Release Year: 1984

Arthur Dent: a confused and bewildered human dressed in pyjamas and a bathrobe is thrust into intergalactic hijinks with his alien friend Ford Prefect after the destruction of Planet Earth by the officious Vogons.  Armed with only his wits, a towell and the electronic guidebook “The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, Dent must traverse many dangers in the search for the lost planet of Magrathea and the ultimate question, to go with the ultimate answer.

Gameplay centres around you sitting (or indeed standing) with a towel and a cup of tea at your gaming station (a PC, or some old masheen, I played it on PC, cause you know, I’m cool like that) which has one of these new-fangled keyboard input interfaces.  The screen comes up with prompts and you type out (in English) a coherent response that the game recognises.  There are no visual clues, so all the information you need comes from the on-screen text, and whatever knowledge you have of the phenomenon (and you need a lot of that to even play the game).

Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it?  Thank yourself lucky you little cretins: this is what your dad played when he was your age, and he enjoyed it, because it was funny and smart and you had to use your brain.  Not every game came with a hand-holding mode and had every control and nuance explained to you in a conveniently placed tutorial.

As you adventure through the 30+ rooms in game, you must solve logic puzzles, which can often be fiendishly hard to do and can render the game unwinnable (see the Babel Fish puzzle for just such an example).  You must also pick up and use any objects you might find on the quest to make the game winnable.  Failure in a puzzle or to pick up items may not necessarily mean in-game death, but it will render your efforts moot as the game will be unwinnable at some point.

Graphics – what graphics?  It’s text on a screen.  Gordon Bennet, I don’t know.  Kids these days thinking everything has to be aesthetically pleasing to be of any worth. The typing input effect is perfect, accurately portraying what you’re saying and the text contrasts well with the background.  It’s crisp and clear so there’s no confusion about what’s happening. This is a bring your own soundtrack game.  Ideally something spacey, or maybe just Journey Of The Sorcerer by Eagles (well, essentially just Bernie Leadon) playing constantly.  And I mean constantly.

What more is there to say?  It’s a text adventure game that happens to be hilarious.  Go play it!  You can find the original on Douglas Adams’ website, and the BBC has an updated version with a nice interface and some visual clues, but it’s the same game.

Release Year: 1990

Summoned by Galactus, you play as the Marvel character Silver Surfer in this scrolling shooter. You must navigate the levels, shoot baddies and destroy bosses in one of the hardest games known to man.

As you load up the game you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re about to play a half-decent shooter. The premise is sound: you’re a hugely powerful comic book hero taking on bad guys, so you must be in for an exciting time right? Wrong. Silver surfer is one of the hardest and most frustrating games I’ve ever played in my life. Whilst games like Mega Man are challenging but possible, Silver Surfer borders on the ridiculous. It will have you throwing your controller within the first few minutes.

Loading up the game gives you five different levels to choose from in a menu system reminiscent of the aforementioned Mega Man. You can complete them in any order you wish, although the completion part is probably not an outcome; I should really say that you can try them in any order you wish. All of the levels are themed in some way, with one a jungle setting, another a fire cave and so on. They’re not all side-scrolling shooters, though, some are played from the top-down perspective.

As you’d expect, you take on enemies with energy balls that you can fire. Picking up upgrades in the levels (in the form of small, silver balls) allows you to fire more than one projectile, up to a maximum of three. The direction of these can be changed to allow you to fire down or behind you, which come in handy in some areas. There are other power ups, too, which you can use to increase your projectile power or clear the screen of enemies. The levels are divided into sections and at the end of the sections are bosses (although you’ll probably never see them) for you to blast.

All sounds pretty standard so far, doesn’t? Now I’ll explain why this is one of the hardest games ever made. Firstly, you can only take one hit before dying. Touching an enemy kills you, touching a projectile kills you and touching the scenery kills you. Essentially you’re not allowed to come into contact with anything or you die. In comparison, enemies take multiple hits to kill, which makes the game extremely one-sided when you’re always outnumbered and outgunned.

