THE FLATNESS

For relaxing times, make it Kirby's Adventure time

2010-03-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

Kirby's Adventure is the follow-up to Kirby's Dream Land, and unfortunately it was not marketed in North America or Europe under its much cooler Japanese title, Hoshi no Kirby: Yume no Izumi no Monogatari, or Kirby of the Stars: The Story of the Fountain of Dreams.

It's a true masterpiece (any serious NES player knows it's a great game), but many people still have not bothered to play it, or in some cases may not even have heard of it. Which is not necessarily surprising: Kirby's Adventure was released in May 1993, quite late in the NES's lifecycle, a time when the 16-bit console generation was on the ascendant. The SNES had been released about 20 months prior, the Genesis fully two years before that, and at that point new NES releases were not exactly being hungrily devoured by the public. Not that the game wasn't successful, but I don't think it enjoyed the extraordinarily broad exposure that NES games tended to get in, for example, 1989 or 1990.

Kirby's Adventure was also bright and cheerful and very cute at a time when the video game zeitgeist was IN YOUR FACE early-'90s 'tude. That probably didn't help, nor did the fact that within the eminently nonthreatening package lies an appropriately easy game. Just play cautiously and pretty much the whole thing is a cakewalk: I mean, you have a six-point health bar, there are bountiful 1UPs, and you can fly at will. In a platformer.

But that is actually part of the experience. To understand the genius of Kirby's Adventure is to relax and let it take you along, like inner-tubing down a slow river. It is just challenging enough to keep you engaged, but so well-designed, so forgiving, that the real point of the affair is to just relax and enjoy this singularly beautiful game. The use of color alone puts it in its own class visually.

In terms of gameplay it's a basic platformer, very much in the Super Mario Bros. 3 mold, but unlike Mario Kirby gains novel abilities by inhaling and then swallowing his adversaries. There's a huge variety of abilities, 24 in all, everything from Fire, Laser, and Freeze to U.F.O., Parasol, Tornado, Wheel, even Sleep!

The game is structured like Mario games in a few ways: there are seven distinct levels, each with a number of small stages accessed through a hub world. These are each introduced with a funny little animation, and are also some of the most impressive visuals in the game (click the hub world pictures for a larger version).

At the end of every stage there's a little bonus chance (like in Mario games) where you get bigger bonuses, or even a 1UP, the more accurately you time a press of the A button...

... there are colorful switches hidden in some stages that open up secret areas (like in Super Mario World)...

... and at the end of every level there's a boss battle, each one completely different than the last.

There are also three minigames you can play periodically throughout the game for bonus points and extra 1UPs. There's Crane Fever, a crane game where you try to pluck Kirby dolls out of the pile, Quick Draw, where you try to out-duel five increasingly challenging opponents, and Egg Catcher, where Kirby's nemesis King Dedede throws eggs and bombs and you have to try to catch as many of the former as you can in Kirby's mouth without swallowing any of the latter.

Did I mention the music is amazing too? Dig these tunes:

It's a very complete game: everything fits together right, everything is nicely designed and finely tuned, HAL didn't skimp on the details anywhere. And it's easy enough that you can see it all without much trouble. Pure pleasure.

It's all topped off with a spectacular finale too. The final stage, 7-6, is a brilliant pastiche of Kirby's Dream Land, basically an abbreviated version of that entire game in one stage. Kirby himself remains in color, but everything else is black and white, just like on the Game Boy--the music is even made to sound like it's being produced by the Game Boy's sound chip! It's like you're leaving the NES game temporarily, and returning to Kirby's Dream Land itself.

That delightful romp is followed by a fantastic final boss battle and great ending/credit sequence.

Download Kirby's Adventure

Note: this game was remade as Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland for Game Boy Advance. That version is not bad, but I strongly recommend you stick to the original, which really is far superior.

Crisis Force

2010-02-26T15:31:00.000-08:00

Konami was one of the great achievers in the field of NES graphics and sound. Crisis Force is one of their most impressive games for Nintendo's 8-bit workhorse, but for us North American fans, it's something of a lost classic, as it was only released in Japan.

One of the reasons for this is that the game used a special chip in the cartridge to expand its graphical and sound capabilities well beyond what the system could normally do. These chips were expensive, and Konami evidently did not feel that it would be a good investment to manufacture cartridges with these expensive extra chips to sell outside of Japan. (This is the same reason that the North American version of Castlevania III is watered down compared to its Japanese counterpart).

Crisis Force is a good vertical shooter, balanced and well-designed, but pretty much exactly what you'd expect in terms of gameplay from a game of that genre from 1991. One cool feature is that, after collecting enough of a certain item, your ship temporarily transforms into some kind of super-ship with which you can really wreak some havoc (in two-player mode, both ships actually merge to form the super-ship). The game also has a nice power-up system: there are two different power-up paths that max out quickly, and combined with 3 ship types (i.e., shot types) that can be switched between at will, it's more about picking the right tool for the job than brute-force powering up. That's a nice touch, somewhat forward-looking I guess, but this game earned its rep with the way it uses its fancy extra chip to really push the limits of the NES/Famicom.

For starters, the sprites are really large, with lots of cool effects, like buildings blowing up as you fly overhead in stage 1, and the parallax "canyons" or whatever they are in stage 1 and 3.

Some of the bosses are truly impressive too.

The stage 5 boss is big enough that you have to destroy it in three chunks--pretty cool.

There's also a great variety in terms of environments.

The soundtrack sounds great, with particularly full-sounding percussion (for a Famicom game anyway). Considered in total it may not be as memorable or well-crafted as, say, the Contra or Life Force soundtracks, but there are some great tunes to be had:

Stage 1

Stage 4

Stage 7

And a terrific stage clear fanfare...

Aside from being maybe a little generic, as I mentioned earlier, this game's only real flaw is the slowdown it often incurs, what with all the huge sprites flying around the screen. But you may in fact find that useful because this game is really hard. Personally, I can't imagine playing the second form of the last boss without the slowdown.

Oh, and on a side note, the Konami code works! (It gives you 15 lives).

Download Crisis Force

Before there was Wii, there was Warlords

2010-02-10T17:25:00.000-08:00

Warlords was originally an arcade game released by Atari in 1980. It was a good game, but I was first introduced to it by way of its Atari 2600 port, programmed by Carla Meninsky.

Played alone it's pretty dull. With a friend it's fun. With four players it's fantastic, and it's not too hard to recruit that many, given that Warlords is as simple a game as you could ask for. There's only one input, a rotatable dial (sometimes you use its one button), and one very simple objective: destroy the other players' castles while protecting your own.

It is essentially four-player Breakout, something of a grandchild to Breakout's progenitor, the industry-defining Pong. Like those games, Warlords' very simple gameplay means the speed of play can be ramped up without overwhelming the player: things start slow and easy, but as the speed of the ball begins to increase, the action gets intense, and quickly.

This combination of simplicity and frenetic action makes Warlords a natural fit for a looser, party-like setting. The gameplay, facile yet fast and challenging, is very conducive to friendly, but intense, competition--it's the kind of game that easily coaxes cries of delight and anguish from players. This is true of Pong as well, but Warlords' slightly more sophisticated design and ability to accommodate four players makes it even better suited to the role of party game.

Let's see... geared towards four players, simple visual presentation, easy to learn, great for casual play, lots of fun. Does that remind you of Wii Sports, perhaps? I guess the title of this post may be a bit misleading, but I still think it's interesting that the hallmarks of Nintendo's hit pack-in game for the Wii, released in 2006, are all present in an Atari 2600 game that was released in 1981. I'm not necessarily saying Nintendo stole any ideas from Atari. Video games belong to a common lineage, and video game innovation is more often about refining and expanding on existing ideas rather than coming up with whole new design paradigms. Considered in light of recent industry developments, Warlords is an excellent, if not obvious, example of this principle at work.

It's also a really fun game.

Download Warlords

VVVVVV: pure, elegant platforming

2010-01-15T12:21:00.001-08:00

There are a few things I don't like about VVVVVV, not least of which is the clumsy title--I mean, who thought that was clever? A member of the band !!!, perhaps? Cripes. Your character's decidedly squirrely physics are a constant annoyance as well: he lacks any real feeling of momentum and moves a little too fast, very irksome considering the game centers on precision and repetition.

Flaws aside though, I think this is one of the best indie games of the last few years. Developed by Terry Cavanagh, VVVVVV is platforming stripped of all but the most essential elements. Your only goal is to explore the game world in order to find your missing comrades. The only barriers to your progress are the platforming challenges. Your only ability (aside from running left and right) is the gravity flip: if you're standing on a solid surface you can hit the action button to invert the pull of gravity.

Using only this bare-bones approach, Cavanagh still manages to craft an engaging, satisfying, and fiendishly challenging platformer. The genius of this game is its simplicity: the game uses but one mechanic, and takes it to its logical conclusion. Aside from exploration, there is nothing else to the game. There is nothing to confuse the player or obfuscate goals, no collecting digital bric-a-brac in order to progress. Frequent checkpoints and unlimited lives mean that the challenges come in tiny chunks, isolated from one another: you only have to worry about the challenge at hand, then move on to the next.

In fact, without that simple approach, this game would not be enjoyable. There are parts that are so punishingly hard, you have to break the challenges into small, discrete pieces. You wouldn't want to have to tackle this challenge after completing an entire level:

Did you watch that video or the trailer above with the sound on? You should. The chiptune soundtrack, by Magnus Pålsson (aka SoulEye), is absolutely incredible. You can also purchase the soundtrack album, PPPPPP, at Pålsson's website.

Buy VVVVVV or play the Flash demo

New Super Mario Bros. Wii review

2009-12-02T00:20:00.000-08:00

If you follow this blog religiously--and hey, I'm sure all of you do--you may remember a post I made back in June about the announcement of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. That announcement heralded not only the first 2D Mario game to grace a console in almost 15 years (Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was released for the SNES way back in 1995), but also the first Mario game ever to support simultaneous multiplayer. I consider myself something of a Mario connoisseur, and to say I was excited when I heard about this game is a gross understatement.

I got the game on the day of its release, November 15, and I've had some time to take it in (and time enough to complete the game in its entirety--all the secrets, all the Star Coins, everything. 100%.) The short version of my review: hot damn, I love this game!

But there's more to it than that. For one thing, this game is pretty hard to review in the proper context. It's far better than its immediate predecessor, the somewhat uninspired New Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo DS, which it hews close to in terms of physics, visual aesthetic, sound design and other basic elements. But it also bears many similarities to Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, and I think it's clear that this game's designers intended for it to remind players of those earlier masterpieces. Those are two of the best games ever made, and also two of my favorites--I'm not that dumb, I know I can't objectively judge something with a pedigree that means so much to me personally. What I think I should do instead is judge it based on the reactions and responses it coaxed from me as a fan, as someone who was hoping for a worthy successor to classic 2D Mario games.

And those reactions were almost universally positive. The level design, the visual design, the music, the control, the overarching vibe of the game--it all feels right to me. It feels natural, appropriate. It feels like a Mario game.

For one thing, it's clever and inventive without being too obvious about it. Other designers prefer to hit you over the head with their innovations. This is more of a slow burn: there are "wow" moments when you're first playing, but the real revelation of just how good it is comes as you begin to get more familiar with the subtleties of the game. Visually it's comparatively spartan, with simple geometry, clean lines, bright colors. It's uncluttered, with nothing unnecessary to distract you except for when the level design calls for it. Though relatively unadorned, it's a beautiful, cartoony dreamworld--inviting, unthreatening, but intriguing.

This visual aesthetic greatly benefits from the music too. For one, there are some truly outstanding takes on the classic underground theme, not to mention some fantastic map music too: subtle, playful, always perfect for the setting. The tunes are memorable, catchy, atmospheric, but they don't exactly take center stage--they serve as a complement to the scenery and gameplay. That's Mario.

The control takes a little getting used to, but it's really just as tight as you'd reasonably expect for a Mario game. Some people may not like the motion controls, but with a little practice it's never hard to do exactly what you want to. You're never caught struggling to pull off some arcane special move or frustrated by some jump that you can't quite figure out how to do. You can tell what's possible and what's not, the issue is whether you can hack it.

And the level design, always the beating heart of a Mario game, is great here as well. Whether it lives up to the lofty standards of creativity set by its predecessors is up for debate (I think it does), but the key qualities are all there: a gentle difficulty curve, consistency, and intuitiveness. No level is so wildly different from any other as to make it inscrutable, and even the most fiendishly well-hidden secrets are hinted at through the placement of obstacles, environmental hazards, items, coins, or enemies. The really challenging parts leave you eager to try again ("Oh, I can do that!"), not discouraged. You can see and understand your path, always: these are unmistakably Mario levels.

Here are some of my favorites. (If you haven't played the game yet and don't like having surprises ruined for you, don't watch these--especially the last one!)

5-1

5-5

A cool reference to Vanilla Secret 3 from Super Mario World

7-6

Another great reference, this time to 5-6 from Super Mario Bros. 3

8-7

Be still, my heart.

