[Terryn]

Some basic guidelines:

1) Make your review cover all relevant points; some people (like me) are willing to pound out at least a full page on a game while others will summarily cover all bases. Length is no issue as long as everything important is covered. Give a final score.

2) Make your review elaborate; I don't want to see stuff like "IT WAS FUN" or "I HATED THE PLOT SO I STOPPED PLAYING RIGHT THEN". If it sucks, tell us why it sucks; if it's good, tell us why it's good.

3) Please, only make a review if you've played the whole game.

4) Tell what system it's from, what language/region it is and what genre it is.

5) While a counter-review is acceptable, a complete diatribe against the other review isn't. Be respectful.

6) Only reviews go here; no little comments.

7) Please post without signatures here.

8) NO SPOILERS WITHOUT CLEAR WARNING. Immediate spoilers will be excised without remorse.

8) If you have a more common game, stick it in the game review. If you have an obscure freeware or shareware game, consider sticking it in the freeware & shareware review; it will still be accepted here. Only more obscure games go here.

Enjoy!

[gofer-chan]

Mmmkay.

Name: Wonder Project J
Year: Not sure
Language: Japanese (English translation available)
System: SNES
Genre: Adventure/???
Rating: Japan-only, but it would get an E, most likely

I really like this game.. I've beaten it multiple times, but haven't gotten the best ending yet... it has a Princess Maker type of feel to it. You basically train a humanoid robot to do different things, and teach him about life. Your goals range from tests of... well, stuff, like when you're courting the princess, to fighting in a touranamnt. The plot is alright, a usual "Evil guy tries to destroy the kingdom" thing, but it's well-executed. The graphics are pretty good, but not the best ever. I dunno about the sound, I never paid attention to it. It offers a lot of replay value, since you need to beat the game at least twice to get the best ending. It also supports the SNES mouse, by the way, but it's not required, and I don't reccomend using it. Okay... I'm done now.

[klinger b goode]

wonder project j was 1996! 1996 sex magic!


DARK MESSIAH/HELLNIGHT
DENNOU EIZOU (ATLUS)
1997 (DARK MESSIAH)/1999 (HELLNIGHT)
ADVENTURE/HORROR
PSX (JP/PAL)

Well, after hearing about Dark Messiah in a Japanese gaming magazine, and viewing screenshots on the Atlus Japan webpage in 1997, I was pretty damn impressed. So I searched for it for 5 years, to no avail.

But then, early this year, I heard it was released in the UK in 1999 under the title of "Hellnight". Impressed yet again that I'd be able to play this title in English, I began my search anew, once again, to no avail. But then, about a week ago, I found a copy at a nearby store. Exciting 2 tha max, I bought it. And here's my review.


STORY

Evening, 2000-2001, Tokyo.

You're a normal person living in Tokyo, coming home from a hard day of work. At the coming of the millenium, the usual doomsayers, cultists, and other would-be prophets are harassing anybody who passes them by. And, as these lunatics do, they start on you. To get away from such weird annoyances, you run into the nearest tube station. You quickly jump onto the leaving train, to begin the journey home.

But something happens. The train derails.

Shaken, but unscathed, you stand up, bumping into a scared schoolgirl named Naomi. You introduce yourselves to each other, when you see a splatter of blood on the window of the door to the next car. The door breaks down, and a creature appears, ready to attack. You and Naomi run into the dark tunnels to escape.


GRAPHICS

As par 1997, the graphics look great, even by 2001's standards. this is one of the best looking first-person games I've seen on PSX. The dungeons look great and creepy. NPCs and characters look great, as expected from Dennou Eizou, the branch of Atlus that released the great Dreamcast RPG 'deSPIRIA'.


TRANSLATION

Not too shabby. There's a few hilariously great translations (Why thay kept follow me??), but besides a few other mistakes ('price' instead of 'prince' once), the translation isn't too bad at all.

GAMEPLAY

In Hellnight, you'll find your way through the dark, dank Tokyo underground via a very well done 3D first-person engine. There's no weapons, no health meters, nothing except your compass. When the monster catches you, it's over. You'll have to use your wits to escape the monster, and you'll have to do a lot of running. Holding down the X button makes you run, but running too long starts the controller vibrating, your character's heartbeat on the soundtrack, and the screen begins to wobble. If you continue to hold down the X button, the screen begins to flash red, and you begin to walk slower and slower, until you're paralyzed for a few seconds. This is very effective in envoking fear into the player, but can also be annoying, as there will be long periods of time when you'll be exploring the underground without the monster pursuing you.