The madness doesn’t stop there: the enemies follow crazy patterns around the screen which are nearly impossible to dodge; the screen is filled with projectiles 90% of the time, your board is massive on the top-down levels and the spaces that you need to fit it through are tiny; when you die you restart from the beginning of the level (or a checkpoint if you can get that far); and you have no idea what scenery will kill you and what won’t (some can be flown over whilst other, identical parts can’t be). So yeah, it’s bloody hard.

Silver Surfer appears to have been thrown together with random sprites because nothing seems to make any sense or fit in. In one level you fight flying lizards and fish, which sound fairly reasonable ( or probably not, on reflection), until you realise that ducks also make an appearance as well. They don’t look like real ducks, either, they’re bright yellow and look like rubber ducks you’d have in a bath. You fight Halloween pumpkins in another level. It’s bizarre. The look of the levels isn’t going to stun you as they’re all pretty standard, composed of dull colour palettes and stock background effects.

The music in Silver Surfer is completely forgettable, and has more in common with a random series of notes than something you could pass off as tune. They’re not going stick in your head and you definitely won’t find yourself humming the tunes to yourself. Effects are pulled from the stock collection of rubbish 8-bit laser sounds and static hiss which sounds like it’s being played through a broken speaker.

Silver Surfer is something that had some potential at some point. If only you could take more than one hit, the scenery didn’t kill you and the enemies were so powerful and plentiful, you might have a playable game. As it is, the only reason you’ll want to play Silver Surfer is to see for yourself how downright hard it is. Alternatively you could be completely insane and want the challenge, but other than that it’s awful. Not the Shaq Fu kind of awful, but not far off.

Release Year: 1989

Chip’s Challenge is a puzzle video game where you’re tasked with collecting chips (the computer kind, not the potato kind) and completing challenges on a series of levels. Whilst not obvious, it does have a story: You’re the nerd Chip McCallahan, who met a girl called Melinda The Mental Marvel in a science lab, and you want to gain entry to the exclusive Bit Buster Club. To do so, you must navigate through Melinda’s Clubhouse, a set of puzzles with increasingly difficulty. Don’t ask me, it was the late 80s. Probably sounded plausible at the time.

As you’ve no doubt guessed, Chip’s Challenge is all about the puzzles. Each level starts you out with a certain number of chips that you need to collect before you’re allowed to exit the level, typically within a certain amount of time. Pushing blocks, collecting keys, navigating mazes and dodging monsters are just some of the things you’ll find yourself regularly doing on your quest for those precious chips. You may think that it’s a simple affair, but in reality it’s quite deep and complex.

Some levels involve water, ice and fire, each of which you can navigate differently depending on collected items. Stepping straight into water and fire unprepared will instantly kill you, but pick up the flippers and the fire boots and you can navigate those areas to your heart’s content. Stepping on ice without skates will just send you flying, but once you’ve found them you can walk freely on the icy surfaces. There are moving floors, warp blocks, switch doors and more which you’ll need to navigate to complete each level.

Many of the level tasks you’ll be solving need to be completed in a specific order, which could lead to frustration in some cases. Push a block into the wrong place or pick up the items in the wrong order and it’s back to the beginning of the level for you. There’s a lot of variety though, with nearly 150 levels for you to make your way through. The hardcore CC players will play each one consecutively, but the vast majority will play the training levels before typing in random passwords to access those later on.

There’s quite a community, too. In the 20 years since launch the game has received its own following, with numerous programs allowing you to create your own levels and capture videos of your best speedruns and high scores. If the levels included aren’t your thing then just have a go at making your own or download some made by others. The standard ones start off easy but soon get you thinking, with more complex puzzles and tasks to complete. They’re not so hard you’ll be throwing your computer out of the window, instead providing a nice, progressive challenge.

There’s not much I can really say here, other than there’s a lot of grey going on. The floor tiles are grey, the walls are grey, the chips are grey and Chip’s little shoes are grey; obviously an inspiration for the colour palette of Gears of War 3. Colour coded keys provide some much needed variety, along with some other environmental objects. The fire is red, the water is blue and the ice is a light blue, so yeah, there’s your colour. As for the animations, there’s not much I can say about that, either. When Chip moves he slides about in a Superman pose, and the enemies just seem to move around without any animation at all.