9-7

This level is deliciously brutal, probably the hardest in the whole game.

Bowser boss fight

And then there's the multiplayer. The game's marketing has highlighted this feature, but really the (simultaneous!) two- to four-player mode is just the icing on the cake, and what delectable icing it is. Appreciate it fully, because it is both very fun and an entirely new way to play Mario. It takes getting used to, and can be challenging (I think it makes the game harder in a number of ways), but it is a pleasure not to be missed. With the exception of a short minigame in Super Mario Bros. 3, previous Mario games allowed virtually no interaction between players. No more taking turns and waiting to play now, and interaction has gone from minimal to constant. The the dynamic of a multiplayer game vacillates between cooperative and competitive with delightful ease too--you will curse your friends and loved ones and enjoy doing it very much. This is new, and I don't know if it feels like Mario to me yet, but it works. Trust me.

I think this mode also allows less skilled players to enjoy the game more, since as long as you're not out of lives and there's another surviving player, when you die you come back in a bubble, safe until another player pops it (you can enter a bubble at will too). It doesn't diminish the challenge, but it makes dying not as catastrophic. Given this aspect of the multiplayer and the Super Guide feature that's present in single-player mode, it's possible for even neophytes to see a good portion of the game.

Which brings me to the difficulty. Like all Mario games, New Super Mario Bros. Wii isn't meant to be intimidating, not even in the later levels. It is easy overall, perhaps too easy for some people's tastes, but it's also flexible enough to allow you to get really, really good. You can do much more than is apparent at first: the game is intended to be experimented with, to be mastered at higher and higher levels. The "Super Skills" videos that you can unlock as you progress through the game are explicit examples that the game is intended to be "pushed" in this way by the player. They say, "See what you can do in this game? I bet you never thought of trying this!" Exploiting the game in non-obvious ways is one of the hallmarks of Mario, and this game not only delivers on that, it provides tutorials.

As far as I know, this is a recording of live play. With enough practice, you and three other people could conceivably do this too.

Even the "Star Coin" and "Secret Goal" videos show off some cool tricks and skillful playing. The game actually goes out of its way to teach you the heights of mastery that can be reached. It shows you where to go, and getting there is fun. It's Mario, and it feels fantastic. Hot damn, I love this game.

Amidar

2009-11-18T11:55:00.001-08:00

Today, I got an email from one Ami Dar, and in honor of that individual's highly improbable name, I decided to make a quick post about Konami's 1981 arcade game Amidar. It's nothing special, just another entry in the maze-game craze that Pac-Man had set off earlier in '81, but it's an enjoyable game, kind of a combination of Pac-Man and Taito's Qix, an interesting mix in and of itself.

Each level is an uneven grid, and you have to color in the boxes outlined by that grid while avoiding enemies, the titular Amidars. There are two types of levels: one, more like Pac-Man, has you freely collecting pellets for points, coloring in the boxes when all the bordering pellets have been collected. The other, more like Qix, dispenses with the pellets and restricts your movement more: you still have to color in each box, but you have to progress by coloring in adjacent boxes, progressively expanding your "conquered territory" as it were. In these levels, each box gives you a point reward once colored in (bigger boxes yield bigger bonuses).

Also, coloring in the four corner boxes on any level gives you a brief period of invulnerability in which you can kill the Amidars for points, just like power pellets in Pac-Man. There's also a jump button, which you can use three times per level, but it actually makes your enemies jump, an unusual design decision even in 1981 when jumping was still not firmly established as a common gameplay mechanic.

There is also a bonus level you get to play in between levels, featuring, guess what? Bonus fruit, of course.

As I mentioned above, this game is nothing special, but I think it's fun, and it's worth a try if you like maze games or early '80s arcade games.

Download Amidar

Tower of Greed: risk-benefit analysis in a platformer

2009-11-02T15:07:00.000-08:00

Tower of Greed is a straightforward score-oriented platforming game, made by Epic Shadow, with one very clever twist.

Your goal is to rack up a high score by collecting gems as you climb a tower. You also collect trophies by meeting certain requirements as you play, such as killing a certain number of enemies, or reaching a certain score threshold. Forced vertical scrolling means that you have to be moving constantly upward--fall too far below the bottom of the screen and your game ends. The obstacles are standard fare for platformers: tricky jumps, a small selection of pesky enemies, and environmental hazards like spikes and disappearing platforms. All these can kill you, but what will do you in most often is your own greed--and this is what makes the game so ingenious.

Unlike other high-score games, you don't just play Tower of Greed until you die. As you climb the tower you will periodically be presented with a door. You can exit the tower through these doors, thus saving your score and any trophies you were awarded in that game. If you die before exiting the tower, your score and trophies are lost. In other words, you have to weigh the risk of continuing on for still more booty against the reward of getting out with your "earnings" intact.

There are a few other elements to the game, like several items that you can pick up and use, but this risk-benefit analysis, this constant temptation to climb ever upwards for more gems, is what the gameplay centers around. It's no accident that, as you see a door, there is invariably a bonanza of gems just above it. The game's designers consistently use the layout of the levels to say, "Hey, you don't really want to stop now do you?" It's very clever, very inventive design.

I was only able to find one video of Tower of Greed in action, and it's sped up (starting at around the 0:10 mark), but it should still give you a good idea of what the gameplay is like:

It's not only very addictive, but it's reasonably deep too. There are a whopping 64 trophies to collect, and floor sequences are randomized based on a difficulty-scaling algorithm, so not only can the game employ meticulously-constructed levels, it's also never exactly the same twice.

Its chiptune background music is pretty nice too, if repetitive.

Play Tower of Greed

Out Run: driving, not racing

2009-10-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

I tagged this post as racing, but as you can see from the title, I don't actually think it's a racing game. But that's its best fit in terms of a broader genre, and categorizing it at all is somewhat futile: Out Run stands alone. There are other games that play similarly but considered in total, this game is unique.

Sprung from the mind of brilliant and prolific Sega wunderkind Yu Suzuki, Out Run runs on the same basic hardware as a number of other Suzuki-directed arcade hits, including Hang-On, After Burner and Space Harrier, and it uses the same "Super-Scaler" sprite-scaling technology that gave those games their distinctive look and pretty convincing 3D feel (for the time anyway). As with these other games, Sega tried to make Out Run a more engaging gaming experience than its competitors with the cabinet design. Like some Super Hang-On cabinets allowed you to sit on a simulacrum of a motorcycle and actually lean into the turns, like some After Burner cabinets had a rotating cockpit, Out Run appeared in cabinets that allowed you to sit in something resembling the red Ferrari Testarossa from the game. One version featured a simple car that just rotated left and right, but the "deluxe" cabinet had a cosmetically fancier car that was actually hydraulically actuated: it moved side to side, up and down, even jostled you when you crashed.

But such gimmicks are deceptive. The key to Out Run's appeal is the mood it sets, the vibe, and eye-catching though the ostentatious cabinet may have been, it was the gameplay that provided the ambiance.

Which brings us back to the title of this post: Out Run is about driving, not racing. It is not about tense competition or white-knuckle action, though it does demand skill and precision. It is not about compiling good lap times or practicing the best line on a sequence of curves. What it is about, as the Wikipedia article so deftly puts it, is "luxury and relaxation."

You're racing against a clock, and the game is pretty challenging, but from the start the clear implication is that you're doing this for the enjoyment of it all, the simple thrill of speed and the open highway. For one thing, you do not control a helmeted expert driver strapped into a Formula One race car or something similar; you control a dude in sunglasses, with a leggy blonde in the passenger seat, in a presumably road-legal Ferrari, with the convertible top down so you can enjoy the wind in your hair and see the sights that much better.

That "sightseeing" aspect is really the most important element of the gameplay: Out Run, very unusual for a car-centric game, really focuses on exploration more than anything else. Like the industry-changing Super Mario Bros., part of Out Run's appeal is that as you play the game, you continually open up new areas, you see new, novel things on your way to your ultimate destination--and reaching that destination is your main objective, more so than achieving a high score. Being an arcade game, Out Run didn't de-emphasize the high-score aspect of gameplay as much as Super Mario Bros. did, but still, it is exploration that primarily motivates the player. You're not just doing the same thing over and over like in Asteroids, and you don't just play the same levels again and again in sequence like in Donkey Kong. You're trying to see what's in the next stage, and hopefully see what's at the end goal, before the clock runs out and prevents you from doing so. The point is to successfully arrive at your destination, to complete your exploration, to "close the frontier," as it were. You can in fact tell that this was a deliberate decision by Suzuki and his design team: at each checkpoint, where you get time added to the clock, you are also presented with a fork in the road. Every stage branches into two others, and with a total of four checkpoints in each route, that gives the game 15 unique stages--each with its own scenery and distinct feel--as well as five different "finish lines" to reach, each with its own unique ending sequence.

The game's structure not only emphasizes exploration, but also makes exploration and aesthetic novelty ("Hey, what's in this stage that I haven't been to yet?") the main factor in the game's great replayability. For a driving game that was released in arcades in 1986, that is incredibly innovative.

The game's attract mode highlights this as well. Most arcade attract modes will show a little gameplay, then the high score table, maybe a public service message, and then another gameplay sequence. Out Run shows some gameplay from the first stage, then pauses to show the high score table, then continues the same gameplay sequence--it doesn't show you some isolated gameplay examples, it shows you an extended gameplay session. In fact, it shows you an entire playthrough of the game: where the finish line would be, the attract mode just slides back into the first stage and continues. It's saying to the potential player, "Look, it keeps going!" It shows you that it's not just about driving by the occasional tree or rock sprite, progressing along a nondescript road--no, there's exciting, uncharted territory to be explored, and you can do it in style. Look at this game. Don't you want to be in that red Ferrari, next to that babe, cruising along that seaside road?

And as innovative as the gameplay is, as cool as the varied scenery is, perhaps the most important element in setting the mood for the game is the excellent music composed by Hiroshi Miyauchi. You have a choice of three different jams, and each brilliantly augments the exotic and adventurous feel of the race/road trip. Take a listen:

Try watching the mostly silent attract mode and you'll see that the game is not nearly as compelling without the music. Even the tune that plays over the name entry screen, "Final Wave," is amazing, perfectly complementing the accompanying image of roadside palm trees silhouetted by the sunset. It turns something as mundane as entering your initials into a pleasantly soothing dénouement to the little adventure you just completed.

Out Run is not so much a video game as it is a vacation.

Download Out Run

Note: this ROM may not work with the latest version of MAME, I'm not sure. If it doesn't work for you, just grab "outrun.zip" from a recent MAME set--torrents are easy to find.

Canabalt

2009-09-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

Canabalt is a neat little flash game (and free, as flash games tend to be). It's similar to Dino Run, one of the best flash games I have ever played, in that you just run to the right, trying to get as far as you can. Canabalt is simpler than Dino Run, and is even simple by the standards of flash games: you play as some kind of escapee (this is never fully explained, although the silhouettes of giant robots you can see moving in the background may have something to do with it), and you must jump from rooftop to rooftop in your attempt to skedaddle. Your character runs to the right and accelerates automatically--all you have to do is jump, and avoid falling between buildings. That's it.

Hazards come in the form of objects you can bump into that will slow you down, objects that suddenly fall from the sky to block your path, buildings that begin to crumble as soon as you set foot on them, and buildings whose rooftops are out of reach, forcing you to jump through a window instead. There is a minimal element of strategy, like sometimes you want to hit obstacles on purpose to make sure you don't accelerate too much, but mostly the game is just about quick jumping reflexes. Scores come in the form of distance traveled--no time component, no bonus points, no nothing. Just keep jumping, and get as far as you can. From what I can tell, the level layouts are generated randomly, which is nice: it makes the game purely about reflexes, with no memorization component.

Given its very simple nature, Canabalt is not much more than a diversion, but it's still a quality game.

Play Canabalt

Toilet Kids: the world's only poop-em-up

2009-09-18T07:56:00.001-07:00

Trust me. That katakana does say Toilet Kids. And it's not just a clever title; the introductory sequence shows a young lad being whisked into the toilet for a fantastic fever-dream adventure. It's Little Nemo meets, well, sewage I guess.

The game is a decent shooter, nothing special, with Xevious-style gameplay: a number of enemy patterns in this game are taken directly from Xevious, but even more noticeable are the air-to-surface bombs that you have in addition to a forward shot--hence the cross-hairs in front of your character--which is a mechanic that Xevious pioneered.

It's also similar to the TwinBee series (which was itself a Xevious derivative) in that power-ups fall down the screen towards you, and you can juggle them with shots. Actual gameplay aside though, this game is entirely unique. It reminds you at almost every possible interval that its title is indeed Toilet Kids.

Some enemies shoot farts at you.

The three levels of difficulty are Easy, Medium, and Heavy. Um...

The first miniboss is a trio of spiders with what appear to be enormous butts.