Anyway, getting to the monster. There's usually two ways to detect him; Seeing him, and hearing him. Hearing him is much more preferrable. You have to highly rely on your sense of sound in this game. Though the sound isn't in stereo, the monster's breathing does get louder as he gets closer, and it's up to you to figure out if he's behind you, or coming up ahead. A helping hand in this is the LOOK-BEHIND button, holding the button down allows you to look behind you as you run, hopefully allowing you to see the monster disappearing behind you.


CHARACTERS

Besides Naomi, there are three other characters who can join you. Kyoji, a serial killer hiding from the police, Ivanoff, a soldier sent with his group to help rescue people from the train wreck, and Rene, a saucy French reporter, investigating the cultists. Each character has a talent; Naomi can detect the monster on the automap if he's nearby, while the other three have guns, that can be used to slow the monster down by pushing the proper button when he's about to strike.

Other characters you'll meet are the people living in the underground, ranging from thieves, to homeless people, to shop owners, to insane cultists, and others.


SOUND

Hellnight's musician (whose name escapes me :p) really knew what the fuck he was doing. Hellnight's soundtrack consists of spooky ambient music, and a few crushing noise tracks. Sound effects are even better. The monster's roars, breathing and other sounds are very well done. The sound effect of a door opening can be even scarier than the roar of the monster at times. One of the most effective uses of sound is the random female screams on one of the later levels.


LENGTH/CHALLENGE

The game's about 10 hours long, but with 5 different endings and a high replay value, I'd say it's a 50 hour game, to get the full experience.

The game can be challenging at times. 2-level mazes do occur, so sometimes you'll have to figure out if the monster is on the same level as you. There's also little tricks around the mazes, such as conveyor belts and one way gates. None of the puzzles are too difficult, you'll usually be delivering items to other members of the underground community. Outrunning the monster takes a bit of brainpower, knowing how to easily confuse him and run down secret corridors and such. One of my favourite dungeons, one of the final ones, contains no threat, but doorways leading to bits of you and your companions minds, allowing you to learn more about them and yourself.


FINAL OPINION

Most of this game was great. I enjoyed meeting the denizens of the underground, finding out more about them and the area, and messing with random items. Though as much as I loved the first half of this game, the second half just didn't do it for me. It went through a huge, surprising plot twist which changed the direction of the game completely. But just because it was a huge plot twist doesn't mean it was a good one. But no matter, Hellnight still stands as one of my favourite horror games, because of the first 5-8 hours, and I'll have fun seeing the other 4 endings.

8/10

[weasel]

SPECTRE SUPREME
Year: 1994
Platform: Macintosh (yeah, yeah, Mac, go ahead and kill me)
Genre: Action/Arcade

If you've ever played Battlezone, Stellar 7, Nova 9, or even the original Spectre, you'll know right away what this one's like. If you haven't, I'll sum this up in a nutshell.

You are a tank. No, you aren't piloting it, you ARE a tank. Your main goal in life is to wheel around the landscape and pick up all the flags, blasting other tanks in the process. Fortunately, you have access to various weapons (I'll get to those later). You may also find extra ammo/armor powerups, full heal, or even a hover jet (for about 20 sec).

GAMEPLAY:
This is pretty straightforward: run around, grab flags, kill anything that moves, take cover behind strangely textured windmill-like object, use warp gate to confuse enemies. It gets tough really fast though, despite the fact that every level gives you a new special weapon to add to your arsenal. Before you get to that though, you can select from various types of tanks: Swift, Balance, and Heavy; or you can allocate resource points to speed/ammo/armor and create your own custom tank. The customization isn't all that complex, and neither is the game. Also here is the multiplayer, with standard deathmatch, co-op, Capture the Flag, and team DM (stuff you would see in modern FPS games, except for the co-op). I was unable to try this myself, thanks to a stupid copy-protection measure that checks BOTH systems for serial numbers. if they're both the same, it won't let you play the game at all.
SCORE: 7.5/10 (Simple yet effective, but unoriginal)

INTERFACE:
The interface may not look that good, but considering that it was made in '94, that shouldn't be a problem. The menu system lets you start the game, view the credits (OH JOY OF JOYS), or customize the game to your liking. The options allow you to select what music the game plays (I turned it off, since the Mac's MIDI handling isn't all that smooth), and how the keys are bound (thankfully, since the default setup is entirely one-handed with the num-pad).
SCORE: 9/10 (Simplicity, with all the needed options to improve performance and gameplay)

GRAPHICS:
Graphics are solid-polygon, with 256-color-palette gradients thrown in for good measure. The landscape is drawn with a dotted-line grid, on a black background (if the the grid wasn't there, you'd feel like you're falling). Not particularly attractive, but depending on how high of a resolution your desktop is set to (and with the Stretch Game Window option set), you get all the better graphics-wise with ultra-sharp graphics.
SCORE: 7/10 (VERY simple.)

