However, since the arcade machine is reasonably rare (I mean those 90s scandals didn't really help) and probably going for a high price now, the only way to play it is on an emulator such as MAME, where credits aren't a problem.

But it's not a bad game, it's just short, and a bit unforgiving. It's a concept that needed expanding upon a bit more. It looks as if it should be a fantastic game but it falls far short from its goal. But it's not bad and is worth a look for the novelty value if nothing else. Again, it triumphs over the MegaDrive game in many places, and is arguably more playable than a lot of arcade games that Sega and others insisted on bringing to the home, it's just ruined by the fact that it's so short and basic. Worth a look though.

I one you a favour

Still other things to be done but for now, Final Fight 3 on the NES. Yet another Hummer Team NES port which actually holds up pretty well... as long as you don't mind a bit of sprite flickering and some typos. Not as good as the real thing, which in turn isn't as good as Streets of Rage, even if Haggar is one of the best mayors ever.

You sure can get a lot done when you're not spending hours on end monitoring MFGG.

Exerion 2

Exerion 2, the unreleased NES sequel to Jaleco's 1983 Arcade game got itself a dump the other day. Unfortunately it was polluted with NintendoAGE watermarks, so this is X-CulT's version that took some of them out. As you can see it's not a perfect fix, unless you want to believe Jaleco produced this game this year, but it's here, and is playable.

What's the difference between this and its prequel? Not a lot. It changes a few graphics and alters the duel shot a bit, but aside from that its generally the same game with some very minor improvements. My problem with Exerion is just how badly the NES version has aged. Exerion's selling point, the "parallax backgrounds" look hideous by today's standards, and those backgrounds were the only thing stopping the game from being classified as a generic shoot-em up. Sure they were early games, but the NES could have been pushed to give us better than solid green grass. By the time Exerion 2 would have been released it would have been in direct competition with Konami's first Gradius game, and that's not a battle that even the Arcade version had much chance of winning. On the plus side though, at least the first game looks good on the SG-1000.

This isn't much of a sequel so it's somewhat obvious why it was scrapped, but nevertheless interesting to see it had a sibling at some point, and who can say "no" to an unreleased title?

Expect the unexpected

because Tiny Toon Adventures (6) is about to start.

For ages I thought this was just another hack of Konami's Tiny Toon Adventures NES game. Turns out it's a completely original title, and for a pirate, isn't too bad. It needs a bit of a polish but compared to some of ths stuff I've played, this is a god.

In other news I re-wrote the article on Harry Potter's NES adventure and found some chickens. Like many early tORP pages it was hideously out of date and didn't really explain a lot. Now it does.

Squiggly's Extras

I set up The Obscure Ripping Project back in late 2007. It should probably be called "The Obscure Research Project" now since the focus has shifted quite a bit over time, but there are a few notable games that probably won't get massive articles, or if they do, it won't be for a while. Here's a few of them, to show you what I haven't forgotten.

First, "Mortal Combat 5" on the Sega MegaDrive:

GamesMonkey sent me this terrible excuse for a game months ago, and though I've tried having a decent stab at it, it just can't be tamed. MC5 is a pirate attempt to bring Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero to the MegaDrive, but the result is quite possibly the worst MegaDrive game ever spawned. Love kicking Kano recolours in the shins? This is the game for you. Without savestates there is no way you could play this game without enduring massive amounts of trial and error, and you will often find yourself fighting enemies that not only refuse to die, clearly cheat and all look the same. It has got some of the worst typos I've ever seen in a video game and is a horrible experience from beginning to end.

Next, "Pokémon Red" on the NES

I covered Pokémon Gold a while back but that was before I started reviewing past the first five minutes of play. Truth is, Pokémon takes a long time to finish, even with guides, and as these both cut all the non-essentials and are in Chinese, it's a challenge to review these two properly, especially if you were going to into any sort of detail. Also you can only give them a go in small doses before you feel the need to rip out your PC's speakers.

"Super Mario Bros. 3 Special" for the Game Boy Colour

Actually truth is there's no reason why I can't cover this one, it's just that there's not a lot to cover. It's a gimped, broken Mario platformer that's not "special" in the slightest. It's just not very interesting and there's not much to learn from it.