Huge pile = GAME OVER

Download Toilet Kids

Dreamcast: in Memoriam on this Ninth Day of September, Two Thousand and Nine

2009-09-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

Today marks two anniversaries: this is my 50th post (yeah, whoop-de-do), but more importantly, it was ten years ago today, 9/9/99, that Sega released the Dreamcast in North America. Although it flopped in Japan and was ignominiously discontinued in January 2001, just 16 months after its North American launch, it would still go down in history as one of the greatest consoles ever.

I bought a Dreamcast in the spring of 2000, mainly so I could import Marvel vs. Capcom 2, which was released in arcades and on the DC simultaneously in Japan. It was a simpler time, when you could buy mod-chipped Dreamcasts from above-ground Internet retailers. I miss those days.

But MvC2 was just the reason I decided I needed a Dreamcast right at that moment. I decided to make the investment--the first console I had acquired since receiving a SNES for Christmas in 1991--because I knew it would keep me happy for years: I was heavily into fighting games then, and by the time I bought my DC, it had an absolutely amazing lineup of fighting games, either already available or announced for release.

There are plenty of other Dreamcast games I hold very near my heart: Skies of Arcadia, Jet Grind Radio, Bangai-O, Crazy Taxi, Chu Chu Rocket, Rez, Cannon Spike, Ikaruga, Mars Matrix, Mr. Driller... the list goes on. But fighters are what defined the system for me. There were so many great fighting games available for it, I spent $120 to import a Japanese joystick, then bought an official US stick so my friends could play with a joystick too. It had some great 3D fighters: Virtua Fighter 3tb was decent, if disappointing compared to the arcade version, but Soul Calibur is still one of the best 3D fighters you can get on a console, and it was a launch title no less. Dead or Alive 2 was outstanding, Project Justice was fun and bizarre in that uniquely Japanese way. But its 2D fighters... this was a lineup for the ages. The Saturn had a famously strong library of 2D fighters, but the Dreamcast outshined even its noted predecessor in that department, with only a few middling titles among nearly 20 excellent ones. I bought most them, and didn't regret a single purchase. Those games are what I want to talk about today.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes

I've heard this game referred to as a "disasterpiece," a disaster of a masterpiece, and that pretty much nails it. It's flashy, frenetic, sometimes seemingly impossible to follow, with an overwhelmingly large cast of characters (56!), but MvC2 is great fun both as a "Friday night with the boys" kind of game and as a more serious, competitive exercise.

Garou: Mark of the Wolves

The last and by far the best game in the Fatal Fury series (the North American DC release is technically titled Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves), this is more or less SNK's answer to Street Fighter III. It's a highly polished game, a pleasure to play and a joy to look at. One of my favorite aspects of this great game is that the fictional city it takes place in, Southtown, is fully developed as a setting. It feels like a real city, and you're familiarized with it not through cutscenes or exposition, but simply by observing the stage backgrounds as you play the game--it's indicative of the game's extraordinary level of detail. One of the best 2D fighters ever made, bar none.

Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge

Street Fighter II is an iconic game, one of the select few that have spawned entire genres in their wake. Known as Super Street Fighter II Turbo in North America, this was the final, and best, iteration of the game's original form, before the coming of the Street Fighter Alpha series. And the Dreamcast version (full title: Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge — For Matching Service, which refers to the netplay feature you could use if you lived in Japan) is really the definitive edition: the ultimate classic Street Fighter game. Note that this game is a Japan-only release.

The King of Fighters: Dream Match 1999

Despite the title, this is actually a port of The King of Fighters '98. There's no real consensus among fans, but I think KOF98 is the best entry in the series and arguably SNK's best 2D fighter. There are a number of graphical tweaks in this port, and aside from a new anime-style intro (nice but inconsequential), the only really noticeable one is the backgrounds, which are now rendered in 3D. Some people think it looks better that way; personally I prefer the original Neo-Geo version. But this is still an excellent port of one of the best 2D fighters ever made.

The Last Blade 2: Heart of the Samurai

The Samurai Shodown franchise is more famous (perhaps deservedly--those are some great games), but The Last Blade 2 is just as good and just as beautifully presented as any Samurai Shodown game. Besides playing very, very well and having tons of cool characters, what I really love about The Last Blade 2 is its sense of place: it's set in the Bakumatsu period, the twilight of Japanese feudalism, and manages to convey as much of a sense of verisimilitude as a video game really can (you can actually see the black ships in one background, for instance). Its sense of atmosphere is amazing too. One stage has you fighting in a building as it burns to the ground with the roar of the flames audible in the background. Another takes place in a field at sunset, with dragonflies flitting about and the ambient sound provided by the blowing wind and chirping cicadas. The voice acting is great, the animation is fluid and detailed, the music is fantastic. It's a delight just to watch, even more so to actually play.

Capcom vs. SNK 2: Millionaire Fighting 2001

CvS2 is like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in that it's pretty unbalanced, has a dauntingly large cast of characters (48), and is really, really fun. Though half its cast consists of SNK characters, it was made by Capcom and feels like a Capcom game (I think Street Fighter Alpha 3 is its closest relative in terms of gameplay). In addition to looking great and being fun, the game's main strength is variety, and I don't just mean the huge cast. Matches can have single characters, teams of three, or "ratio" teams, in which a team can have one, two or three characters, with four "points" distributed among them--i.e., your team can have a medium-strength "Ratio 2" character and two weaker "Ratio 1" characters, one Ratio 1 character and a more powerful Ratio 3 character, or just one extra-powerful Ratio 4 character. And there are six different "grooves" to pick from, each with its own unique style of super meter and subset of special abilities like rolls, dodges, parries, dashes, etc. Note that while this got a North American release on the PlayStation 2, and a slightly tweaked version, Capcom vs. SNK 2 EO, made it to North American Xboxes and GameCubes (!), the DC version was a Japanese exclusive.

Street Fighter III: Third Strike

Third Strike is the best game in the Street Fighter III series, and it's a good one to try if you like the classic feel of Street Fighter but want something nicer looking. It's slower and more technical than, say, Super Street Fighter II X, but like its excellent successor Street Fighter IV, its gameplay will feel familiar to any fan of the original Street Fighter II. Visually it's a treat, particularly the animations, which are as smooth as they are detailed.

Guilty Gear X

Okay, I'm actually not that into this game, but it is worth mentioning if for no other reason than it still ranks as one of the best-looking 2D fighters ever.

There's more too: Street Fighter Alpha 3, Vampire Chronicle, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Marvel vs. Capcom, The King of Fighters '99 Evolution, and a few others.

I want to go on about this plucky little console. Its incredible software lineup included an impossibly high percentage of good or great games. It was way ahead of its time: it featured some episodic games before the format was really popular; you could play minigames on its memory cards; it ran an optimized build of Windows CE as its operating system; it was the first console with any online functionality. Not only did it come with a 56K modem that allowed for workable online play, not only did it come with a web browser, not only did it have a keyboard and a mouse to supplement its online features (you could also use them to play almost all of the Dreamcast's FPS games with PC-style controls), you could even upgrade to a broadband adapter! It had an MMORPG. On a console! In 2000! And with a peripheral it could actually output video in VGA mode--not a converted composite signal, mind you, I'm talking about a true 480p signal. The next console to feature that was the Xbox 360, six years later. You have to understand: the Dreamcast RULED.

See, there I go. Obviously my childlike enthusiasm for the DC is so strong that even this blog's thematic restrictions can't keep it in check. I'm not the only one who feels this way: if you want more shameless gushing or more actual information about Sega's swan song, there are a number of of recent write-ups on its history. Also check out this decent feature from G4 TV.

Jaki Crush: the sequel to Alien Crush & Devil's Crush

2009-08-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

Many of you are probably familiar with Alien Crush, an amazing TurboGrafx-16 pinball game developed by Compile--a shoot-em-up powerhouse that also created Puyo-Puyo--and featuring an aesthetic taken whole cloth from H.R. Giger.

You may also be familiar with Alien Crush's sequel, Devil's Crush (also released on TurboGrafx-16), which is at least as good as its predecessor and really, really metal.

But I think only a few, if any, of you will have ever played Jaki Crush, the third game in the series that I didn't even know existed until recently. It was released not for the TurboGrafx-16 or even PC Engine, but for Super Famicom in Japan only. And it uses yet another variation on the horror pinball theme: "jaki" is apparently Japanese for "demon" or "imp," and appropriately the game is based on classic Japanese horror imagery. And if you didn't know, that's awesome.

If you like either Alien Crush or Devil's Crush you will definitely like this game, seeing as it plays pretty much the same, has similarly great music, and a similar visual style. In fact, if you like pinball video games at all you will definitely like this game.

Download Jaki Crush

If you're interested, Hardcore Gaming 101 has a nice write-up on the whole series.

Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III

2009-08-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

Bubble Bobble has a complicated lineage. The sequel to Bubble Bobble is Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2, in which the first game's stars, Bub and Bob, have reverted to being human, and use arcing rainbows as weapons and platforms rather than blowing bubbles to trap and kill enemies.

Rainbow Islands was more of a spin-off than a sequel: later on came Bubble Symphony, released as Bubble Bubble 2 in some regions, which retained Bubble Bobble's style of play more faithfully. That was in turn followed by a prequel, Bubble Memories, which was also confusingly subtitled The Story of Bubble Bobble III. Those games feature Bub and Bob as dragons, while Parasol Stars has them as humans, like in Rainbow Islands. To add to the confusion yet more, the Amiga and Atari ST versions of Parasol Stars were titled Parasol Stars: The Story of Rainbow Islands 2. What we have, basically, are two interconnected series sprung from the same source, similar to the extraordinarily convoluted Dragon Slayer and Wonder Boy/Adventure Island franchises.

But enough about incomprehensible game family trees, let's talk about Parasol Stars. Originally released for the PC Engine in Japan, the game was brought to the TurboGrafx-16 in North America with a localization by none other than Working Designs, who took the liberty of replacing Taito's logo on the title screen:

And it was later ported to the NES/Famicom (though only in Japan and Europe), Game Boy, and the Atari ST and Amiga computer platforms, as mentioned above. Strangely, some sources, including the usually reliable GameFAQs and KLOV, indicate that an arcade version exists, despite the fact that Taito has confirmed that none does, not even a prototype.

You go from level to level, using your umbrella (parasol) to sort of "grab" enemies, then throw them. It also doubles as a shield and a parachute. Once you defeat all the enemies in a level, you move to the next. Sounds more or less like Bubble Bobble, right? It is, and in a number of ways, Parasol Stars plays more like Bubble Bobble than Rainbow Islands. Most notably, Rainbow Islands featured upward climbing à la Kid Icarus, but Parasol Stars uses the one-screen-at-a-time style of play seen in Bubble Bobble. Also, it features periodic boss fights that play like the final boss fight in Bubble Bobble:

The level design also recalls Bubble Bobble (although there are some larger levels that scroll left/right a bit), as does the mechanic of being able to ride a wave of water down a level's platforms, taking out enemies on the way down:

One thing Parasol Stars has in common with all the games in this varied series is a stunning array of bonus fruit:

There's also really big bonus fruit.

And BEER! Yes!

And there are items, like this cross that makes lightning rain down from above, smiting your foes.
Which of course then turn into colorful bonus fruit.
That's the power of Christ for you: he turns your enemies into fruits.

There's a more fundamental similarity too: behind this game's cloying, cute, candy-colored exterior (which I like very much, by the way), lies a good, challenging, fun game that's far better with two players. Anyone who played the original Bubble Bobble will know what I mean.

Download Parasol Stars

Bad News Baseball

2009-08-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

Known as Gekitō!! Stadium in Japan, Bad News Baseball is one of the better NES baseball games, along with R.B.I. Baseball, Baseball Stars and Baseball Simulator 1.000. In fact, in my opinion, Bad News Baseball is the best of the lot, and coincidentally it was made by Tecmo who also developed Tecmo Super Bowl, the greatest sports video game ever created.

And like Tecmo Super Bowl, what makes Bad News Baseball great is the fact that the umpires are rabbits.

But seriously folks, what makes Bad News Baseball great is the same great balance of depth and accessibility that Tecmo Super Bowl had--albeit not quite as perfectly tuned.

It plays very much like Namco's popular Family Stadium series (the first game of which was brought to the U.S. by Tengen as R.B.I. Baseball), to the point of being a bit of a rip-off. That's definitely a good thing though. The visual presentation is clean and simple with small, kind of semi-super-deformed players. Play alternates between your standard batting/pitching screen and fielding screen.

As you can see from the passed-out baserunner (he's so shocked at failing to reach base, he's seeing stars), the game also has a humorous, very cartoony sensibility, particularly evident in the cutscenes you get for things like home runs:

Yeah, high-five! Low-five! Woo!

Woah, what's with the M.U.S.C.L.E.-esque guy?!

If you really crush one, you get the "moonshot" sequence!

And there are "close play" sequences, even a unique one for plays at home plate.