SOUND:
Not good at all. Sounds are incredibly cheesy, and your tank makes a grunting noise when it enters a level. I don't understand at all why they used some of these sounds.
SCORE: 3/10 (Pleh.)

OVERALL:
A good game, despite its aesthetical flaws.

FINAL SCORE: 8/10

[klinger b goode]

Policenauts
Graphical Adventure
Konami, 1994-1997
PC-98, 3DO, Saturn, PSX
Japanese (English release cancelled at last second)


managed to pick up a copy of POLICENAUTS yesterday at cex. it was hidden behind about 10 world cup games. i was ecstatic!

anyway, for those of you who don't know, policenauts is the sequel/prequel to snatcher that was about 75% translated for saturn, but got cancelled :((( many of you may remember seeing it in old sega brochures around 1996. those were depressing times indeed. cutscenes of it were also shown in mgs.

the only real thing policenauts has in common with snatcher is the game style and cyberpunk universe. the story is that of a young man named johnathan ingram. in 2013, he went up with a team of five to be a 'policenaut' on the space colony BEYOND COAST. while working on a project that takes ingram outside of the station, somebody sabotages his gear, and he floats off into deep space. after hours of not being found, his suit goes into cryogenic sleep mode...and he's not found until 2040. brought back to earth, he appears 28, but his biological age is over 50.

johnathan returns to his home in LA, and opens a PI office. his ex-wife, lorainne, comes to visit him, asking him to find her missing husband at beyond coast. johnathan refuses, saying he'll never return. lorainne leaves. as she goes out to her car, johnathan sees a trail of footprints from her car leading to a masked man holding a detonator. he tries to warn her, but it's too late. he pursues the killer to no avail, and decides to take the case.

everything about this game is simply incredible. it's twice as long as snatcher, and improved in every way. cutscenes and graphics are top-notch. music is good as well. battles are fought in a more "arcade" style than snatcher. you guide the little red light on your gun around the screen, shooting the enemy, reloading, and probably accidently shooting out a few windows. it's truly entertaining, even moreso than snatcher's battles. that's not to say that the adventure mode is bad though, because it's equally as sassy.

ah...the only thing that could make this game better would be if it was in english.

and it has meryl from metal gear.

[Crusader]

Master of Magic
Strategy/War game
MicroProse, 1993
PC
English

This is a great old free download I found that few people have heard of. It's like a Warcraft/Starcraft game, in that you direct and control armies, build bases, and attack your enemies. However, instead of being some sort of location-less commander who controls all his troops and does nothing else, you take the place of a powerful wizard who controls the action from his/her tower back in your main base. From there you not only control your troops and cities, you can cast spells that effect the whole world, just one tile of it, an enemy's city, your city, or something else. Your cities build things like walls to protect it, temples and cathedrals to keep the rebels happy and produce mana for your spells, barracks, armorer's guilds, and war colleges to produce fighting units, Merchant's guilds that double (!!!) the money output of your city, and more. Your units can range from lowly spearmen to lofty paladins, from pitiable sprites to powerful giants, from horrifying hell hounds to heroic huntresses. All units built in cities (not summoned with magic) gain levels as they sit around, and faster if they get involved with combat. This way a elite spearman (lowest unit) can easily beat 2-3 recruit swordsmen. (next rank up from spearman)

You start with one of fourteen (that's right, fourteen) different races initially, but you can easily get control of more, by capturing an enemy or NPC town. Your character also chooses from one of 5 different spell categories to learn from, Life, Death, Chaos, Sorcery, or Nature, or any combination of them.
You can also use some of your character points to take a special ability or two, like Alchemist, which allows you to turn gold into mana and vice versa much more efficiently than a non-alchemist, and gives all your units ever built magical weapons! Other special abilities include Sage Master (learn spells faster), Divine Power (Cathedrals, temples and such produce more mana and keep the population happier), and so forth.

The spells you can cast are original and powerful (You finished casting:... Armageddon!) you can demolish your enemy's city by opening a chaos rift above it, or force him to double his number of workers allotted to farming by halving his food supply with the famine spell. You can cast Black Channels and turn your troops into powerful undead, or Holy Armor to bestow upon them the defensive power of light. Each class of magic has a LOT of original spells, and a few good ones common to all disciplines. (although Life magic seems a little unbalanced) There are also a horde of summoning spells that you can use to summon mighty dragons, giants, demons, angels, wraiths, unicorns, wyrms, ghouls, elementals, skeletons, phantom warriors, magic spirits, death knights, basilisks, gorgons, and still more.