"Toy Story", "Tom & Jerry 3" and "Aladdin II" for the NES

I've grouped these three together because they're all practically unplayable generic pirate games with no redeeming qualities. Toy Story is a broken platformer where all Woody's friends are out to kill him and Tom & Jerry 3 is just stupid (though it's worth noting that Tom is a chain smoker). As for Aladdin II, it's much like Aladdin 3 except that it tries to give the NES Virgin's Aladdin game instead of Capcom's. Problems with that are a) the NES already got Virgin's game officially (though it's not the best port ever) and b) Aladdin II has some of the worst graphics and gameplay I've ever encountered within a NES ROM. There was a reason this system was being phased out by 1993 people!

"King of Fighters 96/97/98/99" for the NES

Another common pirate fighting game that had numerous revisions. There's also a couple of Samurai Shodown games that use the same engine. It'll be worth checking out at some point, but having already messed with those Mortal Kombat pirates recently, it's safe to say I'm a little tired of fighting games for the NES. One day though. One day it'll be done.

Besides, I do like to talk about games that aren't pirates every once in a while. There's plenty of obscure games that weren't made by people living in run-down garages in gloomy alleyways. Though I suppose I'm starting to cover those in this blog instead. Not much to research when these games's histories are widely known.

You ain't never had a friend never had a friend

Time to meet Somari's good friend Aladdin 3, also known as "Aladdin 4", "Aladdin" and "Popeye II: Travels in Persia".

Yes the NES gets yet another SNES game. This time it's Capcom's version of Aladdin, ported by pirates in an attempt to make a quick buck. There's actually quite a few NES Aladdin pirates - I guess the official game (based off the MegaDrive version I might add) wasn't good enough, so they had to make a few rubbish Aladdin games to make it stand out a bit more.

However saying that, this one isn't too bad. I mean the SNES game was a bit generic compared to Virgin's legend of a game, but with a quick fix up this could be alright. Of course then again, if it's taken fourteen years for someone to cover this pirate in depth I can't imagine the game being torn apart any time soon.

The real question is what possessed these people to stick Popeye in there?

EDIT: It appears that I am dense, having taken a screenshot of the elusive Hummer Team logo yet failing to talk about it. So I've updated the article, made another "shocking" discovery, and are now anxiously awaiting the arrival of "Aladdin III Special" or a similar name. Thanks again to KingPepe for the tip, and "Anonymous". See, they don't all go out attacking churches of scientology after all.

Toasty

Well, here you go.

I've been slaving over this garbage for the best part of this week. Thirteen Mortal Kombat NES pirates, all covered in one place.

The original task I set myself was to find out who made Kart Fighter but my results were inconclusive. There's just not enough evidence to say "Hummer Team made it" and call it a day, regardless of what you may have been told.

Remember kids; the Nintendo Entertainment System and the fighting genre don't mix!

Pirate Hunt

What can I say, I was in the mood for some pirate research. Big pirates that have been around for years include "Somari", "Kart Fighter" and "Super Mario World (NES)", but their origins are still somewhat in the dark. I traced Super Mario World's origins a while back and found that it was the lovechild of a group known only as "Hummer Team". Since then, word got out about the little Hummer Team logo and many other games have since been matched up with authors.

But that's only one third of the great pirate mysteries. For some reason "Somari Team" isn't widely accepted as a group name, and there's been links between Somari and its siblings to Aladdin ports to the NES. That mystery is still unsolved.

But we're incredibly close to finding the truth about Kart Fighter. Its graphics have been matched (almost) with sections of Super Mario World NES. Its engine (dubbed by myself as "the Kart Fighter Engine") has been used in TEN Mortal Kombat clones, some by Hummer Team, it's also been matched to beat-em-ups by Hummer Team, and... Tekken 2... also by Hummer Team. Whoever that team are, they sure liked Kart Fighter's engine, but sadly, there's still not much to say where Kart Fighter came from, because though some of these Mortal Kombat games have Hummer Team's mark, some have other peoples' marks.

Furthermore World Heroes 2's engine has been spotted in the form of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat clones. It just goes to show that these fighting engines were widely distributed in the 90s.