The pace of play in the field is somewhat slower, which makes fielding more manageable. The relative speeds of the game are well-tempered too: pitches, the baserunners and fielders, thrown balls in the field... they combine to give the gameplay a rhythm and a pace that isn't quite like the real game, but feels very much like it, something few baseball video games achieve while still maintaining good, satisfying playability.

I especially like that pitching stamina is a little more realistic too. Starting pitchers can usually go about six innings, give or take and inning or two. Complete games are the exception, but possible. In many other baseball games from this era, four or five innings is about all your starter can do, which always irked me.

This very effective illusion of realism, this attention to detail, achieved without sacrificing any of the ease and simplicity of its gameplay, is what really makes this game, providing the depth and replay value. I mean, look at the rosters of the 12 selectable teams (and two all-star teams): not only are they impressively large for a NES game (each team has 14 position players and 6 pitchers), but they are also very detailed. Position players are rated on "AV" (batting average, or contact hitting ability), "HR" (home runs, or power hitting), an A, B, or C rating for defensive positions (left to right: catcher, first base, second base, third base, shortstop, outfield--if a player has no rating he can still play the position, he'll just make a lot of errors), "A" (strength of throwing arm) and "R" (running speed).

Pitchers are rated by "ERA" (earned run average, I'm not sure how this actually affects the players), "T" (throwing style or delivery: right/left and overhand/sidearm), "ST" (stamina), a 1-7 rating of their "R" (right) and "L" (left) curves, and a A, B, or C rating for their "F" (forkball, or sinker).

It's not necessarily unusual in baseball games from this era to have this much statistical and rating information for players, but I find these to be particularly intuitive, especially the defensive ratings, allowing for great depth of analysis without making things too arcane. It allows you to take into account a player's hitting vs. their defensive ability when evaluating them, it forces you to essentially use pitching rotations as you allow your most recent starter to recover his stamina, it makes decisions about pinch hitters or pinch runners or pitching changes feel more "natural" for someone who knows a little about real-life baseball.

To top it all off, there's also a code you can enter that allows you to play as all-female teams. The game plays exactly the same, but it effectively gives you a whole other 12-team league to play with, since the rosters are completely different. To access the girls' teams, hold down/left on controller 1, hold up on controller 2, and reset the system. You'll know it worked if the baseball cursor on the title screen is replaced with a heart:

And yes, lest I keep gushing like a fool, there is a flaw and a glaring one at that: depending on where the ball is hit, certain fielders cover certain bases. So, for example, there will be some pop-ups that your second baseman would have been in a perfect position to grab, but instead he stupidly trundles over to cover first. And once a player covers a base, he cannot move. Which is extremely frustrating when a throw goes inexplicably by, say, your catcher, and the closest controllable character you have is the pitcher who apparently wears lead cleats and just happens to also be up near second base. I have seen an inside-the-park grand slam because of this, and it wasn't me who hit it.

Okay. Enough about that. Stupid crap like that is in all 8-bit baseball games, which is why I don't really like most of them. But I like this one. It is that good.

Download Bad News Baseball

Warning Forever

2009-07-12T18:34:00.000-07:00

Warning Forever is a cool freeware "boss rush" type shooter for Windows. The art is very simple, reminiscent of vector graphics, but the gameplay is sharp, with a very nice arcade feel. The basic premise is that you start off facing a small, easy enemy...

... which gets progressively more complex with each level, eventually working up to flat-out massiveness:

There are a few game modes to choose from too. The default gives you infinite lives and three minutes to work with (you have to be very aggressive to get good scores), but there's also a more familiar "three lives, infinite time" mode, one-life sudden death--there's even a customizable mode.

Download Warning Forever (you have to scroll down a bit...)

Championship Pro-Am: R.C. Pro-Am on Genesis

2009-07-04T18:16:00.000-07:00

If you lived through the NES era, you probably played R.C. Pro-Am, a radio-controlled car racing game from Rare. A sequel was made for the NES several years later (R.C. Pro-Am II), and though it had more features, it didn't quite capture the magic of the original.

But Championship Pro-Am for the Genesis does, because it's not a sequel but an enhanced remake. The most notable differences are minor changes to the upgrade system (check Wikipedia if you want more detail) and the presence of six cars during each race, as opposed to four. Other than that, it's basically identical to the original, with the same gameplay: simple, fast-paced, and very enjoyable.

It would be nice if this game included multiplayer modes like R.C. Pro-Am II, but you can't always have it your way, can you?

Download Championship Pro-Am

Family Pinball (aka Rock 'n' Ball)

2009-07-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

Rock 'n' Ball began life in Japan as Family Pinball, getting a very slight makeover for North America. Being published by Namco, Family Pinball has Namco characters to select from for the head-to-head games, while Rock 'n' Ball has an Elvis impersonator named Billy, among other ridiculous creations.

Family Pinball's main board also sports a cool Pac-Man theme (including the original bonus fruit sequence, which is crucial), while Rock 'n' Ball's is more generic.

The games are otherwise identical: great physics (for a NES pinball game), fun and original head-to-head minigames, a terrible pachinko/pinball hybrid, and really annoying music--I actually play with the sound off.

Playing the main board is enjoyable enough, but what makes these games worth a look are the head-to-head minigames. They're played on a two-ended table, each player having a "home" side, with points being scored by getting the ball into your opponent's outhole, like air hockey. This is not a unique idea, there are actual pinball machines like this, but this is the only instance of this in a video pinball game that I've ever encountered.

Joust, by Williams. Click for a larger version.

Challenger, by Gottlieb. Again, click for a larger version.

There are two modes. The standard one has three regular pinball-type boards, each with their own gimmick, and the added twist of moving your flippers into your opponent's territory by pressing up or down on the D-pad.

The other mode is called "Sports," featuring soccer and hockey, which play like stripped-down versions of foosball or bubble hockey.

Tedious when played against the computer, but very fun against a friend.

Download Family Pinball

Download Rock 'n' Ball

Major Havoc

2009-06-24T11:05:00.001-07:00

Major Havoc is the most complex vector game I'm aware of, though I am admittedly not an expert on the form. The goal of each level is to destroy a "mothership," and is broken into two sections, shooting and platforming. You must first defeat the spaceships guarding the mothership.

Then you have to land your ship on the mothership itself...

And when you land, you have to infiltrate the mothership, find the reactor, set it to self-destruct, and then get out before it does, all while avoiding the robots guarding the ship's interior and before running out of oxygen.

Here's a video which may give you a better idea of the gameplay:

Major Havoc is primitive both as a shooter and as a platformer, but it was ahead of its time in combining these genres (Havoc was released in arcades in 1983, while HAL's Air Fortress, very similar in gameplay and setting, didn't come out for the Famicom until 1987). And as I said, it was very sophisticated for a vector game, being as it was one of the last vector games released in arcades--compare it to contemporaries like Tempest or Gravitar and you'll see what I mean.

Major Havoc was even forward-thinking in its Easter eggs: before you begin the shooting portion of each level, you get a little HUD-style display of what you're about to face. In the lower right-hand corner, the display includes a little Breakout-type game that you can actually play by pressing the fire/jump button to release the ball. I'm told that playing this minigame is the key to enabling warps to advanced levels, but I don't know how it works exactly. It's pretty impressive that in 1983 Havoc's designers thought to include a playable reference to a game from 1976.

Download Major Havoc

Four-player Mario?!

2009-06-10T15:13:00.001-07:00

At E3 this year, Nintendo announced New Super Mario Bros. Wii, more or less a sequel to the popular DS game. This would be a good thing in and of itself, but the new game will also feature simultaneous multiplayer, supporting up to four players à la the Four Swords games of the Zelda franchise. The trailer:

It'll supposedly be available in November or December 2009, depending on which source you trust. Normally I don't do preview posts, but I'll make an exception for something like this.

Crystal Castles

2009-06-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

Crystal Castles is an interesting game in a number of ways, not least of which is the fact that it doesn't have a real title screen. Obviously meant to capitalize on the popularity of maze games in the early '80s arcade scene, it's considerably more complicated than its contemporaries. Other maze games released in 1983 include the likes of Guzzler, Jr. Pac-Man, and Taito's Chack'n Pop, (which is kind of a precursor to the venerable Bubble Bobble), and as you can see from the linked footage, they're all considerably simpler than Crystal Castles.

You play as the curiously bipedal Bentley Bear, and you have to avoid enemies while collecting the red dots (crystals) scattered throughout the game's levels, or "castles," which are rendered using trimetric projection (which is apparently different from isometric projections used in games like Marble Madness). Avoid enemies, collect pellets... sounds like a run-of-the-mill maze game, right? It is, but there a few interesting twists.

For one, a number of different enemies also collect the crystals, costing you points--and, if an enemy collects the last crystal in a level, you get no bonus points.

You can also jump to avoid enemies, an ability which didn't appear in the Pac-Man series until 1987's Pac-Mania.

What really sets Crystal Castles apart is its visual presentation. The levels are far more intricate than other maze games featured at the time, and although they are sometimes confusing, the pseudo-3D layouts are handled pretty well for the most part. There are apparently 37 unique levels, and some pretty striking designs:

You can even travel through the structure of the levels sometimes. In the above screenshot, you can see black rectangles in certain places. Those are doors, and pairs of doors are connected by passages through the solid walls of the level. Pretty fancy. Many levels also feature elevators that you have to ride to access gems on different platforms:

This game in a way presages the more complex level design featured in Rare's excellent 1990 NES action/maze game Snake Rattle 'N' Roll.

Crystal Castles isn't really a great game, mostly because of the squirrely, somewhat imprecise controls (the arcade cabinet featured a trackball instead of a joystick) and steep difficulty. It's still pretty fun, and notable for being ahead of its time.

Download Crystal Castles

Tecmo Super Bowl: the greatest sports video game ever created

2009-05-27T18:33:00.000-07:00

Greatest sports game ever? A bold claim, but I will stand by it. Some deluded wingnuts think the original Tecmo Bowl is better, which it most definitely is not. Some people might say John Madden Football is the superior football video game franchise, to which I say: feh! Madden's a good game... if you're wearing a white baseball cap backwards and have a Bob Marley bumper sticker on your Ford Explorer. It has nothing on Tecmo Super Bowl and the same goes for the rest of EA Sports' hallowed lineup. Fun, straightforward classics like R.B.I. Baseball don't quite measure up either. Even wonderfully cartoony sports games like Super Dodge Ball and Super Mario Kart can't match the sheer enjoyment of playing TSB.

And why? Balance. TSB strikes a perfect balance between accessibility and depth, and I mean that quite literally. I have never found another sports game that you can pick up and play without even a great understanding of the sport on which it is based, and yet is also sophisticated enough to keep even hardcore players interested in virtual perpetuity. I still play TSB regularly, and the game was released nearly two decades ago.

It is accessible mainly because of the brilliant way it reduces the complexities inherent in real football, and because of its simple, intuitive user interface. Eight plays are available, four runs and four passes, each represented by easy-to-understand diagrams. When defending, you simply pick the play in your opponent's playbook you want to defend against.

The great interface design even extends to minor features like kickoffs: the bar rapidly fills and then resets. The higher the bar, the farther the kick goes, and when you press A when the bar is blue, you'll get an onside kick. It's easy to make a decent kick, but if you go for the "full juice bar," and slip up, you'll regret it. Easy to learn, tricky to master.

And unlike a sloppier design team might have done, the system for kicking field goals and extra points is simplified, with just a directional arrow that moves up and down--you just have to worry about centering it.

On offense, you simply control whoever has the ball. Plays develop automatically, so all you have to worry about is avoiding the sack and passing with the quarterback, or just waiting until the running back has the ball on a run play. You can't just tear around the field all willy-nilly though: you have to follow the play or your blockers won't be there on a run. You have to watch the defenders on a pass. The action is quick but requires thought and planning.

On defense, you pick your defender before the play begins--and you can't change mid-play. It makes it so you don't have to worry about too much, and yet it forces you to make good decisions because there isn't much room for error: if your chosen defender gets locked in a tussle with a blocker, you'll be forced to watch as the play develops and your CPU-controlled teammates simply do their best, which usually isn't much to speak of.

Games move quickly too: an entire game only takes 15-20 minutes to play. You can take a team through an entire season in one evening. Compare that to the time investment other modern football games demand. And that's the appeal for most people: it's simple, it's fast, it's fun. You don't have to go any deeper than that. But for people who want to, there is so much to learn.

All 28 NFL teams are represented (at least, the ones in existence when the game was released), and with I believe three exceptions, the rosters are made up of real names (the exceptions are Randall Cunningham, Jim Kelly, and Bernie Kosar who are mysteriously rendered as QB Eagles, QB Bills, and QB Browns, respectively). And all players are rated with a variety of stats, depending on their position.

Although you're stuck with your defense, you can actually make substitutions on offense, and across positions. Quarterbacks can only play QB, but running backs, wide receivers and tight ends are interchangeable. For such a simple game, the level of analysis you can perform to try to optimize your offense is remarkable: if you have a slow running back, do you replace him with your fastest wide receiver or do you need him downfield catching passes? How can you optimize your power blocking? Should you put your slow fullback at tight end to help the running game?