One of the better implemented features of Master of Magic is it's heroes. No people, Warcraft 3 was not the first strategy/war game to implement heroes, you can find a great example right here. Your heroes can go out on adventures (with armies at their backs, of course) into ancient dungeons, temples and the like, to loot them for bonus gold, spells, magical items and the like. The heroes have different abilities, like the ability to cast spells that even YOU can't cast, they might "inspire" (boost) their troops to greatness, and so forth.

If all that weren't enough, there are two world maps. Every game there is a primary plane and an alternate plane(both randomly generated) that you can travel between via magical towers, spells, items, and so forth. The maps are huge, and loaded with dungeons to explore, NPC cities to take/raze, and of course, your enemy(s). You can have a maximum of four enemies to fight, and make treaties or alliances with them to crush mutual enemies. (once they're gone, the backstabbing begins) The NPC cities pose another problem, they will band together to attack and defend each other, but you don't have to defeat them to win the game, and, without the power of a mighty wizard(like you) leading them, they can't pose a serious threat, but they always start with well-defended bases, so you can give up on the idea of capturing a few easy cities early on. They also effectively eliminate rushing as a strategy, forcing you to think farther down the road than 9 swordsmen and a Water Walking spell.

There are very few downsides to this game, but there are a couple. First of all, the game is Dos based, which may cause problems for some people trying to run it. Second, the game has quite a few bugs (but there is a patch to fix them, look at the links section of the webpage below.) Third, there isn't a tutorial mode, which makes the game a touch overwhelming at first but you can get a copy of the manual at the link below, and right clicking on anything in the game always provides all the necessary information. (Right click on a city to see the units in it, right click on a unit to see his stats. Right click on a stat to see what it means, etc.)

All in all, an incredibly fun game, only a 10MB download, available here. My only regret is that MicroProse is defunct, so no chance for a sequel.

http://www.the-under...game.php?id=687

Crusader's rating: 9.7/10


EDIT: Apparently (I didn't know this) there is a game eerily similar to Master of Magic that came out in 1999. It's called Age of Wonder and has more spells and stuff and fancy newish graphics. There's even an Age of Wonder II, but I don't know if it's out yet.

This post has been edited by Crusader: 02 January 2003 - 06:44 AM

[GentryXaties]

Arrite, here goes nothing...

Traffic Department 2192
Published by Epic MegaGames/Safari Software

If you've ever heard of Safari Software, you've probably already played this game. Or, at the very least, the first episode of it.

The story begins on the distant desert planet of Seche, where the Traffic Department--essentially the street police of the various cities on this planet--is battling against the evil empire of the Vultures who are much worse outfitted, but unfortunately have the greater numbers. After all, the Traffic Department controls only a single planet. The Vulturnus Empire controls most (if not all) of the known galaxy.

Your character in the game is one Marta Velasquez. Bitter ever since the death of her father at the hands of the Vultures, she vowed to give them a piece of her mind (and a few ion cannon blasts to the hull).

At twenty missions per episode, three episodes, three different hoverskids (five if you count the rare occasions when you get to pilot enemy 'skids), and even an infrared mode for night missions, you figure you've got your work cut out for you to beat this game, right? Not really. The AI makes it pretty simple, and about the only times you'll really die in this game is if you let yourself get tagged one too many times by the heavy guys who aren't stuck on one of the many corners.

Even the somewhat tricky controlling can be easily mastered if you're playing with a simple keyboard. Typically, a joystick won't cut it, even if you're lucky enough to have a joystick that will still run in pure DOS mode. That's right, this game will only run in DOS. Good luck.

Overall, though, this game deserves at least one play-through, even if just to hear (I mean, read) some of the witty banter between Vel (her common nickname in the game) and the TD dispatcher.

In the words of Bram Wolstencroft (in the 2nd episode), "It's so hard to fling good kelp these days."

(Heh... forgot to post the final score.)
Final Score: 9/10

[Crusader]

DECKER

- No publisher, released freeware by designed Shawn Overcash

- Platform - Windows


Overview Decker is a remarkably addictive RPG/Puzzle Game. The game itself is quite similar to the Hacking rules of table-top RPG Shadowrunner; you take on the role of a 'decker' in a futuristic world. You make your living by hacking into corporate systems and performing services for your clients, be it stealing files, editing records, shutting down subsystems, or even crashing the whole CPU. These systems are not open for the pickings, however, as there are plenty of defensive programs running (known as ICE) to keep you busy and on the run. As you perform jobs you earn credits and can buy new programs and hardware to assist you, as well as gaining experience points that can be traded in for tangible skill increases. As you complete more jobs, your reputation increases, opening doors to more lucrative (and dangerous) systems to hack.