Either way I just thought I'd mention it because coming soon will be a MASSIVE tORP page comparing THIRTEEN Mortal Kombat clones. All we need is some romantic music and we can make a night of it.

Ken's Labyrinth

The first person shooter is still a relatively new genre. Unlike most others, older consoles and computers simply could not handle them, so even though arguably early FPS games are a graphical mess with all that pixelation, they stood out from the crowd just due to the fact they were first person shooters, and nobody had really seen one before.

During the early 90s there was no doubt that id Software ruled the roost. They had brought us Wolfenstein 3D, were about to revolutionise the genre again with the massively successful Doom, and would later produce another top FPS Quake.

But id had rivals. Rivals that wanted a slice of the FPS pie for themselves. Rivals such as Epic MegaGames, who were taking the PC games market by storm. Epic would later have some major success with the Unreal franchise, but it did dab in some FPS titles before then. And so, enter Ken's Labyrinth.


Having seen the success that was Wolfenstein 3D, Epic probably wanted a chance to better it. Ken Silverman, who later went to go work for Apogee and create the build engine (used in games such as Duke Nukem 3D) gave them a game he coded almost entirely from scratch - Ken's Labyrinth.

Ken's Labyrinth was the first FPS game I ever played. It would have been '96-ish when I got my hands on it, and amazingly it ran perfectly on our old underpowered DOS computer. Sure it didn't have soundblaster, but Epic made sure we weren't left without sound and had the entire game's musical score blurt out the built in PC speaker instead. So it's possibly the first game I had where music played from beginning to end.

If we take this as our FPS timeline

Wolf 3D -> Ken's Labyrinth -> Doom -> Duke 3D -> Quake -> Unreal -> etc.

you can see where the Labyrinth fits in. It's technically more impressive than Wolfenstein 3D, but not by much. The graphics are slightly better in places and it was the first FPS game to allow you to interact with scenery (aside from Wolf 3D's "moving blocks"), though truth be told it's a very boring game in comparison to id's gem. A kid's version perhaps. It has the same "untextured ceilings and floors" and sprites are always the same no matter which direction you view them from. Also even today, fourteen years after release DOSBox struggles to have both music and sound effects running at the same time. It boasts more enemies than Wolf 3D too, but since the enemies have less animation it's really up to you to decide which is better in that area.

The game is split into three episodes, as was the style at the time. The second is notable for having the rather annoying dog "Sparky" follow you about getting in the way. It would be a long time until friendly NPCs would be following you in FPS games again. Thank god most of them have more brains than this thing who either gets in your way or gets lost.

But despite this Ken's Labyrinth is a challenging title. Having played Wolfenstein 3D since, I can't possibly recommend this over that, but again, another childhood defining game here. Plus, it's freeware nowadays so you can't really go wrong. That first level's theme has been lodged in my brain for a decade and a bit, perhaps it can find another home in yours too. Plus, you get to fight Ken Silverman which predates all that "shoot the head of John Romero" stuff in Doom II.

Now you don't need a Game Gear 2

Sonic Drift 2 just got ported to the Sega Master System. Well okay, I say "just" but it was actually released three days ago.

It's even buggier than Triple Trouble SMS, but again, you can play it. Sadly Sonic Drift 2 hasn't really aged well - it betters its predecessor but aside from Sonic in a car, it's nothing special... and Sonic in a car isn't very special either since he's been in one before, and is due to be in one again.

Nevertheless you can't help but be fascinated by all of this. The Sega Master system getting new games fifteen years after it came off the market. Sure neither of the two Sonic games that have been released this fortnight were stunningly amazing games to begin with, but good lord there's worse out there for that system.

Now you don't need a Game Gear

Good news everyone

It may have taken fifteen years but Sonic Triple Trouble (or Sonic & Tails 2 for you Japanese gamers) has been ported to the Sega Master System. No longer must we live under Game Gear conditions.

Boasting a larger screen size, Triple Trouble is now a lot less cramped and can join its siblings on hardware that doesn't eat batteries for a living. It takes a bit of a hit on the graphics because the Master System has 4000 less colours to chose from, and because it's the first release of a fan-made hack, it's not exactly glitch free, but nevertheless it's quite an accomplishment. Kudos to the folks at Sonic Retro!