There's so much more too. In season play, players get injured, and stay out of action for a random number of games, making roster depth just as important as the strength of the starting lineups. You can customize playbooks for any team, allowing you to tailor them to the team's strengths. You can call time outs (mainly a clock management device, since you can leave the game on the playcalling screen for as long as you want as a means of pausing). Players have four levels of physical condition (bad, average, good, excellent) that change (one notch at a time) at random throughout a season. Average is the default; a player in bad condition will have all his stats decreased by one pip, while good is a +1 increase and excellent +2. Monitoring these conditions is key, especially for teams that don't have many standout offensive players: a mediocre player in excellent condition can suddenly become a key component of your attack. You can also play a Pro Bowl, and the lineups are completely customizable: you can pick any player from any team in the conference. Want to make Pro Bowl teams of the worst players in the league? Can do.

And let's not forget the stats! You get a neat summary screen at the end of each game, much more detailed than games made in this era usually offered:

But in season play, the game tracks an incredible number of stats, and keeps leaderboards not only for team offense and defense...

But also offers a stunning variety of individual leaderboards, which can be viewed by individual conference or both conferences combined:

For a NES game in 1991, this level of detail was unheard of.

The depth and complexity that all these elements lend to the game have added to the game's longevity. TSB enjoys a very active fan base, with lively Internet communities, an incredible array of ROM hacks, even leagues and regular tournaments that people travel for. My friend's cousin, an accountant, apparently participates in an annual TSB tournament with his coworkers.

The game has spawned its own bizarre lexicon: Jackso, Groganballs, JJ ("Jumping Jackass"), jumpball, the Lurch, cheating up, moonballs, popcorn, a "possessed" player... etc. It has spawned its own pantheon of legends, too. The game features many famous players, like Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Barry Sanders, Lawrence Taylor, Jerry Rice et. al., but mistakes and odd choices by the programmers led to the likes of Bob Nelson of the Green Bay Packers and Lonnie Young of the Phoenix Cardinals, unremarkable players in real life, being absolute beasts in TSB.

You've probably never heard of these guys, but ask a TSB fan, and they'll nod knowingly. The game also features players that were very good in real life, but were nothing less than gods in TSB, like Bo Jackson, QB Eagles/Randall Cunningham, Rod Woodson, and David Fulcher.

If you're still reading this post, it should be obvious to you how much I love this game, and how much I've learned about it over the years by playing it. Even if you don't ordinarily like sports games, I urge you to give this one a try. I generally don't like sports games either, but I count Tecmo Super Bowl among my all-time favorite games, bar none.

If you're interested in learning a bit more about TSB and its intricacies, some dude named Leif Powers has written a two-part FAQ available on GameFAQs that is probably the best, most extensive fan-written documentation for a video game I have ever seen.

Download Tecmo Super Bowl

Bonus! Check out the amazing Super Bowl half-time show starring Mighty Bomb Jack!

Guevara (yes, as in Che)

2009-05-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

The game that SNK brought to the West as Guerrilla War was actually called Guevara in Japan. Take my word for it: that is what the katakana of the title spells. The references are not oblique: the game takes place in an obviously tropical setting (Cuba), and the intro, which I can't read because it's in Japanese, does clearly mention 1956 in Roman numerals (the July 26 Movement, led by Fidel Castro, began military operations in Cuba in December of '56). When the game itself begins, the players arrive at a beachhead by boat, just as Castro and his rebels arrived in Cuba by boat via Mexico. And the player characters are explicitly Che Guevara (player 1) and Fidel Castro (player 2). Look at the characters: berets, bandoliers, and thick beards.

If you need more convincing, look at this portrait from the start of the game's attract mode:

That actually does look a lot like Che did in the '50s.

SNK's decision to localize the game as Guerrilla War makes sense, seeing as it was 1987: Guevara would probably have been decried as "pro-Communist," and Central American left-wing guerrillas were not exactly popular in the United States at the time. Konami's megahit Contra was of course named to take advantage of Ronald "Bedtime for Bonzo" Reagan's very vocal support for the right-wing anti-government paramilitaries operating in Nicaragua at the time (you remember the Iran-Contra scandal, right?). By renaming the game Guerrilla War, SNK could capitalize on the extensive contemporary media coverage of Central American guerrilla warfare while avoiding any serious controversy.

The game itself is good but not exceptional, just another '80s top-down walk-and-shoot. Like a few other similar SNK games (Time Soldiers, Ikari Warriors, etc.) the arcade cabinet featured rotary joysticks so that, in addition to providing directional imputs, you could rotate the body of the stick itself to control your direction of fire, a clever way of divorcing directional movement from fire arc. It's a little cumbersome, but still better than the "one joystick for movement, one joystick for shooting" solution adopted by Robotron: 2084 and Smash TV.

What's more notable about the game is the counterbalance it provides to the vaguely right-wing shooters of the day that were so popular, like Contra and its many, many imitators. It's an interesting historical curio: the fact that a shooter starring Che Guevara and Fidel Castro got made in 1987 seems bizarre in retrospect, but then again, so do Contra's thinly-veiled anti-Communist messages (why was the demonic overlord called Red Falcon?).

Sorry, no download of the arcade version of Guevara. But here's the arcade version of Guerrilla War, and the Famicom port of Guevara instead.

Plants vs. Zombies

2009-05-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

I just tried the demo for Plants vs. Zombies today, and it's pretty fun. It's a tower defense-type game, and as such is mainly about resource management (doing the most damage with the least amount of materiel), with a small but substantial strategic component.

Here's the trailer, which gives you a decent overview of the gameplay:

And here's some guy playing through one of the early levels:

What sets Plants vs. Zombies apart from most tower defense games is that instead of requiring you to place armaments around a single path that the enemies must navigate, there are a few rows that the zombies approach along, and these rows do not affect each other. A plant on a given row will affect zombies on that row only, not even the rows immediately adjacent. In other words, there is increased emphasis on balancing attention between rows as needed--kind of like Tapper in a way. Naturally this action gets increasingly more frenzied as you progress, and twists that make your resource management more challenging are introduced periodically.

Plants vs. Zombies also has more depth than most tower defense games (it has a few different gameplay modes and lots of levels), which is expected since this is a commercial game and most tower defense games are freeware Flash affairs.

There's also something I love about the idea of defending your turf with organic things instead of cannons or whatnot--that element of the visual design really appeals to me. Actually, I love this game's visual presentation in general: it's cartoony, colorful and well-animated, the qualities of video game visual design I most treasure.

Download the Plants vs. Zombies demo

Twinkle Star Sprites

2009-04-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Twinkle Star Sprites has a dedicated following in its native Japan but because it has never been officially released in any other territory it remains a somewhat obscure game elsewhere. This is not a case of a game being beloved by the Japanese and not seeing popularity (or release) abroad because it's unfairly difficult or just plain bad (for example, The Tower of Druaga and Spelunker, respectively). This is a great game, one that most gamers will enjoy, and we've simply been deprived of it for no good reason. But thanks to emulation, we can also enjoy this gem without forking over tons of cash to import it.

Twinkle Star Sprites is a vertical shooter, and obeys basically all the conventions of that genre, with one brilliant twist: it's a head-to-head shooter. Instead of just trying to get through a stage and defeat the boss to progress, you have to tackle a series of opponents by sending various projectiles and other attacks to their half of the screen. It's easier to show you a video than to explain all the intricacies:

As you can see, it's like you're both playing the same stage of a shooter, but destroying enemies sends little fiery comets to your opponent's side, like in a head-to-head puzzle game such as Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo or recent versions of Tetris. You can send these fireballs back to your opponent, which will make them stronger, but your opponent can then send them back again as an "EX attack," a stronger, character-specific weapon. If a combo is big enough, with sufficient materiel built up, you'll unleash your boss attack, which is exactly what it sounds like: a large boss-like enemy will appear on your opponent's screen, and will continue to harass them for a set period of time, or until they can destroy it.

You also have bombs (of course), mainly for getting out of tight spots, and a three-level charge shot. You can always fire at least a level 1 shot, which will cut right through bogeys and repel attacks more effectively, but as you destroy enemies your meter will build up. A level 2 shot also sends a few EX attacks your opponent's way, and a level 3 automatically unleashes your boss attack! Level 2 and 3 shots drain your meter back to level 1 (or thereabouts), and you have to build it back up again.

The standard arcade story mode forces you to play as the main character, Ran, but there are a total of 9 normal characters and 4 hidden characters you can choose from, each with their own speed and power attributes, different EX and boss attacks, and different charge shots. It's not nearly as balanced as a well-tuned fighting game, but there's enough variety to keep it from getting stale too fast.

Although playing the game yourself is quite enjoyable, I cannot impress upon you enough what a blast this thing is with a friend. This is one of those classics that can keep two people glued to a screen, screaming at each other in anguish and delight for an entire evening. This is one of my favorite, favorite games, and I hope you enjoy it too.

The download link I'm providing is for the original Neo Geo game, meaning it can be run both in arcade mode (MVS) or console mode (AES), provided your emulator supports that feature, which almost all Neo Geo emulators do. Note that while MAME runs Neo Geo games perfectly well, it does not support AES. My personal pick for Neo Geo AES emulation is Kawaks, but there are other good options too, like Nebula.

Download Twinkle Star Sprites

Note: If you're interested, Twinkle Star Sprites has also been ported to the Neo Geo CD, Dreamcast, Saturn, and PlayStation 2--but as mentioned above, only in Japan. Shame, really.

Tinkle Pit

2009-04-15T14:59:00.001-07:00

I know what you're thinking, but there really is an arcade game, made by Namco, called Tinkle Pit. The game itself is quite simple, kind of retro in fact: arcades in 1993 were all about 1-on-1 fighting thanks to the completely obscene level of popularity achieved by Street Fighter II, but Tinkle Pit is done in the style of early-'80s maze games like Pac-Man and Lady Bug.

The object of Tinkle Pit is to eliminate all the enemies in each maze. You can do this in two ways: by using your bell or picking up and throwing little yellow energy balls. The latter is done with the second button:

When thrown, these balls ricochet off the walls until they hit an enemy.

As for the former, what you have to do is set your bell in place by pressing and holding the first button, then walk around the maze leaving a length of rope (or something) behind you. Releasing the button causes the bell to travel along that rope, eliminating any enemies it touches along the way.

You're on the left, the bell is the bright blue thing towards the center of the frame.

Naturally, there's a multiplier for getting multiple enemies in one go.

As you can probably tell from the pictures, you score points by killing enemies and collecting a wide variety of bonus fruits/food in that great early-'80s arcade tradition. In fact, the whole game is really an exercise in nostalgia: the old-school gameplay is the centerpiece of course, but the game is also loaded with cameos from other, mostly older Namco games. Loaded. I can recognize at least a dozen, and according to Wikipedia there's a lot more, including characters from Pac-Man, Galaxian, Sky Kid, Xevious, Dig Dug, Mappy, Phozon (which I've blogged about before), Tower of Druaga, Gaplus, Rally-X, Galaga, Rolling Thunder... etc. So I guess you could also say that this game is more or less Namco's way of saying, "We used to rule the arcades. Before Street Fighter. Curse you, Capcom!"

Download Tinkle Pit

Kickle Cubicle

2009-04-06T18:04:00.001-07:00

Kickle Cubicle is a fantastic action-puzzler for the NES very much in the tradition of Adventures of Lolo, but with less arcane puzzles, at least in my opinion. You play as a very homely boy with ear muffs; you progress through almost 100 unique levels by collecting all the red "Dream Bags" in each.

Hm, there's water between you and the bags. How to reach them? You can freeze your enemies into ice blocks, kick them into the water, and they'll form stable platforms. Very simple mechanic, but Irem elaborates on it very well by introducing many different types of enemies and environmental elements.

The cylindrical blue things in the above level are ice pillars, which you can place and remove at will. They're permanent fixtures unlike ice blocks which melt after a time. The game is divided into four sections, Garden Land, Fruit Land, Cake Land and Toy Land. Once you clear all 17 levels in an area (Cake Land has 16), you have to face a boss.

If periodic moments of pure action sound odd for a puzzle game, note that there are levels where the "puzzle" element is pretty minimal, and the key is more to be as fast and efficient as possible to avoid dying.

You're looking at one of them above, in fact one of the harder levels in the whole game by my reckoning. It's one of the 30 levels of the "Special Game" that you get to play after beating the regular game, which is challenging but not very. The Special Game is where the real meat of Kickle Cubicle is and it features some pretty gnarly levels.

This is the kind of game where you will blow through a bunch of levels in one sitting and then get stuck on one for a while until you have a breakthrough. In a perfect world, all games like that would have some kind of save, but we don't live in a perfect world, and Kickle Cubicle only has a password. But it's only an 8-character password, and there are unique passwords for every single level, meaning you only have to clear them one at a time--and that's nice. If you're emulating, quicksaves are key, take my word for it. You'll die on the hard levels again and again and again...