Gameplay Very addictive. All the actions you take in the systems you're hacking will be through various programs that you can buy or write yourself(takes time), all of which have an effectivity rating that tells you exactly how advanced your software is. There are scan programs for finding files, Silence programs to temporarily incapacitate alarms, decoy programs to fool the ICE into attacking something that isn't you, and many more. The primary problems you'll have to deal with are the ICE, which are programs designed to attack and reject system intruders. There are two kinds of ICE you need to watch out for, Black ICE and White ICE. The White Ice programs roam the various nodes(rooms) of the system, looking for intruders. If they see you, they'll 'Query' you, which is equivilent to asking for a password or other authentication. If this happens, you have no choice but to deal with the ICE somehow. You can run a deceive program and attempt to fool the ICE, you can try to crash(kill) the ICE before it can set off an alarm, or you can smoke the node and flee. The black ICE don't do anything... until the alarm goes off. Then they start to blast you with all sorts of nasty effects, they try to crash your programs, fry your chips with power overloads, or even try to kill YOU with electrical surges! The great part about Decker is the multiple ways to get past the same system. For instance, there is an annoying kind of ICE called a guardian ICE that sits in certain nodes and queries anyone who attempts to use that node's functions (download files, activate uplinks, etc.). There are a bunch of ways to handle these guys, for instance, you can run a hide program to try to use the node without the guardian noticing, you can run a deceive program to fool the guardian into thinking you're a legitimate user(you're not), you can run a silence program to disable the alarm and then crash the guardian with attack programs, you can crash the program surreptitiously with a virus program, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Versatile and addicting.

Sound None.

Graphics Not much to speak of, similar to Megagames' old Castle of the Winds.

Replay Actually rather high. Since there are lots of ways to attack a problem, its fun to go back and see what it's like trying to create a hacker that specializes in various different areas; for instance, I've got three save games, one with a hacker that uses lots of hide and decieve programs to escape detection, but can't hold his own for a second if the alarm goes off, a hacker with high skill in attack/defense programs that can take on multiple Black ICE at once, and a hacker with a really high programming skill which lets me design and use advanced software far ahead of the curve that makes up for my weaknesses in other areas.

A fun game, great in quick, five to twenty minute spurts. Solid gameplay, with some fun little side options (like the ability to name your own programs-"Contagion 2.1 successful - Attack Mk 2 Infected for 8 turns") that more than make up for the graphical/audio weaknesses.

It's like a 300kb download. I think you can get it off www.the-underdogs.org, and some other freeware sites, too.

[weasel]

About time I reviewed a CRAPPY game!

High Reflection

Platform: Amiga
Minimum requirements: 68000-class Amiga system, 1 floppy drive, ECS support, joystick
Medium: A single floppy disk.

Okay, this is probably one of the more original ideas I've seen in a puzzle game. A purple ball is bouncing around a single screen, and you must place flashing blue pixels around the field to make the ball bounce into all the gems to open the exit, and in turn, get the ball to the exit. However, the idea is crippled (nay, annihilated) by poor execution.

Graphics - Pretty standard. ECS has a limit of 64 colors on screen, which some people have managed to get a lot of neat stuff from, but High Reflection makes the Amiga look like crap. Everything is gradients, and there's no real animation to speak of (aside from an overused starfield simulation on the title screen). As a matter of fact, this is one of those games that would be better without graphics. They're THAT bad. 4 of 10, doesn't take any advantage of ECS chipset.

Sound - Ick. A dull thud sound when the ball hits something, and an unexplained dying sound when the ball runs out of time or hits one of the many skulls on the play field. I think there was a MOD song on the title screen, but I might have tuned it out because it was old-style MOD-pop...*shudder* 2 of 10 - pretty much no sound to speak of, and crappy title music.