Michael Jordan in: Chaos in the Windy City

Following the trend of basketball stars in video games, here's another underrated Super Nintendo classic of days gone by:

Michael Jordan in: Chaos in the Windy City. Like Shaq Fu people dismissed this game from the get go because it was a platforming game featuring Micheal Jordan. As such, the game has been buried and forgotten about, which to be honest, must be some sort of crime. Though then again digging up a grave probably is as well.

Released for the Super Nintendo in 1994 by Electronic Arts, Micheal Jordan is set up with the task of saving all his team-mates so that an all star charity basketball game can continue (just like Shaq Fu!). In order to do this he must overcome the evil scientist "Maximus Cranium" who wants a perfect basketball team for some reason. Because this is clearly more important than curing cancer or whatever.

When I see basketball players in derelict buildings surrounded by floating eyes and zombies, I can't help but think of Scooby Doo's friends the Harlem Globetrotters. The concept of those guys helping to solve mysteries is a bit strange, but that didn't stop Hannah Barbera making several Scooby Doo specials devoted to them. In CitWC, Michael Jordan fits the role quite nicely as he runs about with a basketball attacking these creatures and opening doors with keys. If I were to write "one of the main parts of this game is opening doors", chances are you'd be turned-off, but don't be, because this game is a fine example of how to make the platforming genre more interesting. You have a colourful array of basketballs to deal damage to your enemies and the SNES manages to deliver a well polished, good looking (and pretty good sounding) title.

Though it's unwise to compare it to what could be considered the king of SNES platforming, Super Mario World, CitWC isn't as far behind as you may imagine. Its main problem is that it doesn't adapt to a PC keyboard that well. Granted, it's not supposed to, but with little chance of it ever being re-released it means you have to hunt down a real SNES (or a gamepad... whatever floats your boat) to get the true feel. Also because for whatever reason ZSNES isn't a fan of my keyboard, any gameplay flaws I may see many not actually be gameplay flaws. All I know is that it's got quite a bit of depth and is pretty damned fun. One thing EA could have done with is a saving feature instead of passwords (I mean come on it WAS 1994) but I suppose this is made up by the fact you can attack the press on your train journeys. In fact, this makes up for every flaw this game has.

Though you wouldn't make the album charts with the selection of music presented here, it's not too bad either. It fits the mood nicely, just a shame some of the tracks were re-used quite a bit. Then again how many EA games have noticeable soundtracks nowadays? Outside of the film licensees that come equipped with them, probably not too many.

But yeah, you can't go too wrong with Michael Jordan here. The real tragedy is that games such as these will likely never see the light of day again.

Arkenstein 3D

For whatever reason, the Super Nintendo was largely pirate free. Despite all the famiclones and piracy surrounding its older sibling, the NES, the SNES's library was pretty clean. Oh except for Super Noah's Ark 3D.

Games involving religion don't generally work and this is no exception. But it didn't stop Wisdom Tree from making these titles again and again. This one is quite famous because it's built off the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D. Now to be fair, Wolf 3D on the SNES is pretty bad because for some amazing reason Nintendo of America decided it was in their best interests to censor everything. They took out the blood, the references to Hitler and the Nazi party and the... dogs, replacing these things with sweat, made-up dictators and GIANT RATS. Shoot at all the Germans and Rats you want, just leave those dogs alone!

There's an urban legend that Super Noah's Ark 3D was made in "revenge", because the censorship policies of the time were so stupid. It's not true, but it should be.

And as it's built on a nice engine, it's probably one of the only decent religious games ever created. Putting animals to sleep with food makes no sense, and it even goes against what was in the bible by having far more than two goats, but nevertheless, it's quite entertaining. Nothing new, but who cares.

The game is actually quite brutal in many different ways. Unlike Wolfenstein 3D, enemies hide around corners and jump on you (probably because goats can't hold guns). The SNES couldn't do 3D that well so like its port of Doom things are pixellated. Tie this with the fact that most of the scenery is brown and the music is dreadful... and you've got a pretty bad mix.