Download Kickle Cubicle

Soul Blazer: the real ActRaiser 2 (sort of)

2009-03-28T12:21:00.001-07:00

I've found that a lot of people are familiar with ActRaiser, a weird (but awesome) combo of hack'n'slash platforming and city-building pseudo-simulation. I think this is mostly because it's among the best of the first wave of SNES releases: whereas I think most people would have ignored a game like ActRaiser under ordinary circumstances, people were hungry to experience what the SNES had to offer in the early days, so they played anything that was available.

And it was no small thing to be a standout among early SNES games. The system's first generation of titles included Super Mario World, F-Zero, Final Fantasy IV (aka II), Gradius III, Super Castlevania IV, SimCity, and more. ActRaiser, a quirky game with distinctly Japanese design sensibilities, is remembered favorably along with those classics, a testament to the talent of Quintet, who developed the game.

Quintet developed five other SNES games, none of which are as well known: ActRaiser 2, Robotrek, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma, and today's selection, Soul Blazer. Why does the title of this post refer to Soul Blazer as "the real ActRaiser 2"? Two reasons: Soul Blazer actually followed ActRaiser chronologically (ActRaiser 2 came out after Soul Blazer); and, Soul Blazer keeps the action/town development dichotomy of ActRaiser intact, whereas ActRaiser 2 contains only action gameplay, which is a real disappointment. Not to mention Soul Blazer is closely thematically linked to ActRaiser: both games' stories revolve around an angel-like being (you answer to "the Master," an oblique reference to God) traveling the world rescuing its inhabitants both physically (securing them from monsters) and spiritually (freeing their souls from evil). I think Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma share this theme too, at least partially, but I've never played them.

But enough about Quintet and their repeated use of vaguely theological tropes. More about Soul Blazer: as I said, just like ActRaiser, it's split between developing towns and killing monsters, but in Soul Blazer the action sequences are Zelda-like top-down dungeon crawls, not sidescrolling platforming. In the dungeons, you encounter monster lairs, little tiles that produce a number of monsters of the same type (remember the monster lairs you had to seal in the overworld parts of ActRaiser? Same idea). Mostly they produce one baddie at a time, but it varies. Also, when a monster emerges from the lair, it's invincible for a time, so you can't just stand next to the lair and swing away--you have to position yourself using space and objects so that you can kill the monsters before they can reach and damage you. So it's a tactical game, in a way.

I'll be able to whack him with my sword before he rounds the corner.

Once all the monsters in a lair have been destroyed, you can step on the lair to seal it, which has various effects, such as altering the environment of the dungeon so you can continue:

Step on the lair to seal it...

...and the wall opens!

The town development aspect is also more tightly integrated with the action than in ActRaiser. As you seal monster lairs in the dungeons of a given area, you release the souls of townsfolk. Mostly, you'll be releasing people, which will often cause a building to be reconstructed too.

But not always.

To progress through the dungeons, you often have to leave and speak with the people or animals you've released--they'll give you items or trigger other events that will allow you to access new areas of the dungeons. If this back-and-forth aspect sounds tedious, it actually isn't, trust me. Each town is tightly integrated with its dungeons: teleporters, doorways, passages and the like are revealed as you go to create shortcuts so you don't have to retrace your steps constantly. Eventually you'll reach the boss; beat it and you can progress to the next area on the world map:

But, even in the first area, there will be enemies you can't defeat, and thus souls you can't release, until you get items in later areas, so like many console RPGs the game is mostly linear, but not entirely. You equip weapons and armor, learn magic spells, use items, and level up just like in most RPGs too.

The greatest strength of Soul Blazer is its excellent design. Towns and dungeons are complex enough to be interesting, but so well thought out that it's always obvious where you have to go next. The game is balanced too, perhaps a bit on the easy side, but you do feel challenged at times without ever having to grind. In fact, the pace of the game is very, very fast: each area is laid out such that you have to get a number of items and gain access to different sections in sequence, and each link in the chain takes only minutes to complete. You're constantly urged on to the next step, which you complete so fast, you think "Okay, one more piece and then I'll stop." It's a very satisfying experience.

Did I mention the game has an amazing/cheesy soundtrack?

And here's a video of the first part of the game if you want a better feel for how the whole thing works:

Download Soul Blazer

Ninja Gaiden III was better in Japan

2009-03-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

Ninja Gaiden was a huge hit when it came out for the NES, and its sequel, Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos was a great game, but some criticized it for being too easy. The next game in the series, Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom, was abominably hard. Controller-throwing hard, even harder than the infamous original Ninja Gaiden, and mostly because Ryu loses huge chunks of his life bar when he's damaged by even minor enemies.

But Japan got a slightly different game: Ninja Ryūkenden III: Yomi no Hakobune (lit. Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword III: The Ark from Hades, according to Wikipedia). Unlike the NES games I've previously discussed that saw superior Japanese versions dumbed down for other regions (Contra, Castlevania III), Ninja Ryūkenden III is better because of different gameplay and features: not only did it correct Ninja Gaiden III's draconian damage scaling, it also features a password system, and a very easy one at that: four places, four different symbols.

So not only is a needlessly hard game made much more reasonable, you are also not forced to play through it in one sitting. Taking out aesthetic niceties is one thing (and bad enough at that), but these kinds of changes I find completely inexplicable. My only guess is that Tecmo listened to the critics who said Ninja Gaiden II was too easy--but why, in addition to overcompensating, did they remove the password feature? Bizarre.

Don't get the wrong idea: even with these improvements, this is clearly the low point of the NES Ninja Gaiden trilogy, but it is a huge improvement over what was originally foisted on us.

Download Ninja Ryūkenden III: Yomi no Hakobune

dive

2009-03-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

dive, which is definitely not capitalized according to its creators, is a new game (2007), for Windows XP and Mac OS X, that plays very much like an Atari 2600 game. The graphics are incredibly simple, with a small playing area and huge, chunky pixels. The mechanics of the game are just as rudimentary: dive as deep as you can. You encounter a variety of sea life on your way down: baddies are pink/red/orange; friendly fish and marine mammals are blue; neutral creatures are white--they don't interact with you at all. You can send out a sonar ping with Z, which stuns enemies and causes friends to release a little bubble that replenishes your air supply, which is of course constantly diminishing.

If this had actually been on the 2600 in the late '70s, it would probably have been a score-objective game with no real end goal--but dive has no scoring system, and has an end that's in fact not very hard to reach. It's just a neat little diversion.

It uses some nice design tricks too, like a pulsing, low-frequency hum, ever-darkening water (see pics below) and creatures that get larger and weirder the deeper you dive. All these work in concert to make a very primitive game a surprisingly atmospheric experience.

Download dive

Hotdog Storm

2009-03-07T19:34:00.000-08:00

Not much to say here, I just wanted to post about this one because of the title. And the title screen--who would have thought that the "Hotdog" of the title was literal? And who puts lettuce on a hot dog? Cripes.

The game itself is a vertical shooter, above average but nothing special. Good soundtrack though.

Download Hotdog Storm

Xexyz (say: Zecks-iz)

2009-02-25T12:18:00.000-08:00

Xexyz is very much like The Guardian Legend (an amazing game, in case you didn't already know), which mixed a Zelda-style top-down free roaming world with vertical scrolling shooting stages substituted for dungeons. Xexyz uses the same basic formula, but instead uses more linear platforming stages mixed with horizontal shooting stages.

The play structure works as follows: odd numbered levels start with an open stage where you wander around, collecting "E" (money) which you can spend on health restoration or various items. Rooms contain enemies, gambling games, items, NPCs that give you information or other goodies, and shops.

Very Zelda-like, wouldn't you say? Ultimately, you have to find the room that this statue resides in, which, after being shot in the head enough times, gives you a Force Star that allows you enter the boss's lair, which is always the door at the extreme right of the first area.

The "Mechanical Castles," as they're called, are slightly more linear, although there is some exploring you have to do, including using little air hatches to enter rooms above and below the level you're on.

At certain points in the Mechanical Castles, you'll find various vehicles, and will be treated to a small shooting section.

Eventually you'll meet this large, Zardoz-esque head that will give you a floating gizmo to fight the level's boss. These are interesting fights, since you can float around like in a horizontal shooter, but you can also jump just like in the platforming sections of the game.

That's how the odd-numbered levels are structured. The even-numbered levels are straight-up horizontal shooting action.

You get a different craft each time.

My personal favorite is the super robo-lobster.

And also like in The Guardian Legend, there are passwords you can input to play only odd- or even-numbered levels, which a pretty cool level of control to have: you can make the game strictly an action-platformer or strictly a shooter.

By the bye, Xexyz was known as Kame no Ongaeshi: Urashima Densetsu in its original Japanese release, and features a) a much nicer title screen and b) an intro removed from Xexyz. Would that I could only read it.

If you want more detailed info, NESPlayer.com has put together a nice page about Xexyz.

Download Xexyz

Bonus! While Googling for information about this game, I discovered that there's a black metal band called Xexyz that apparently incorporates samples from the game into its songs. Ye gods.

Uo Poko

2009-02-23T12:33:00.001-08:00

As far as I'm aware, this is the only puzzle game ever developed by Cave. They're more known for their shooters (and they're one of my favorite shooter developers along with Compile and Konami), but they evidently have some kind of magic touch, because Uo Poko is a terrific game. It's essentially like Puyo Puyo or Magical Drop, except you pull down on a plunger (actually, you make the cat pull on the plunger for you) to launch the ball into the play field, so there's an element of aiming involved. Match three or more of the same color to make them disappear.

A key part of the game is planning ahead and setting off big chain reactions.

Every ball you drop (after a set intial number of "safe" moves) that doesn't complete a match and make a set of balls disappear causes the play field to rise one row. If the top ball gets pushed above the top of the play field, you lose and the cat drowns--very pleasant.

The plot involves traveling to the bottom of the sea in a yellow submarine. After a set number of levels, you get a little cutscene showing your progress.

As the levels get more complex, more colors are added as well as extra obstacles like ice cubes (drop balls on them to break them) balls with a "shell" (you must complete a combination adjacent to one to remove said shell) and bombs that explode and take surrounding balls with them when hit directly.

As you go deeper, the backgrounds get weirder and weirder, and there's a bizarre surprise waiting for you at the sea floor. And when you get into trouble, occasionally the sub will appear at the top of the screen, and if you hit it with a ball, it will shoot a laser straight down that eliminates balls in the playing field.

There's also a collaborative two-player mode, which is pretty fun, albeit frustrating at times: your balls can collide in mid-air, quite easily in fact, which can totally screw you up. You have to be careful to coordinate your efforts, and though that adds an interesting new angle to the gameplay, it can be tedious.

Aside from just being a nice puzzle game, I like Uo Poko because it's very soothing to play. The colors are bright and vibrant, the backgrounds are beautiful, the pace of play is slower but steady, and the music is smooth and relaxing without being soporific. It also has a great legal warning (read the last sentence):

For whatever reason, that phrase appears in a few other Cave-developed games as well. Personally, I think "Full Extent of the Jam" would be a great name for a stoner band.

Download Uo Poko

Otocky: making music with a shooter

2009-02-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

Those of you familiar with Rez might be interested in this game, apparently the first game made by some dude named Toshio Iwai, who I guess is famous, although I've never heard of him until now. It's basically a horizontal shooter where your shooting generates notes in time with an accompanying rhythm track. Your shots must fire in rhythm with that backing track, which forces you to pay attention to the music as you play. Pretty clever for 1987. I'm not even going to bother to post any pictures though, you really need to hear the game in action:

You have to collect musical notes (which you do by shooting them). Levels just repeat until you collect enough notes, which become scarcer as you go along, which is how the game ramps up the difficulty basically. You can take a set number of hits before you die and your shots get smaller every time you get hit. Collecting capsules marked A change the instrument noise your shots make; collecting the B capsules gives you a secondary weapon that isn't bound by the firing-in-rhythm restriction but has limited ammo. After collecting enough notes, you face the boss, a giant music note with holes in it, and you have to shoot the holes to put the music notes you collected back into the big music note boss. Yeah.

You can also unlock a sequencer for the game's music by beating the game. Sadly, this means slogging through stage after stage of repetitive play with clunky controls. I gave up on stage 9. Truth be told, it's not a great game, but it is still undeniably cool.

Download Otocky (link is at the bottom of the page's text)

You'll also need the Famicom Disk System BIOS.

Famicom Disk System had the best BIOS screen ever

2009-02-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

I just discovered this today, but some of you probably already know about it. If you turn on a Famicom Disk System without a disk inserted, you see this.

Is that not amazing?

Legend of Princess

2009-02-08T21:03:00.000-08:00

Quick post this time, about a game that's been making the rounds lately called Legend of Princess. Maybe you've heard of it. It's pretty amazing, probably as good as Cave Story in terms of gameplay, although it's very, very short. As you may have guessed from the title, the game uses a Zelda motif, and if you're a fan of that series, there's tons of references to catch. The art is outstanding, with great animation, and the controls are pretty much spot on, it plays very, very well. And good music too!