Gameplay - An original idea, yes, but it's made way too difficult. On one system I used to test the game, none of the input devices were accepted (and everything was plugged in). I played the game with a joystick in the mouse port, and it seemed to work. However, that didn't make the game any more fun - the cursor moved at half the speed of the bouncing ball, making it impossible to catch up and stop it from the inevitable bounce off the skulls. Also, the first level is incredibly difficult - all the gems are in an alcove with an opening one space wide (the ball is one space wide), and the exit is the same way! I acciedentally painted a pixel on top of my ball once as well, which got it stuck in place for the remaining 4 minutes of play. I made it to the top score though, but that's pretty much inevitable when all the scores are set to 0 by default. Lastly, the bouncing ball never changes it English, meaning that it always goes at right angles. 4-directional bouncing really sucks. 3 of 10 - Good idea, but poor execution, crappy controls, and the inability to erase your pixels mean that it's too frustrating to keep going.

Overall - 2 of 10. I never thought that I'd find a game this crappy on an Amiga system. Poor gameplay, awful sounds, and graphics that almost literally look like crap. If you see this ANYWHERE, do not touch it, do not let your exposed flesh come within one foot of the darned thing! It is EEEEEVIL!!

[weasel]

Knuckles Chaotix

Platform: Sega Genesis w/32X addon
Publisher: Sega, 1995
Hardware requirements: 32X, one controller (two for co-op play), a brain

This game was originally called "Sonic Chaotic" and was planned to be the fourth game in the Sonic series (Sonic & Knuckles really only counted as Sonic 3.5). Taking the original play style and making teamwork the focus (you have to use your partner's special abilities to progress), the game was eventually killed and ported to the 32X. Not a single trace of Sonic or Tails is present, and instead you have 5 other characters, from Knucles himself, to Vector the Crocodile, to Mighty the Armadillo (if you've seen the Japan-released Segasonic the Hedgehog trackball game, Mighty was player 3). Each one has special abilities - Knuckles can glide and climb walls, etc.

GRAPHICS - The game really works the 32X hardware. With the CPU being a high powered SH-2 instead of the Genesis' 68k chip, the game never slows down. Characters are smoothly animated, things scale and rotate seamlessly, and there's even a few full-3D moments (like the bonus rounds). For the limitations of the hardware, these graphics were very well done. 10 of 10, the best looking game of the 2D graphics era, and can beat anything the SNES can do any day.

SOUND - Didn't pay attention to the sounds. N/A

GAMEPLAY - Here's where it really shines. In the game, your prime objective is to get all 7 Chaos Rings (not Emeralds) before Dr. Robotnik does. This is done by racing through the levels with your partner attached by some elastic energy field that is connected to the rings the two of you are holding. This means that you can't be too far apart from each other. However, this leads to some interesting moves - for example, telling your partner to Hold their position, pulling the elastic field really tight, and letting go to get a huge burst of speed. There are also switches in the levels that only one character can hit, meaning you have to have them Hold on the switch and speed through the door it opens (sometimes there's a switch that you can trigger, and both of you must be on that switch at the same time). There are several other puzzles availible to solve, and as usual you have the traditional Sonic-series 10-minute time limit on your back, forcing you to go through as fast as possible. A very novel twist on the traditional game play. Bonus rounds are wicked awesome, ranging from picking up blue orbs in a large cylinder/flat area, to flying in 3D space and hitting the cubes to get bonueses while avoiding the exits. 9 of 10, co-op mode is exactly the same as single player, pretty much.

CONTROLS - A game like this shouldn't have too many controls for the player to memorize, right? The classic Genesis 3-button pad is used here, with one button for Jump, one button to tell your partner to Hold (disabled in co-op), and one last button to Call your partner to your position Kirby-style if they happen to get stuck. Controls are nice and responsive, making this game nice and fun. 10 of 10 - not hard to get this high, unless it's a PC port of a console game like Metal Gear Solid 2...

OVERALL - 8 of 10. It's a great idea, kinda fun with two players despite being much the same as single player mode, and some really awesome bonus rounds.

[weasel]

El-Hazard
"You're free to go, blah blah blah....I hate my job."

Platform: Game Boy Advance (PUBLIC DOMAIN)
Publisher: Public Domain, 2003 - Availible at www.zophar.net
Hardware Requirements: Either VisualBoyAdvance and a 933+ MHz Pentium 3 system, or a GBA and a flash-rom cart

For those who haven't seen the anime (plenty of you, no doubt), El-Hazard is the story of a schoolboy named Makoto Mizuhara who is staying at school late one night to finish up a science project. He turns the machine on, not even knowing what it is going to do, when he somehow begins communicating with a person from another world. Then, somehow, he is taken to the world of El-Hazard, along with several other people he knows.

GAMEPLAY - The game is a standard interactive fiction type of game - ie., you are given multiple choices to choose from that impact the plot of the game. The game has 8 "chapters", each rather short, and 9 different endings based on your choices. There are very few puzzles in this game, and they're rather easy, but most of the reason people play interactive fiction in the first place is just for the plot. 5 of 10 - Not terribly interactive, but has enough substance to keep you there.