Contrary to popular belief it's not just Wolfenstein with a coat of paint however. The levels are completely different as well. It's certainly no-where near as fun as shooting nazis but as far as religious games go, it's quite high up the charts. I can't really recommend it - the SNES struggles far too much with FPS games and the SNES Wolf 3D wasn't quite up to spec either. Eventually someone will probably mod the DOS version of Wolfenstien to give a better Super Noah's Ark 3D experience (if they haven't already)... probably best to seek that out instead.

Robocop versus The Terminator

Oh my god

After playing a bit of the Terminator on the MegaDrive I came across this relic of the past. I already knew it existed and assumed it was rubbish, but that was before I had this blog feature and enough spare time to talk to nobody.

The first MegaDrive Terminator game isn't amazing. It's alright, but it's short, easy-ish and has numerous gameplay problems. By the time Robocop vs Terminator came about, many of these issues had been fixed. Likewise it's an improvement over the Robocop games that were around at the time too.

Robocop versus the Terminator was released for the usual bunch of consoles in 1993/1994 by Virgin (and Interplay) once again. The NES version was cancelled (which is probably for the better), the Super Nintendo and MegaDrive copies ruled the roost once more, and once again the two copies are ever so slightly different. You know how the Wii and DS versions of that new Ghostbusters game have cartoony graphics while the Xbox/PS3 versions don't? This "changing the mood to suit the console" idea is not a new thing it seems. Sega's copy takes a more realistic uncensored approach while Nintendo's goes for the comic book style. There's a few differences with the weapon systems and storytelling and censoring but they're effectively the same game. Well okay I haven't played the SNES version but still.

The story is an odd one. Basically it states that all the Skynet from the Terminator series is based off Robocop's technology, and as Robocop is amazing he manages to rebuild himself in the future to well... destroy his earlier self. They were going to make a movie about it, but it ended up being cancelled. A shame, though it's obvious it was really just a money making scheme like Alien vs. Predator. Problem is Robocop and Terminator don't mix as well as you might think. Terminator is great because it's always got X person on the run from Y terminator. A horror/action thing. Robocop can easily take care of Y terminator, so there's no running involved. It's just a Robocop rampage which doesn't really need Terminators to work.

RCVtT is one of those side-scrolling shooters that were all the rage in the day. Still not quite up to the level of Contra, but closer than previous attempts. Like Contra, this game aims to make your life a living hell by making everything under the sun fire projectiles at your robo face.

Now it's all fine and dandy up until the Terminators start getting involved. Shooting civilians? That's alright, but when the machines come to town you start losing lives. I don't think it's physically possible to beat some of the later stages without cheating. Even when things explode they still manage to fire at you, and since Robocop is quite big, he's quite the bullet magnet. The last boss is horrible, so much so I had to resort to Game Genie. Of course it must be worse on the Super Nintendo as apparently enemies respawn on that version... but still, this isn't easy.

As well as this, Robocop is a bit clunky and sometimes has trouble with hanging on bars and aiming. But he's more agile than Kyle Reese who had no way to avoid enemy fire (though Reese still has more health... amazingly). It also has the classic "no recovery time" issue, so bosses will literally crush you if you stay in one place. The camera isn't perfect either. Each level presents you with a slightly different mission (rescue hostages, destroy all satellites etc.) though I'm not sure if it makes a difference if you don't do all of these things. The SNES version apparently spices things up with first person shooter sections too. That's nice.

Graphics have certainly improved over previous attempts - animation is more fluid and there's more background effects, though this is to be expected for a 1993 game I suppose. Sound is marginally better too - the sound effects are nicer and Robocop says "excellent" every now and then. The music is hit and miss - there's not a lot of variation and I'm sure the announcer from Action 52 was captured to say "TERMINATOR" for the first couple of levels' music. It's a bit... stupid, but fun I guess. Bosses lack music altogether for some reason. Decent stuff, but there's been better.

But it's really the difficulty that kills this game. With gloomy level after gloomy level where every move must be timed so that you recieve as little damage as possible, it does start to lose that edge it once had. It's the sort of game where you almost feel like demanding a motorbike stage halfway through just to keep things going. I can't see how anyone could play this game to the end under normal gameplay conditions.