This doesn't do the pixel art justice at all, really. It's excellent on a monitor.

Some people have compared the game to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and while it has superficial similarities to that actually-not-all-that-great NES classic it doesn't really feel like Zelda II: the action's more frenzied, the terrain is more of a factor--and of course it's pure action, no RPG elements at all.

But if you made more levels, maybe some nice twists like Metal Slug-esque branching stage structures, you would have a ready for retail game. It's quality, I'm telling you.

Download Legend of Princess

Note: you can use a gamepad, but you apparently can't customize the button layout. There's a simple remedy: use the keyboard input scheme, and run JoyToKey or Xpadder.

Bonus funny! Check out this post on Awesome Radical Gaming, a very appropriately named blog. The post is totally asinine, but look at the comment!

Castlevania III was better in Japan

2009-02-04T16:03:00.001-08:00

Recently, I made a post about the Famicom version of Contra being better than the NES version. That wasn't the only time that happened with a Konami game on that very system though--Akumajō Densetsu (Legend of the Demon's Castle, more or less), the Japanese Famicom equivalent of what we got on the NES as Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is also the superior article.

As with Contra there are some graphical differences, although they're less pronounced. Some of the enemy sprites are different: the creepy little midgets in the North American version were originally brightly-colored gremlins of some kind.

Castlevania III

Akumajō Densetsu

Mostly the differences are less dramatic though. The main difference between the different flavors of zombies, for instance, is the position of their arms.

Castlevania III

Akumajō Densetsu

Which brings me to another difference, the backgrounds. You're seeing one of the more noticeable discrepancies above, by which I mean the more bodacious statues.

Castlevania III

Akumajō Densetsu

Japanese culture isn't very uptight about breasts, and here Nintendo of America reigned 'em in with a little John Ashcroft maneuver.

According to the Wikipedia article on Castlevania III, there are a number of other differences, including Trevor Belmont's name, the amount of damage the characters take, and so on. One of the more surprising ones is that Grant DaNasty (what the hell kinda name is that?) actually throws daggers as his main attack, instead of just meekly stabbing with one, and that makes him a much better character (fast forward to about 0:18 in the video below).

But the key difference among all of these, the reason Akumajō Densetsu is the superior version of the game is music. Akumajō Densetsu actually had a special chip, the VRC6, to enhance the Famicom's sound capabilities. All it really did was add an extra channel, but when you go from five channels of sound to six, the difference can actually be dramatic. Take the outstanding music from stage 1, for example. Here's Castlevania III...

Classic tune. But here's Akumajō Densetsu (crank it dude)...

Oh yeah. Or how about the clock tower stage music? One extra sound channel is all it takes for total massively heavy metal gothitude:

And the absolutely masterful beefed up version of "Vampire Killer," the stage 1 music from the original Castlevania, one of the best 8-bit tunes ever written:

Pure awesome. The version from Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo is probably better, but that one benefits from CD-quality sound. Konami got a lot of mileage out of that little sound chip. The music of Akumajō Densetsu really is good enough to make it worthwhile to play it right, and sadly there's still no North American native release of the better version of the game--not even Virtual Console, even though it would be exceedingly easy to do, since the better version is out on Virtual Console in Japan. The ideal is to play with an original cart on an AV Famicom. Most of us aren't dedicated enough to go through the trouble to import both those rare items, but at the very least we can all use an emulator that emulates the VRC6 properly. I keep harping on the amazing Nestopia, and it comes through again in this case. But other emulators run it well too, including FCEUX (formerly FCE Ultra) and G-NES, which are both excellent.

Download Akumajō Densetsu

Bonus! Download Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse

Super Star Soldier

2009-01-24T12:27:00.001-08:00

I've already discussed the fact that the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 had a number of generic-but-solid vertical shooters, and here's another one, Super Star Soldier. Once again, nothing really exceptional, but it controls well, has pretty balanced difficulty, and some great tunes. Check out the weapons too:

Like the Ripple laser from Gradius, but more so!

Green lightning!

Spaceballs the flame thrower! (The kids love this one...)

You can also get homing missiles and little option-type things. These don't fire, but work more like a shield: they can destroy enemies and bullets they come into contact with. And, you toggle their orientation:

Horizontal.

Vertical.

And like that other generic-but-solid TG16 shooter I posted about before, the pilot of the spaceship in this game is also a hot babe!

The game's Shakespearean tragic flaw? When you die (unless you're fighting a boss), you have to start back at the beginning of the stage. Ugh.

Download Super Star Soldier

Kings of the Beach: Professional Beach Volleyball

2009-01-19T21:36:00.000-08:00

How could you turn down an opportunity to play as a grown man that goes by "Vanilla Thunder"? There's not much to the game really. 2-on-2 volleyball with bumping, setting and spiking. And occasional blocking. Normal volleyball rules apply pretty much.

You can argue close calls (walk up to the referee or whatever he is and press Start), and sometimes the call will be reversed, but you'll be docked a point for being a dick if you do it too often.

You get a yellow card first, then a red card, like soccer.
The point deduction comes with the red card.

Your guy kicks sand at the ref if things don't go his way. Awesome.

What really makes the game is the fact that your character tracks to where the ball's going if you don't give any directional inputs and, more importantly, top-shelf controls: precise, intuitive, very well tuned. You can play single matches or a tournament, meaning a series of increasingly difficult computer opponents. If you beat them all, you're treated to the kind of eye candy that every NES-playing kid craves.

Notice it's basically the same guy with a different head pasted on?

Download Kings of the Beach

Pooyan (haha, I know)

2009-01-12T15:49:00.001-08:00

A minor early hit for Konami, Pooyan is an interesting shooter, essentially Space Invaders with the invaders rotated 90 degrees. You're a mother pig trying to prevent wolves from getting to your piglets. You do this by shooting the balloon-riding wolves out of the air with a bow and arrow, of course.

If any of the wolves reach the ground, they steal your progeny and climb the ladders and try to eat you. Even-numbered levels (in which you rescue your piglets instead of defending them) have the wolves floating up, and if enough of them reach the top, they crush you with a boulder, Wile E. Coyote style.

The trick is, you can frequently grab a meat roller power-up (in the pic above, see the thing right above Mama Pig's head in the upper right?) which makes your arrow arc downward and take out multiple enemies for bigger point bonuses on the way down. Strategy Wiki has a pretty decent how-to if you want more detail.

And of course there's bonus fruit. Apparently they couldn't get any more creative than the second fruit of the Pac-Man sequence, which may or may not be visible on this blog somewhere.

Pretty much every third arcade game had bonus fruit in 1982. Why can't games these days have bonus fruit? Would it really be so terrible for, say, Gears of War to have health bonuses in the form of cute, pixelated peaches or something?

Download Pooyan

Gaiares (say: "Guy R. Ease")

2009-01-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

A rad Genesis shooter, Gaiares is very much like the Gradius series: horizontal orientation, an option (actually, the option here is more like the one in R-Type), and an invincibility power-up that's a straight rip-off of Gradius' Force Field item. It also bears noticeable similarities to the Valis games. As a whole, it's not quite so derivative: the music is phenomenal, the graphics are excellent (the bosses are HUGE, and it has some of the best backgrounds of any Genesis shooter, with tons of parallax effects), and it features two cool gameplay gimmicks: three speeds of movement that you can switch between at will, and a unique power-up scheme ("TOZ System")--you release your option...

It "captures" an enemy...

And depending on the type of enemy, you get that weapon. Repeated capturings of the same type of enemy will yield more powerful versions of the corresponding weapon. There's an amazing variety to be had.

Also, don't miss the opening cinematic. It's absurdly long and detailed for a shooter released in 1990, and features hot babes and some amazing dialog.

Can't go wrong with a villain named Zz Badnusty (was it supposed to be Zz Bad Nasty?). My only complaint is that it's too hard (according to the Wikipedia article, Gaiares is "notorious for its high level of difficulty.")

Download Gaiares

Ninja Baseball Batman

2009-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

Basically a cartoony, baseball-themed Final Fight. Very fun, very Japanese, very wacky. Not much else to say except the sprites are gigantic and colorful, the control and challenge are well-tempered, and the game's a blast with friends (it supports up to 4 players simultaneously).

Download Ninja Baseball Batman

Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti

2008-12-16T23:16:00.000-08:00

According to Wikipedia, "wanpaku" means "naughty," but I'm still not sure what obscene graffiti has to do with a super-deformed Splatterhouse game--for the Famicom no less.

Splatterhouse and Splatterhouse 2 were flat 2D beat-em-ups that played a lot like Kung-Fu Master, while Splatterhouse 3 was a more conventional 2.5D beat-em-up. But Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti feels more like Rush'n Attack, by which I mean it's somewhat like a 2D beat-em-up but is really more like an action platformer--especially in the later levels where there's more bona fide platforming. And it's cute, but it's also kinda gruesome.

Leave it to Japan to make a cute game with disembodied heads hanging from trees. And while we're talking about Japan, there's some good Engrish to be had too...

There's a shotgun later in the game that can take out a whole line of enemies (very satisfying).

The game is too hard, overall. You have one life, no continues, and it's not easy to avoid taking damage. It's all worth it for the Thriller reference though.

Download Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti

Contra was better in Japan

2008-12-12T22:53:00.001-08:00

Everyone knows Contra, specifically the NES version (the original arcade game was actually pretty lackluster--but that's a topic for another day). But Contra as we know it is actually totally neutered: a lot of cool stuff got taken out when the original Japanese version was localized. Although it's often mistakenly called Gryzor, it's actually called Contra too: the kanji on the title screen apparently are read "Kon-to-ra," simply a rendering of "Contra" in kanji rather than katakana, a trick which is apparently called "ateji."

It's better right off the bat too: we're immediately treated to an opening cinematic that was completely excised from our Contra. Not only that, the story's a bit different. The North American manual says that Red Falcon arrived via a meteor that crashed into the Amazon basin in 1957. In the Japanese version, the asteroid crashes near New Zealand, in the fictional Galuga archipelago, in 2631. The North American manual also specifically mentions the Pentagon; in the Japanese, the heroes, Bill and Lance, who were rechristened Mad Dog and Scorpion in the NA version because as you may remember American Gladiators was popular at the time, are just space marines of Earth. Hmm...

Then you get a side-view of your route of Red Falcon's lair, with an insert of a bird's eye view of the island to boot.

You see cutaways for later levels.

There are little animated cutscenes between levels...

There are extra animated bits in the levels too. In the first stage the tops of the trees sway in the wind (skip to about 2:00)...

There's actually snow falling in the Snow Field level (imagine that) which starts and stops throughout the level and adds to the challenge a bit, because it makes bullets a little harder to see...

The floors and walls pulsate in the last stage (Alien's Lair), making it even more atmospheric...

Remember how cool it was that as you damaged the final boss, the heart, it beat faster? The writhing of the background elements gets more frantic as the heart beats faster too. And the ending gives you a little more than just the helicopter flying off and the island exploding, although it doesn't thank you for saving the world or suggest that you "consider yourself a hero."

It's clearly the better version of the game. It's what I play now, give it a try.

Download the Japanese Contra

There's also a fan-made English translation available for download, but note that the hacked rom doesn't work with all emulators, including my precious Nestopia.

Bonus download of original North American Contra

Robocco Wars

2008-12-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

Robocco Wars is a cool little action platformer/shooter hybrid for the Famicom. You play as a cute little robot who has to progress through 10 cute stages of cute little enemies, killing them cutely. The whole game is sugary and super-deformed in that distinctly Japanese way. I love that approach to visual design--if you don't, you should probably steer clear of this one.

The game starts as a simple action platformer: you can shoot and jump, and after fending off a miniboss, you face the boss and proceed to the next stage.

But what's this? Your robot turns into a futuristic fighter jet! Stage 2 is a horizontal shooter! Awesome!

In this mode, the jump button launches downward-arcing bombs instead. And yes, that miniboss is shooting red pumps at you. The game takes a few cues from the Parodius series. Stage 3 is back to platforming, but then Stage 4 takes you underwater, and your robot turns into a submarine! Not only is it a Transformer, it's a Triple-Changer!

There's this and one other underwater stage later in the game, and they work just like the shooting stages, except the jump button fires missiles straight up instead of lobbing bombs downward. The pattern of alternating platforming and shooting stages continues through the end of the game. Though the enemy and boss sprites are primitive, the music is quite good and the backgrounds are very beautiful and inventive in some places.

My only gripe is that the hit detection can be a little janky, the jumping in the platforming stages doesn't control very well, and the whole thing is way too easy--I beat it on my first try. I guess that this is intentional, as the game was probably marketed to young kids, but still. The game presents no challenge whatsoever until the final stage, which is a clever, nonlinear labyrinth in which you have to find and kill four unique minibosses before facing the last boss--pretty sophisticated level design for such a simple, "kiddie" game.