PLOT - The plot in this game is excellent. Sure, the general idea is cliche by now (man transported to other world), but it's how the whole thing rolls together that is the real treasure. Very good character development, and really memorable characters and moments. There's some incredibly funny parts around here too, but you'll just have to play the game to find out because none of them are funny out of context. 8 of 10 - General idea cliche, but very involving. Multiple endings are a serious plus.

GRAPHICS - Lovingly hand-drawn characters and backgrounds. These are, of course, done in anime style. The original Saturn version had fully animated cutscenes, but unfortunately these had to be cut for the GBA version. What we get instead are some cropped out scenes from the original version, but they still do the scenes justice despite the lack of action. Character portraits are well-done too, with several emotions for each character. Very effective! 7 of 10 - but what do you expect for a GBA conversion of a Saturn-based interactive fiction title?

SOUND - Not a lot of sound. Music is done with old-style GBC sound hardware, but it can be turned off. Sounds are fully digitized, and help sometimes to convey the mood of the scene (like Makoto screaming as he is thrown across the front yard of the Shrine of Fire), but sometimes these can get annoying (like if you're playing through the game trying to get the rest of the endings), but they too can be turned off. 4 of 10 - Not very high quality, but scores extra points for being able to deactivate them.

BUGS - You wouldn't expect too many bugs from these kinds of games, but there's some present. Some pictures were not properly implemented, so they appear scrambled in the game; and locking Fujisawa in the palace dungeon in Roshtaria screws the game up. Total bug count: 2

OVERALL - 7.5 of 10. Not the most original kind of game out there, but it's got a great plot to back it up, and it never takes itself too seriously.

"...this is awkward. See ya."

[weasel]

Pressure Cooker

Genre: Arcade Action
Platform: Atari 2600 (also availible on PC in Activision Classics collections)
Company: Activision

You are a fast-food chef. To keep profits going, you arrange to have all the toppings for your hamburgers thrown to you as opposed to having to go all the way across the room to get them. You make burgers to customer's specifications, by catching toppings and putting them on burgers and then tossing them down the chutes.

Graphics

For a 2600 game, it looks good. Everything looks just like you would expect it to look, and there are a few gradients on some items as well. Your character is animated just enough to make him look normal. Considering that this was all crammed into assembly language on a weak CPU and an 8k cartridge, this is quite an accomplishment.

10 of 10 - the best looking Atari 2600 game I've ever seen.

Sounds

Not the strong point of any Atari game. The game starts with a catchy song and keeps playing a quiet version of that song through the entire game. Sounds don't make that much sense, making a loud BANG noise when any topping hits you in the back or sides, and something that sounds like a sword cutting through something when you apply a topping. But ah well, as sounds are not very possible on a 2600 anyway, I won't bother letting sound score affect the game.

5 of 10.

Gameplay

Toppings are shot from the right side of the screen almost randomly (like Tetris blocks). To catch them, you must be aligned with the shooter and facing the topping (good amount of forgiveness here - you always catch it provided you're facing it when it touches you, unless you get hit in the face with it). You then run over to the burger on a conveyor belt and touch it to apply your topping. When the burger is complete, a bun is shot at you, which you can place on the burger and take it down to the chute of the same color as the order on your screen. (Red, Blue, and Green.)

You start with 50 "performance points" (as the manual states it). You lose points if you miss catching a topping, put a topping on the burger more than once, drop a burger from the conveyor belt, or drop a burger in the wrong chute. When you're out of points, the game is over. YOU'RE FIRED YOU LAZY SLACKER!

It's a fun formula, and it gets harder with faster moving conveyors, more toppings per burger, more burgers, and suchwise. A bit more variety would be good, like more toppings (all you get are tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, and onions - THAR IS NO KETCHUP! WHY IS THAR NO KETCHUP) and another chute...

9 of 10.

Bugs

Seeing that this was back in the 80's, when people actually CARED about making their games work, there are no bugs whatsoever! (I'm not sure about the Collection CD's though.)

Overall

A great old game. Doesn't really stand up to more recent games, but it's good for its time. If you're ever on an old-school gaming frenzy, try this one out.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.5 of 10

[GentryXaties]

*comes back from his hypersleep to review another weird old game*

For your convenience (or possibly just confusion), I've added quotes from a log I kept in notepad while I was playing.