However it does have a nice array of cheats. If you input a code you get a nice little message from the game's programmers, and there's even a "real mode" code which adds more blood, skeltons and strangely dressed women with guns into the mix. Why is this an extra option rather than being part of normal gameplay? God knows.

And that's all I really have to say. Nobody talks about these games and I bet many of you don't even know they exist. But there you go - Robocop vs. Terminator. Bring on the movie dammit.

Shaq Fu

Either I've been extremely lucky or there's been some seriously bad information being spread about about this game.

Shaq Fu, a one-on-one fighting game featuring Shaquille O'Neal is another underdog of a game that's worth mentioning. I hadn't played this until extremely recently. I'd heard it was a terrible joke of a game. It... kinda isn't.

Shaq Fu was released in 1994 for the SNES, MegaDrive, Game Gear, Game Boy and eventually Commodore's Amiga. It was developed by the legendary but now defunct Delphine Software. Why are they legendary? Flashback. One of the many defining games of my childhood. Think Prince of Persia (the 2D game), sans time limit, plus guns. It's just a really good game and hasn't really been bettered since.

Shaq Fu didn't get high marks when it was first released. It was panned by critics for various reasons, most likely the fact that it's a one-on-one fighting game featuring Shaquille O'Neal. The story has Shaq fighting all sorts of weird mystical beings in the "2nd World" to save some... child... from some... mummy thing. It makes absolutely no sense and features no basketballs. Yet, unlike many people who see this as a turn-off straight away, I think this is one of the best ideas ever conceived by a video game developer. Why would anyone be possessed to make such a title? It's like they took a random game genre and a random celebrity and mixed the two together with a bit of magic.

Because I'm a Sega fan I'm basing my opinions on the MegaDrive version, which has more characters. The SNES game has the benefit of better sound (sort-of) and probably better graphics, but it's just that tiny bit slower. Handheld versions are likely to be worse and the Amiga version could be all over the place.

I must admit, the controls are a bit wacky. If you're expecting Street Fighter II you'll be disappointed. If anything, it's more like a "more busy" Mortal Kombat. Luckily it makes use of the MegaDrive's six button joypad, though I'm not entirely certain why since it still feels as if you've got "one kick, one punch, one... A button". You jump around and kick people who have the unfair advantage of having projectiles. Oh and there's a taunt button which is useless. One of the highlights is beating up a child (a possessed child, but a child nonetheless) - don't even know if it's politically correct to have that in games nowadays.

I actually thought the game was quite fun. It's not going to win any medals or anything but this isn't half as bad as people said. Then again, most people have been spared from things such as pirated Mortal Kombat games on the NES. There's some garbage circulating about poor hit detection which I'm not seeing. The only major problem with gameplay I had was the fact that the computer cheats... a lot. Well that cat-woman character does anyway. Also Shaq has a habit of getting stunned after a bit of beating which never seems to happen to anyone else. But it wouldn't surprise me if it's just me sucking - I'm not a massive fan of the fighting genre.

Other good things about this game are the graphics. There's some very smooth animations much like those in Flashback and the levels are just generally nice to look at. Some of them even have palette changes as the day progresses. There's also other nice things such as the HUD - your character's face gets beaten up more as your health decreases. It's a nice touch. Don't think it was the graphics that caused the bad reviews.

Sound is okay. The Super Nintendo has the added "benefit" of more digitized samples though it's not brilliant, and for some reason it almost feels as if there's a lack of sound on the MegaDrive version (but maybe it's for the better?). It's really just a matter of preference when it comes to choosing the better console, and the game probably sounds better on real hardware too so I'll leave that up to you to decide. One thing that does bug me about the MegaDrive's sound is that one high pitched note that's used on every track. If you play it you'll understand exactly what I mean.

At the end of the day Shaq Fu is not a bad game. It's not the best thing since sliced bread but it doesn't deserve the title of "worst MegaDrive game" and doesn't need to be hunted down and destroyed like some sites will have you believe. But of course it might be an entirely different story with the SNES version. I would gladly accept this into my MegaDrive collection.

Secret Doom Castle

I've been watching episodes of AVGN recently. Why? I'm... not sure. I suppose good home-made video reviews aren't released in healthy numbers, and certainly not that many are released that cover things such as the 1972 Magnavox Odessy. That system is just crazy.