At the end, you find out that the robot's name is R-10, and he's piloted by some random putz named Lance. This must be an episode from the early life of the "red guy" from Contra, Lance Bean. I mean, obviously.

Download Robocco Wars

Super Mario World: my teacher

2008-12-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

Super Mario Bros. was not the first video game I ever played, but it was the first one that made me say "I have to have this." I remember like it was yesterday: I'm six, at my friend Alex's house, watching him make it to 3-4, I think. I'm stunned, silent, I've never seen anything like this. And then on my first turn I walk right into the first Goomba and die. True story.

I was never good at video games when I was a kid, not even when I got my own NES. I never beat Super Mario Bros., not once. I couldn't beat Contra without 30 lives. But it didn't matter, I loved my little NES anyway. I put countless hours into Super Mario Bros. 3 too (even though I never owned it), but I couldn't beat that one either. As I recall, I'd get stuck on World 5. Usually on the airship. Fucking Roy Koopa, I hated that guy.

I knew I would have to have the SNES when it came out too, and Mario was the main reason: I saw some screenshots from a prototype and then the spread below in Nintendo Power and that was that. I rented a SNES as soon as it was released, and Super Mario World was superb, if slightly disappointing. I was expecting it to be this life-changing experience, like SMB3 had been, and it wasn't, although I did almost completely lose it when I (quite unsuspectingly) found the first Star Road entrance on my own. I got a SNES that Christmas.

The art in Nintendo Power was quality, wasn't it? I always loved it but could never put my finger on why, until I discovered anime and manga and was like "Ohhhh.... okay, yeah!"

This magazine was marketed as impartial journalism, can you believe that?

I played the shit out of SMW for a while, even beat it (I beat the game! By myself! I could do this...) but wasn't able to find all the exotic hidden levels that the expansive, beautiful map hinted at. I got heavily into Final Fantasy II the following summer, then Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II later on. A few years later, I literally played nothing but Final Fantasy III for almost a year--that is of course besides Super Mario World. That was the only game I kept coming back to, even if it hadn't bowled me over at first. My interest in other games came and went, but slowly, slowly I was mastering Super Mario World. The real crucible was the Special World, which I spent months and months on until one day I decided to say screw it and used the cape to fly over the entirety of Outrageous, my last hurdle. I was disappointed that the "new world" I found upon completing the Special World was just a palette swap and some new enemy sprites, but still. When I saw that little star next to the "96" on my Mario A save file, it had to be the most gratifying moment of my life at that point (look, I was all of like 13 and I grew up in a pretty boring place, okay?).

And I continued to play it. By the time I got rid of my NES and SNES in a very stupid attempt to make music my life entire, I could start a new game of SMW and clear all 96 exit gates in one sitting. I could nearly do it without dying. When my wife and I got a SNES and SMW, Yoshi's Island and Super Mario All-Stars a few years ago so we could play together, I stunned her with some ridiculous cape-shell-juggling in Forest Secret Area. "How do you do that?!" I shrugged, "Um, I just... do."

That's the genius of the game: the control is so perfectly intuitive, so easy and relaxing to use, you quickly think about it less and less: you just do what you want Mario to do on the screen, not think, "Okay, I need to jump about *that* far, then jump again real quick, then stop before falling off the ledge."

And oh yeah, there's that level design too, pretty much genius. The music is good enough to be noticeable and memorable, but doesn't steal any attention from the gameplay, just kind of blending into the rhythm of play after a while--classic Kondo. True, Super Mario Bros. 3 has all these features... but it didn't have saving. With Super Mario World, I could pick up and play and clear a huge number of levels, make a little bit of progress, or just dick around. SMB3 required that I start over every single time--trying to see the entirety of World 7 was a huge time investment, not to mention too hard for me when I was first playing it. SMW not only had saves, but level re-entry and free movement around the map! I could play Yoshi's Island 2, then Star World 4, then Chocolate Secret, then Vanilla Dome 4 and call it a day.

That great customizability added immensely to the replay value. I've gone back to SMB3 again and again too, in fact I still play it all the time, but with SMW's map, you could try tons of different variations: the short cut right to Bowser through the Star Road; completing every level--including Star World 5's secret exit--without tripping any Switch Palaces (hard but very possible, I've done it many times); getting to Bowser clearing only necessary exits, no secrets, no Star Road; making interesting designs with the Forest of Illusion's paths; bypassing as many "main routes" as possible, like avoiding the main route of Donut Plains, and taking the secret route from Vanilla Dome 1 and skipping Lemmy's Castle and Butter Bridge entirely; and so on. You can see I've done this a number of times.

Can I talk about my favorite levels? Indulge me.

Vanilla Dome 4. I just kind of like this one for the combination of being indoors, having stars in the background, and those bizarre white columns (plants?) with the multicolored tops. And it's a nice nod to SMB levels like 5-3 with the constant stream of Bullet Bills. It's fun to see how many you can stomp out of midair over the course of a level too--try letting one go by, letting it get to the edge of the screen, then running to catch up with it and picking it off. Fun!

Vanilla Secret 2. Do you know the secret on this one? Be sure not to kill any Parakoopas at the beginning, then get the Gray P-Switch just after the halfway marker. Go back to where the Parakoopas were, hit the switch, then run to the left and collect as many gray coins as you can, and voila: 50UP+ every time.

Soda Lake. This is what made me actually like hard swimming levels in Mario. Getting every coin (Dragon Coins included) without powerups is punishingly hard.

Forest Fortress. Tough and fun, try it without getting any Switch Palaces. I shat a brick the first time I flew over that rightmost expanse of lava on a hunch.

Chocolate Island 2. The first time I found the section with all the mushrooms in bubbles, I thought it was a glitch. If you didn't know, the amount of time on the timer when you go through pipes is what determines what part you get next.

Chocolate Fortress. Try this without getting any Switch Palaces.

Mondo. Did you know that if you just wait at the beginning, the water level lowers, making the level a lot easier? It rises again after a while, but you can wait it out then too. (By the way, did you know that in Japan the Special World levels didn't have retarded Bill & Ted names?)

Funky, the final Special World level, deserves a special mention because I had been trying to beat Outrageous, the one before it, for... ever. It was so weird to be on the level after Outrageous, and on top of that the sky was this weird navy blue, like a really bad thunderstorm, and the level's "trick" was that it was REALLY long and gave you only 200 ticks on the timer. It was tough without being all that tough, a victory lap that's easy to unwittingly die on. It's a unique and strangely rarefied final flourish.

I may have put more hours into Super Mario World over the years than any other game. It was my teacher, I'm good at video games now because of this game. It was such a pleasure to play, I just kept playing it and playing it and playing it and got so good at it, suddenly a lot of other games started to make more sense.

Think about it. Which game taught you how to play? I'd like to know.

No download link (if you're wondering why, Mario : Nintendo :: Mickey Mouse : Disney).

Juno First

2008-11-30T21:08:00.000-08:00

Konami apparently released Juno First after their early masterwork Time Pilot, but it's somehow more primitive. As a shooter, Time Pilot was headed forward, at least in that it had bosses (kind of), while Juno First is more like Galaga and Defender. Mostly the former: it's a vertical shooter, structured in waves, each with a finite number of cartoony mutants.

The catch is that it kind of scrolls. Sort of. You can fly in eight directions, and as you fly forward the bad guys in the distance (see the little red rectangles at the top of the screen?) get closer and eventually come into range. The "scrolling" effect is provided by that field of bright dots you see up there. Even Defender offered a more convincing scrolling effect with that crude single red line depicting the terrain, but for some reason Juno First's simple trick works well enough.

Sometimes the aliens come at you in tightly-packed formations, kind of like Galaga again, but mostly it's looser. There's also the faint hint of Asteroids, with a hyperspace disintegration warp type deal. Just dematerialize...

Hang out in limbo for a sec...

Then back at 'em.

Unlike hyperspace in Asteroids this thing is actually useful, putting you right back where you were and always lasting the same amount of time. Downside is you only get three.

The "mystery" mentioned on the title screen is just a little multiplier item. Shoot the vaguely biomechanical red and orange (sometimes blue and purple) asteroid planetoid guy thing and a little neon spaceman appears, and if you collect him, each enemy destroyed will be worth 200 points more than the last, starting from a base score that gets higher as the stages progress.

The aliens mutate into tougher aliens if you don't kill them fast enough too. So we have a nod to Robotron 2084, in addition to all the other borrowed mechanics. Classic shooters can be kind of inbred, y'know?

Download Juno First

Dig Dug II: better than the original

2008-11-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

At least I think so. A lot of people may feel the same way but not even know it yet because they've played Dig Dug II so little, if at all. I don't think its original arcade release was very wide, and people definitely don't talk about it much.

It's actually almost nothing like the original game in practice. It's top-down instead of side view, and scrolls. The absolutely bizarre premise of the first game (killing monsters by inflating them with a pump until they explode) remains, and the new mechanic of drilling is added. By using your drill on a little circular hole, you can create fault lines. If fault lines are connected all the way across a portion of the island, the smaller piece of land that it encloses will fall into the sea, along with anything on it.

Just drill here and...

Peace out, dude.

You score more from killing baddies this way too, and the bigger the mass drowning, the bigger the bonus--up to 80,000 in fact. If you cut off three pieces of island, the level's bonus fruit will appear. There are 31 levels--level 32 is the same as 25, level 33 is the same as 26, and so on. StrategyWiki has a nice guide if you want more detail.

And if you're interested, check out the NES version, which adds 40 (!!) distinct levels to the game. It was also re-released very, very recently (as in earlier this year in Europe) via Namco Museum DS, which isn't a bad purchase, but is also unfortunately the reason that I can't provide a download link this time.

Trivia bonus: did you know Taizo Hori, the hero of the Dig Dug games is the father of Mr. Driller franchise protagonist Susumu Hori?

It's all over now, Navy Blue

2008-11-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

A Japan-only release, this is a take on the board game Battleship, but with some extra goodies. Mindscape published Battleship for the NES, which was made along the same lines: more variety in ships than the board game, and with weapons that can be equipped on the ships in order to fire at more than one square per round, like so:

But while we Americans were stuck playing that incredibly bland game, Japan had Navy Blue, which uses the same ideas, but more extensively, and with a much more interesting visual presentation.

Pretty fancy for a Famicom Battleship adaptation. The music is good too.

The object is to progress from your base in the lower left all the way to your enemy's base in the upper right. This can take anywhere from nine to twenty-some-odd different battles. There are eight units you can choose from: six ships and two aircraft. Each has their own unique special weapons (different spreads), and their relative advantages and disadvantages: the spy plane has no attack capabilities, but takes up only one square and can scan the enemy grid with its radar; the aircraft carrier is two squares wide, but can use airstrikes to attack many squares in one round with no firing pattern restrictions, etc.

You have a set number of ships you can place on your grid each battle, and can purchase a limited number of special weapons for your ships. Additional special weapons are unlocked as you progress through the game, and you can also place more ships and buy more weapons in successive battles. For a pick-up-and-play strategy game, it has some depth.

Be warned though: the game is unforgivingly, needlessly, infuriatingly hard thanks to some sloppy AI programming.

Interestingly, there are also two Navy Blue games for Game Boy: Navy Blue '90, by the same developer that made this game and Navy Blue '98, which was developed by some other outfit. Navy Blue '90 appears to have been localized for the North American market as Battleship, also by Mindscape, which is curious, considering that Mindscape's NES Battleship is definitely not a port of Navy Blue, but uses a number of its ideas.

Download Navy Blue

Note: the game is obviously in Japanese, but it's playable. Some guy wrote a pretty good guide too; check that out if you're having trouble figuring out what to do.

Out Zone

2008-11-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

A top-down walk-and-shoot in the tradition of Commando (like a vertical shooter, only with 8-way movement and firing, and not necessarily auto-scrolling). The form had been copied extensively since that game's 1985 release: Ikari Warriors, Guerrilla War, Heavy Barrell, Jackal, Mercs, Cal .50, etc. But Out Zone, coming late in that cycle, presents a highly refined execution of that formula, absurd "story" aside.

The sprites are intensely large and bright, lighting up the screen. The action is very manic, almost like modern shooters--nothing like a "bullet hell" game though.

The game uses the environment you have to "walk" in pretty well too. In one part, you have to navigate some corridors, in which you can see enemies that you can't hit--until they come out of doors at junctions. Pretty cool.

Sometimes you have to navigate narrow pathways (yes, you die if you step off) ...

... and sometimes tricky moving lifts, almost like in a platformer.

There are two crucial power-ups too: a brutal flame thrower called the "Super Burner" (yes!)...

... and a very suspiciously Rygar-esque thingy (it whips around the guy clockwise on a chain or something--you can do the same thing in the Rygar arcade game) called the "Super Ball." Whatever.

They're both completely devastating, and so is the Engrish at the end.

Download Out Zone

Bonus question: I put this game in both the "action" and "shooter" genres. But which is more accurate? Defend your answer; extra credit for knowing who the heroes of Ikari Warriors are.