Like looping midi tracks? Great, you’ve come to the right place. CC offers two tracks to eventually make your ears bleed, cunningly titled CHIP01 and CHIP02 (on my version, anyway, they may be called chips01 and chips02  on other versions to spice things up). Either way, you’ll soon be switching it off and listening to something else whilst solving your puzzles. I did always prefer CHIP02, though; it’s quite catchy for the first few minutes but gets old by the hundredth time you’ve heard it.

Overall, Chip’s Challenge isn’t a bad little puzzle game. It’s simple on the surface but once you get stuck in it has all the elements of a classic puzzler. Good for both short blasts and extended plays there’s a lot on offer with it, so if puzzles are your thing there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try it out. Just don’t forget to mute the sound.



Release Year: 1984

Originally released in Japanese arcades in 1984, and later into US and EU homes in 1985 and 1987 respectively, Duck Hunt tasks the player – armed with the NES Zapper – with shooting on-screen ducks and clay pigeons for points. It was also later released in a multicart alongside Super Mario Bros.

The gamplay of Duck Hunt is relatively simple, and just consists of shooting ducks to gain points. There are three main game modes to choose from: the first is a one duck mode, the second being a two duck mode and the third is for clay pigeon shooting. The one duck mode gives the player only a single duck to shoot each time, where the two duck mode, surprising, gives you two ducks to shoot at once and requires faster reaction time and a keener eye. Clay pigeon shooting does what it says on the tin, and allows you to shoot clay pigeons instead of ducks. The main difference in this mode is that they’re much smaller and a lot harder to hit because of their trajectory, and thus require much faster reflexes.

To keep you company in your duck hunting is your trusty sidekick dog, who sniffs out the ducks for you at the beginning of each level. A duck will fly up and you’re given a certain amount of chances to hit it; if you successfully hit it then the dog will pop up holding the duck, but if you fail, either through taking too longer or missing too many times, the little beggar will pop up out of the grass and start laughing at you. Successfully completing a level allows you to progress onto the next, which become increasingly difficult. The main issue here is that every level is essentially the same as every other level, just with different duck speeds and patterns, meaning that there is severe repetition.

The NES Zapper is a real joy to use with the game due to the sheer simplicity. You won’t be complaining about the gun not being in line with a receiver or because it’s incompatible with your TV, it just functions. There are issues with faulty guns in some cases because they’re mostly over 20 years old now, but find one that works and you’ll have no other issues. In the one duck mode, you can even plug in a normal NES controller into the second port, allowing your friend to control the duck whilst you try to hit it.

Pleasing on the eye and never distracting from duck-spotting, Duck Hunt has some nice, vibrant visuals to go along with your murderous activities. Green and blue are the main colours used throughout the game, due to the outdoor setting. There aren’t that many effects to speak of, although the sprites used for the ducks when they’ve just been shot are fairly funny. If you’re a bad shot then you should also get used to the laughing dog animation.

Simple audio for a simple game, but no less effective. All the tunes and sound effects are suitable jolly to fit in with the general style of the game, although most of them aren’t as memorable as some other Nintendo classics. There is one sound, though, which haunts everyone who has ever played Duck Hunt, which is the noise of the dog laughing when you fail to hit any ducks. You never forget it, and it will haunt your dreams.

All in all, Duck hunt is a a very good light gun game, and probably the best that was available for the NES. The beauty is in the simplicity, because the game has no unnecessary bells and whistles. It’s just simple, mindless fun which is just great for kicking back and relaxing , or relieving some stress. With only three extremely similar game modes the main downfall is the repetition, meaning you could get bored easily after a few rounds. Other than that, it’s something that shouldn’t be missing from your NES library. Just beware of the dog.

Release Year: 1990

After Burner II for the Mega Drive is the home version of the arcade game of the same name, and sequel of the hugely popular After Burner. You take command of an F-14 Tomcat, and it’s your task to blast anything that moves.