Two things I thought I'd pick up on that I somewhat disagree with though

First, Milon's Secret Castle

A 1986 platformer game by Hudson Soft. Hudson liked it enough to give it a couple of SNES sequels that have nothing to do with a secret castle (and are henceforth better), plus a few cameos in other Hudson games (though seeing as the western world only got to see Milon in this form... it makes you wonder why). It's one of those NES games that hasn't aged well, but... it was released in 1986, which was still fairly early on in the NES's lifespan. It's aged better than things like Ice Climbers and Urban Champion.

People say it's a lot like Super Mario Bros. due to its colour scheme and looks but honestly I think it fits the role of a Metroid clone a bit better. You go back and forth looking for powerups to get... to the top I assume. The problem with MSC is that its learning curve is non-existant. You start off confused and you finish confused. That's probably the main reason it never caught on, but once you get the hang of it it's not too bad I suppose. It has a lot of nice ideas, they're just not executed properly.

Well, until you realise that the engine sucks.

Milon's acceleration is terrible and he(?) has no deceleration at all. Basically, it takes a few seconds to get up to full speed while walking, and as soon as you take your thumb off the D-Pad you'll instantly stop, no slowing down needed. And seeing as Milon's top speed isn't very fast, well... yeah. You'd have to play it to understand fully. Also the camera seems to have more fun following the large chunk of pixels behind Milon than following Milon. A slow game with a bad camera... ouch. Good job there's not masses of scrolling.

Furthermore everything's out to kill you, and with only one life... you're pretty much screwed unless you can play a perfect game somehow. Sure you have health but you don't start up with a full supply (did Hudson decide to break Milon's arms before he starts or something?). You shoot bubbles though they have limited range and don't fire in straight lines, and basically you've got to hit everything in hopes of finding a door or a key.

Now this process wouldn't be so bad if you weren't doomed to failure by the god-awful engine and hoards of enemies. Every now and then you fight a boss, and then you progress up the castle. Oh and also the music sucks. Lets not forget about that.

But it's not as terrible as people say. Fix up the engine and there's a passable game to be had here. But of course the ROM hacking community is a strange beast - it'll quite happily mess around with games that are already great, e.g. Super Mario Bros. but it won't fix the stuff that's been broken for 20 years. The icing on that cake is that apparently this game has a cult following (which is understandable since people do like those "search for x to unlock y" sorts of games.

Thing is, it's old and outdated now. Not so much in 1986. And lord knows there were much worse games on the market then. At least this shows some effort. But then again it never got to Europe so even Hudson didn't believe in it that much. If it had been released in, say, 1992, it may have been the NES's swan song, assuming Hudson learned from Super Mario Bros. 3.

Second, Doom on the 32X

People knock this one quite a bit and don't understand why.

When Doom was released in 1993 it was probably the most advanced PC game of the time. Some things to note about that sentence - 1993, a good three years after the release of the Super Nintendo and a good half decade after the MegaDrive, the two leading home consoles at the time. The 32-bit generation was coming up and both consoles were starting to show their age a bit. PCs are constantly improving and by this stage they were once again more powerful than the home consoles, so any port of Doom would have been gimped. In fact, with a 32X port in 1994 and a Super Nintendo port in 1995, these consoles were due to be replaced within a matter of months.

Arguably the Super Nintendo version is a better port but it's not without its issues. For one, the walls and floors have no textures. It's got all the enemies of the PC original but everything is a lot more pixellated (though I do prefer the HUD). And though yes, it's music is closer to the PC original... it's still far off. If you're a Doom fan, you probably wouldn't want to play either port.

Issues with the 32X port include the borders and the low quality sound... both space saving measures. Yes sadly even a 32X cartridge had problems storing this game fully. I assume any graphical problems on the SNES were down the limits of the Super FX2 chip. I mean you can only take these things so far. On the other side of things, the Atari Jaguar port, often labeled as the best official home console "port" lacks the soundtrack altogether! It seems to be a case where better graphics = worse sound and vice versa. So all three versions are probably on par with each other. The deciding factor is obvious though - the Jaguar died almost instantly and the 32X was awful. But if you were unlucky enough to buy a 32X instead of a SNES, you've still got a decent Doom.