As far as gameplay is concerned, After Burner is a pretty simple affair. It’s essentially a rail shooter, where you’re able to move your jet within the limits of the screen to try and hit your target. Like most other arcade games, it’s broken up into stages, each of which has it’s own distinct visual style. To blast you enemies you’re given both machine guns and missiles, the former firing constantly, meaning that most of the time you just have to aim at whatever it is you want to destroy. The missiles, however, are fired by you. These are handy for taking down incoming aircraft (of which there are a lot) where a white box appears around the aircraft along with a voice shouting out “FIRE!”, which is your cue to blast them out of the sky with a barrage of missiles. Don’t worry about running out, though, your ammunition is topped up after every couple of stages when your jet connects with a support plane.

The controls for After Burner II are fairly responsive but sometimes not as fast as you’d like. At first, dodging missile can be quite a challenge, but after playing for a while you know what manoeuvres you need to pull to stay alive in the heat of battle. In the later stages, the screen is crammed with enemies and missiles, so quick reactions and a solid grip on the controls are vital. Added new in After Burner II is the ability to control the speed of your jet, giving you the opportunity to go full throttle or pull back in tight situations. If you’re hit, however, your jet will lose power, dive and crash on the ground, costing you a life.

Whilst using the normal controller is good enough to enjoy the game, it enhances the game drastically if you can play it using a compatible joystick. I played the game using a Quickshot Python and it worked really, really well. It’s much more intuitive than using the a gamepad and makes it feel much more like you’re playing it in an arcade.

For the time of the original arcade release (1987), the visuals were great. Whilst most players were used to sidescrolling shooters, After Burner II brought thrilling 3D action to the table with vibrant visuals. As with most games of this type, the scenery varies considerably with each stage, and it’s enough to keep it from getting that repetitive. The jet’s are quite nicely modelled, although there’s not much variation so you’ll be seeing the same enemies over and over again. The explosions look great, as do the missiles that create them. All in all, it’s probably one of the better looking games available for the Mega Drive.

The audio of After Burner is, like the visuals, pretty good for the time it was released. The music is fitting and in no way intrusive, adding to the experience rather than annoying the player. The music changes as you enter different stages so you’re not stuck listening to the same track all the time. The sound effects are great, with no static or distortion. It’s nice to hear voice in a game where you can actually hear what is being said, as most games that tried to incorporate voice normally ended up with a distorted, fuzzy noise which you couldn’t decipher.

Overall, After Burner II is something that every Mega Drive owner should have in their collection. The gameplay isn’t deep, but it’s great to be able to boot it up and mindlessly blast enemy jets into oblivion to your heart’s content. Whilst it’s still inferior to the arcade version (which had a moving cabinet), it’s by no means less fun and you’ll get hours of enjoyment out of it, especially if you can rustle up a joystick to play it with.

Originally posted on TheSixthAxis on September 9th, 2009.

]]> http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/23/retro-review-after-burner-ii/feed/ 0 http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/16/retro-review-super-hang-on/ http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/16/retro-review-super-hang-on/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:00:16 +0000 David R (LiquescentShadow) http://startgame.org/?p=1677 Reviewed Platform: Sega Mega Drive

Release Year: 1989

Super Hang-On was a motorbike racing game released into arcades in 1987, and later ported onto home consoles in 1989, with a few new additions.

As soon as you start the game, you’ll be given two options – arcade mode and original mode. Arcade mode is a straight port of the game found in the arcades, so all you need to do is pick your difficulty and music and you’re away. New to home systems is the original mode, which is a career mode for you to play your way through.

Firstly, the arcade mode. With this, you can jump straight into the action with the most powerful bikes and race to your heart’s content. As with any arcade racer, your main goal is to reach the next checkpoint without running out of time, which isn’t always as easy as it sounds. There are rival racers that attempt to block you and road side obstacles that will send you flying should you hit them, costing valuable seconds. Lucky for you, then, that the bike has a boost mode. Hit your normal top speed and with the press of a button you will shoot off at a ridiculous speed, exhaust flames and all. This leads to thrilling races as there’s nothing better than shooting through a checkpoint with only seconds to spare. You can partake in races in a total of four continents, each continent representing a different difficulty class, which is determined by the number of checkpoints that you must hit in time to finish. Finishing a race grants you a special ending for that continent. Whilst the gameplay is fast paced, sometimes things are a bit too quick, which can result in more crashes than you’d like. Even at top speed your bike is still incredibly responsive, which can cause you to overturn or hit something your didn’t mean to. Also, once you’ve come off the track, it’s fairly tricky to get back onto it.

Aside from the arcade, there’s also the aforementioned original mode to play around with. This is for those who like a bit of simulation thrown into their arcade racers. The racing mechanics remain the same, only this time you start out with a beginner bike and it’s your aim to keep on racing to win money and ultimately upgrade your bike with the best parts you can. You can also change mechanics during the career, with better ones costing more of your hard earned cash. This gives the game longevity, as a handy code is generated for you which allows you to continue from where you previously left off, negating the need to start over every time you boot the game.

When it comes down to it, Super Hang-On looks great. The tracks are vibrant and full of colour, and contain different roadside objects depending on the continent that you’re playing in. The backgrounds are nice to look at, there’s beautiful blue or dusky-orange sky and it’s all just perfect when you’re flying by at 200mph. As the terrain, roadside objects and backgrounds change from checkpoint to checkpoint, there’s tons of visual variety to keep you entertained. The bikes and riders are all neatly detailed and move fluidly when flowing between the turns, and the game also includes other little touches such as smoke that comes off of your knee as it makes contact with the road. All in all it makes for a memorable visual experience.

Before each race, you’re allowed to pick one of four tunes to listen to whilst you’re burning rubber. Whilst most of them are pretty good, they won’t really add much to your race. They’re quite bland and after a while they do have the potential to irritate a bit, especially on some of the much longer races. The bike engine noises aren’t bad at all, and there’s a selection of other sound effects which add to your experience, such as the grinding of your knee pad on the road surface or the loud thud when bike meets bilboard.

For the time that it was released, Super Hang-On was a great gaming feat. It provided thrilling bike races to everyone on their home systems, truly bringing the essence of the arcade racer into everyone’s living rooms, and, for those who wanted it, a fully fledged career mode for you to play through. If you love bike racing or arcade racers, this is definitely one you should try. You won’t regret it.

Originally posted on TheSixthAxis on August 16th, 2009.

]]> http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/16/retro-review-super-hang-on/feed/ 0 http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/09/retro-review-night-trap/ http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/09/retro-review-night-trap/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:00:48 +0000 David R (LiquescentShadow) http://startgame.org/?p=1577 Reviewed Platform: Sega Mega-CD

Release Year: 1993

A group of girls are staying at Mr & Mrs Martin’s house for a sleepover, but this is no ordinary house – some of the girls who have stayed before went missing. As part of the Sega Control Attack Team, it is your job to monitor all the rooms of the house during the sleepover to find out what is going on. As the night begins, the ‘Auger’ (vampiric baddies) invade the house, and it is your job to catch them using the traps built into the house.

The basic premise of Night Trap is to spring traps at the right time to catch the Augers which invade the house during the night, and because of this there aren’t any button mashing or intense sequences to deal with. It’s pretty much just a simple horror strategy game, where you must assess your priorities and make choices accordingly.

Catching augers is a pretty simple affair to begin with – at the bottom of the screen there’s a bar which tells you the right time to spring a trap. When the bar reaches the red, it’s a case of just pressing a button and watching the Auger(s) be caught in a number of hilarious ways, whether it’s a trap door in the floor, moving bookcase or spring which removes the baddies from the vicinity. You can switch which room you’re viewing at any time, and there’s a floor plan you can access which you can use to track which rooms the Augers are heading for (e.g. if an Auger leaves the bedroom, you know it’s either going to be in the hallway or bathroom). However, after a few minutes catching the Augers gets a bit trickier. As is explained in the beginning sequence, the traps only work if you have the correct colour access code selected. The people in the house are free to change the access code at any time so it’s essential to listen in on specific conversations so that you can hear whether they’re going to change the code and, if so, what they’re changing it to. Missing one of these will mean that you’re no longer able to spring the traps and letting too many of the Augers get away will mean that the game is over. Game-overs can also be caused by the capture of specific house occupants, or if one of the characters breaks your connection to the house security system.