And lets not forget, the Saturn and Playstation ports that followed dropped Bobby Prince's soundtrack in favour of ambient garbage and lighting effects, and Doom 64 is just... wrong (though it's not a terrible game). The really good ports of Doom are the fan-created ones. There's even one on the ZX Spectrum of all things.

Point is though, Doom 32X is not bad. Sure the SNES version probably has an edge but at the time it was still worth paying for. The 32X console on the other hand... probably not.

The Terminator (MegaDrive)

Most gamers have played or heard about a Sonic or Mario or Halo or whatever game. Mainstream titles... the ones that sell consoles and may have even been the reason you got into gaming. Now mainstream titles are nice and all, but they're boring. Yes the majority of mainstream titles are good games and at the top of their class, but the majority of games in general aren't. This means the big bulk of video gaming is simply thrown aside and forgotten about. Even the extremely poor and obscure titles get more coverage than some of these. Those crazy fanboy arguements about certain consoles having a bigger library of games is made redundant if nobody plays anything but Mario. What games am I talking about?

THE UNDERDOGS

Games that aren't fantastic but should still be classed as games. There were hundreds back in the late 80s and early 90s. Socket, mentioned in the post before this one is one of them - it's not worth a lot but it's worth something. Games that were shunned at the time for one reason or another, or games that simply didn't sell and that's why nobody's heard of them.

The Terminator was one of 1984's big movies. It had a follow-up, Terminator 2, the signifcantly better movie, another, Terminator 3 which was okay and a new one that's coming out soonish. Needless to say the series has spawned a few licensed video games, but unlike nowadays where games are easily ported to every home console and handheld, this wasn't always the case back in the 8-bit and 16-bit days. Some 16-bit games were just too complicated for 8-bit systems even when watered down, and likewise some 8-bit games were too simple/broken for them to make money off the 16-bit consoles. Back in 1984 there weren't even any consoles deemed good enough to get a Terminator game, so most of these came half a decade late!

The first Terminator game is completely different on just about every major platform of the early 90s. The majority have you play as Kyle Reese in the future fighting the machines, but no game is identical. How is a Terminator game an underdog you ask? Well I suppose it isn't... but do you honestly remember this game much? Is it at the front of your brain when you think "MegaDrive"? Probably not!

This is the MegaDrive version, devloped by Probe Software and published by Virgin. There's inferior Master System and Game Gear ports of this title were made as well, but I'll leave those for another day. Probe have a history of turning movies into half decent games which are then often overlooked and forgotten about. They're also known for the famous MegaDrive ports of Mortal Kombat which actually brought the blood to the living room and subsequently delievered quite a big blow to Nintendo at the time.

As with Socket the game spawns a good soundtrack but its gameplay has a lot to be desired. Graphics are alright though nothing to write home about and no-where near as nice as the Mega CD game that came out later (though they are arguably more colourful). Kyle spends most of his time throwing grenades at things, then spends most of his time shooting people. There are other weapons, but you can't use them in mid-air, so if you're expecting a side-scrolling shooter on the lines of Contra... you may be disappointed.

Generally the game makes very little sense. T-101 terminators are pretty strong - it took an entire movie for two humans to get rid of one of them. Yet a couple of grenades seem to do just fine here. As for Kyle, he's... stronger than T-101s in this game, being able to absorb quite a few shots to the face before being killed. But then things go a bit crazy because as the movie progresses you're on the run from a T-101, which is significantly stronger than those in the future... or your weapons in the past just suck. If they had T-101s like this in the first level all the events of the first movie could have been avoided!

Overall Terminator for the MegaDrive is an odd game. You think it's going to be insanely hard after the first level... but it isn't, and it's short too. So as far as mediocre games go this definately fits the role perfectly. It's bettered by its Mega CD counterpart in many areas, but it batters the NES version into the ground. The SNES game isn't as far behind as the NES game but it's just another one of those cases where Sega takes the gold.

Terminator on the MegaDrive is a solid game. A hundred times better than today's movie licensed games which are usually quick cash-ins. Kudos to Probe Software, who went on to produce loads of other great titles in a similar fashion to this. Shame Probe no longer exists.