This is really where the strategy comes in, as you have to decide on what action you should take next. You might decide to watch the occupants on the off chance that code-changing is discussed, at the cost of missing a few Augers you could have captured. The game rewards multiple play-throughs as the story plays out the same each time, so you know what to expect and can be ready to capture the Augers at the right places at the right time.

There’s not much going on here graphically speaking, due to the fact that the story unfolds through a series of live-action cut-scenes. The cut-scenes aren’t of fantastic quality and are quite grainy, but are good enough to see what’s going on and allow you to spring your traps at the right time. The acting in the cut-scenes isn’t exactly blockbuster film standard either, but the awkward performances and extreme cheesiness are good for a bit of a chuckle.

There won’t be any synthesised sound effects to be found in this game, only live dialog spoken by the actors. The quality of this isn’t that bad really and it’s clear enough to hear what you need to without having too much trouble. There’s a bit of horror-style music that starts whenever you see the Augers, but it’s not really that atmospheric and doesn’t add much to the experience.

In all honesty, Night Trap isn’t going to win any awards. However, it’s a pretty unique game released for a console which saw a very limited life. If you want to, and have a bit of time to spare, then it’s worth a play or two just to experience it. It’s definitely not going to scare you but it’s an intriguing game which you’ll probably get a few laughs out of, especially if you play it with a few mates.

Originally posted on TheSixthAxis on August 2nd, 2009.

]]> http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/09/retro-review-night-trap/feed/ 0 http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/02/retro-review-super-mario-world-2/ http://www.startgame.org/2010/03/02/retro-review-super-mario-world-2/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:00:42 +0000 David R (LiquescentShadow) http://startgame.org/?p=1427 Reviewed Platform: SNES

Release Year: 1995

Whilst a stork is carrying Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to their parents, Magikoopa Kamek appears and attempts to steal the children. He successfully retrieves Luigi, but Mario falls and lands on Yoshi’s Island. The Yoshis that populate the island then commence a journey to save Baby Luigi from Kamek and Baby Bowser.

In Yoshi’s Island, you play as various coloured Yoshis trying to rescue Luigi from the evil hands of Kamek and Baby Bowser. This journey spans across 6 worlds, each containing a number of different stages. Mario rides on the back of the Yoshis, who effectively play a large relay race with him – after completing a stage, the current yoshi passes him on to another one to complete the next stage.

To help you through the stages, the Yoshis have a number of abilities, such as the ability to float jump, stomp the ground, eat people, make eggs and transform into vehicles. These come in really handy, as you will often need to use all of them to complete a stage. Eating an enemy grants you two main abilities – you can either spit him back out again (which can be used to take out other enemies), or turn them into an egg for later use. The eggs which you make are the most important to gameplay, as they can be used to take out enemies, walls and hit icons which give you new places to go. There are even a number of special items that you can eat which give you the ability to spit something more deadly such as fire.

Hitting certain bubbles cause the Yoshis to transform into a number of other forms, which may be required to pass certain areas of a level. Large gaps can be passed as a helicopter, stretches of water can be passed as a submarine and so on. In certain areas of the levels, Baby Mario will put on a cape and perform special feats to help the Yoshis on their way. The controls are easy to learn and really responsive, meaning that pulling off all these moves and controlling Yoshi is a breeze.

Unlike most games, Yoshis are unable to die through normal means – if you get hit by an enemy (of which there are many different kinds in the game), it will knock Baby Mario off of Yoshis back. At this point, a timer appears on the screen and you must collect Baby Mario (who floats about in a bubble) before this hits zero and you lose a life. The default time is 10 seconds (so if you have 1 second to spare, it will count back up to 10), but you can extend the time by collecting stars or hitting middle rings throughout the level, up to a maximum of 30 seconds. Whilst you’ll normally be able to get Mario before the time is up, some sections of levels make it nearly impossible to get him without super-speedy reactions, causing you to lose a life. Falling into fire or spikes does mean instant death, but provided you’ve been boosting your time and are careful with your jumping, none of this should really happen too often or ruin your game.

The large number of stages mean that there’s a huge amount of variety which never leaves you feeling bored. There are two boss fights per world (middle and end stages), which consist of fighting regular enemies that have been supersized by Kamek’s magical abilities – most are fairly straightforward to defeat, but they’re a huge amount of fun. There are also a number of special stages which you can unlock by gaining high scores on the levels (gained through collecting special items etc), giving the game a large amount of replay value.

This is really where Yoshi’s Island stands out.When most other games were striving for ever-increasing realism, this game threw it all out of the window in favour of something that looks like it was drawn with a set of crayons and felt-tipped pens. However, it looks stunning. The game uses the Super FX chip (previously seen in games such as Star Fox/Starwing) to create lush worlds which are full of colour and detail, and to use parallax scrolling to great effect. In some levels both the background and foreground is used, such as where an enemy can jump from one to the other or where you have to defeat a boss who’s in the background.

As far as sound is concerned, Yoshi’s Island is great. The background music fits the game really well, making a nice accompaniment to the gameplay and fitting the look of the levels without ever become too heavy or serious and spoiling your playthrough. All the sound effects are also very well done, with no static noises to be found anywhere. The only thing that could annoy after a while is the crying of Baby Mario, but it’s really only a little niggle and nothing that could ruin your enjoyment of the game.

With beautiful levels, tight gameplay and a single player story that’s an absolute blast to play through, Yoshi’s Island is a masterpiece of gaming. This is one of those games which should be experienced by every gamer, not just Nintendo fans. An unmissable classic.

Originally posted on TheSixthAxis on July 26th 2009.

Release Year: 1992

As the pilot of an Apache attack helicopter, you must complete a series of missions to take out Dictator Kilbaba and the army that he has amassed before he initiates World War 3. Sound familiar?

If you think that this game is just a straight-up shooter, you’d be wrong – there is a strong emphasis on strategy and going into battle ‘all guns blazing’ will normally result in your demise. In each mission there are a set number of tasks that need performing; some visible right away, others given to you on-the-fly, which need to be completed in order to succeed in the mission. You’ll find yourself destroying a whole host enemy installations and weapons – you can destroy radar stations, airfields and command centres in the first mission alone. Whilst these can be performed in any order, doing them in a specific order gives you a tactical advantage, which is a huge help. Doing something wrong (destroying necessary installations etc) usually means a mission failure, at which point you are instructed to head back to the frigate. Thankfully, missions restarts due to this aren’t common and so won’t hinder your playthrough. Each level is effectively a mini sandbox, which you can travel through as you wish in any direction from the game’s isometric viewpoint. Your helicopter is responsive and easily maneuverable, although sometimes it’s a bit tricky to line up the helicopter with whatever it is that you need to destroy. Once you’re good, you’ll run rings around enemies whilst you pummel them with machine guns, hydra rockets and the devastating hellfire missiles.

Now, the tactical element. Nearly everything in Desert Strike is controlled and limited. Helicopter fuel, armour and weapons each are finite and depleted over the course of a mission. Thankfully, fuel drums and weapon crates are strewn across the map, some in plain sight and others hidden in objects that need to be destroyed to reveal the contents. Don’t worry about finding them, though, as the pause menu gives you all the information you need to know. You can see how much fuel, armour and ammo you have, locations of mission critical installations, items, friendlies and enemies. This allows you to plan your attack effectively and sort your priorities – you may be within range of a target but running out of fuel and ammo, so you can easily open the map and check the nearest item locations should you need to break from the attack to replenish your supplies. Items and people can be picked up with your winch – if you manage to pick up a friendly and drop him at the landing zone, your armour will be increased. Either running out of fuel or armour will cause your helicopter to crash, losing you a life. When all lives are lost you will need to restart the mission. The missions all follow the same basic structure, but there’s enough variety to keep you entertained.

Graphically, this game is quite good. The viewpoint makes a welcome change from the sidescrolling shoot ‘em ups which were heavily present in the era. Explosions look nice with some good fire effects, giving you a good sense that your weapons (especially those hellfires) are serious toys with a substantial destructive force behind them. All the vehicles are nicely detailed, although these (as well as the explosions) suffer from some noticeably jerky animations at times.

The game sound is a bit below average. I can’t say that anything is particularly bad, but nothing stands out. As far as the audio is concerned the most exciting part is the opening sequence (which has an audio style very similar to the game Road Rash), and after that it’s pretty boring. There’s no in-game music, so the only things you’ll be hearing are the chopper blades, the weapons firing (which all sound different, there’s even a noticeable difference between the whoosh of a hydra and hellfire) and the warning sounds when you’re low on fuel.

Desert Strike is a good strategy game, and although it starts out relatively easy you’ll soon find that you may have to invest a good few hours before you can make significant progress. Once you’ve got to grips with it, it’s a real joy to play.

Originally posted on TheSixthAxis on July 19th, 2009.

]]> http://www.startgame.org/2010/02/23/retro-review-desert-strike/feed/ 0 http://www.startgame.org/2010/02/16/retro-review-shaq-fu/ http://www.startgame.org/2010/02/16/retro-review-shaq-fu/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:00:25 +0000 David R (LiquescentShadow) http://startgame.org/?p=771 Reviewed Platform: SNES

Release Year: 1994

On his way to a charity basketball event in Tokyo, Shaquille O’Neal wanders into a kung fu dojo. There, an old man says he is ‘the one’ and sends him through a portal to another world to rescue some kid called Nezu from some baddie or something. There you get to fight with various people, such as someone who looks like Catwoman and another who looks like The Prince of Persia. Oh, and cyborgs. I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

Gameplay is what really holds a game together. You can deal with average graphics, sounds and plot but if the gameplay is bad then there’s really no point in playing the game at all. Unfortunately for Shaq Fu, the gameplay is poor at best and head-bangingly awful at worst. So, where do I start?

The main aim of a fighting game is to be able to land hits, so it’s not exactly helpful when the hit detection in SF is woefully poor. For a hit to register it has to make perfect contact with the centre of your opponent, and if it lands anywhere else at all then you won’t damage your opponent. This causes you to be up close and personal all the time – even long range kicks won’t register unless they hit the sweet spot. This is where the second flaw comes in, which is the range attacks of the opponents. The enemies have the distinct ability to damage you at range, which is really annoying considering you have to be literally on top of them to damage them. Of course you have dodge moves, but this is where the third flaw comes in – controller lag. Sure, you can see that an attack is coming, but that’s a whole different story to being able to dodge them. The time it takes for you to execute a move is hair-tearingly long. You can hammer the buttons all you want, but Shaq just doesn’t move fast enough for the moves to be any use.

If, after the first battle, you haven’t already thrown the game out of the window then you will do when you learn that the entire game is composed of these battles. No variation, just different looking opponents with slightly different attacks, and every one as frustrating as the last.

So, with ‘credit where credit is due’ and all that, I have to say that Shaq Fu looks nice, at least. It’s nice and colourful, and the areas that you fight in all look good. Both Shaq and the enemies you fight against are all nicely animated, and any moves that you manage to pull off flow together nicely.

The sound in Shaq Fu is only really slightly above average. The music during the fights is themed and good enough to not make your ears bleed, but won’t win any prizes. The sound effects are the usual deal of canned fighting sounds, all complete with that muffled-static effect that sounds like they’re being played through a set of blown speakers.

To say that Shaq Fu is the worst game ever made would be a lie, but it’s not far off. The basic premise of the game makes no sense, and the gameplay is just so infuriating that you’ll hate the game after the first round of your very first fight. It makes it no better, then, that the inclusion of Shaquille O’Neal was probably just to boost sales. The hero of the game could have been any made up character of the developer’s choosing, but by sticking Shaq onto the game (who at the time wasn’t long into his Professional career) they were guaranteed sales. This game is so bad that there’s a website dedicated to destroying every single copy of it. Hell, Delphine Software should have just streamlined the process and shipped the game with a hammer.

Originally posted in TheSixthAxis forums on June 14th, 2009.