Captain Blood
by Mindscape (now defunct... alas poor Mindscape, I knew them... eh... not so well. Oh well.)
Platform: PC, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, perhaps some others (was remade in 1995 on CD-ROM, but this is the 1988 original on Amiga)

187, 086 - ENEMY, INHABITED!
Muscular pink dude again..."Great Warrior", he calls himself. "Planet Trap 2", 252, 69. "Planet Great Fear", 76, 117. "Planet Kill You", 156, 37. "Planet Trap 1", 236, 85. Bombed out again! DAMMIT!

Action, Conversation, Flight Sim... Captain Blood is an unclassifiable game that seems schizophrenic in it's portrayal, but manages to pull it off without so much of a hitch in the way the game unfolds.

GAMEPLAY
119, 090 - ENEMY, INHABITED!
Odd pink creature. Wants me to destroy planet at 56, 73. 08, 121 = Great Fear. "Planet Kill You", 216, 41. "Planet Trap 1", 168, 89. Would have come in handy if I hadn't bombed out again. Landing craft probably blew up the poor guy.

The game starts shortly after the story outlined in the manual. You are Captain Blood, and you've had five genetic clones split off of you, but it sapped your strength in the process. Therefore, to prevent being robotized (hey, I didn't write the story. Mindscape did!), you must search the galaxy for these five clones, capture and kill them, and absorb their bodily fluids into your own system. Sounds pretty weird, huh? It's cooler than it sounds.

You start at a random location in the galaxy, but every sector has a planet in it. You have the option of attempting to land an OORXX (a kind of creature that you have an unlimited supply of) on the planet and looking for intelligent life to communicate with, or going to the galaxy map and traveling through Hyperspace towards another sector and another planet, and maybe an alien. Sometimes your landing will be hampered by enemy missile locks (seemingly out of place when there turns out to be no life on the planet), which can be avoided by flying as low as possible without crashing. You do, however, get quite a few crashes before your OORXX dies and you have to deploy a new one.

When you finally figure out how to land, there's a possibility that an alien lifeform may be waiting for you. If this is the case you can communicate with them by stringing together up to 8 of a dictionary of over 100 icons of this alien language. They will communicate in the same way with you, but translations are brutally precise and literal resulting in such combinations as "ME SMALL YOKO" or "YOU GREAT WARRIOR ME WANT HELP YOU". If you manage to convince the alien that you're a good guy, he'll allow you to teleport him to your ship and you can bring him out of freezer storage later for information. (NOTE: I never figured out what the purpose of this was, but if you do, please let me know.)

The aliens usually have lots in information for you, like locations of planets. Sometimes, to gain their respect, they want you to destroy some planets. Believe it or not, this is an option. You may choose to DESTROY a planet when you're done with it Destruction typically comes with an intense color cycling effect, showing that either A) you really blew it up or B) Captain Blood took too much LSD. They don't come back (obviously). The process repeats - and it's really freakin' fun!

9/10 - Not exactly intuitive, but very shallow learning curve.

GRAPHICS
The graphics largely depend on what version of the game you play. The Amiga version has some good graphics with a great usage of color, considering the 64-color limitation of the ECS chipset. Has a very organic, Giger-esque look about it.

When landing on a planet, you're presented with a smooth wire-frame of the planet. When you land, the terrain fully renders itself. The graphics overall look darn good. No better way to describe them except "a lot like Alien, except it's blue".

9/10 - For the Amiga version anyway. (I wasn't able to obtain a copy of the ST version, and the PC version wouldn't run under Dosbox)

SOUND
Speech for the different commands ("PLANET DESTRUCT ACTIVATED"), good ambience in some places, and a really weird thrust sound. It's pretty good as far as Amiga games go.

188, 005 - INHABITED!
Alien's last words, "YOU BAD BYE". What the heck?! Neural net crashed again - my head hurts!

8/10 - No music. I recommend putting on some period music. Anything quiet and wordless from '88. Or if you enjoy boycotting the 80's (like me), some hard rock or techno would be just fine.

CONTROLS
Entirely mouse-based. Most of the commands are self-explanatory, being icon-based buttons.

9/10 - Could be simpler, but icons are pretty damn self-explanatory.

BUGS
Encountered several nasty "Software Failure" bugs due to invalid settings in the emulator, but as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with the game. (NOTE: Just make sure if you get the Amiga version that you play with the settings somewhat before giving up on it. When I quit playing, I was very very close to getting it running on an emulated 68000 CPU... I did finally determine, however, that there's nothing wrong with the disks. Just my emu-settings =P)

137, 040 - INHABITED!
Or at least, I think it is...freakin' crashes.
Total count: 1 (recurring)

OVERALL
This one's a definite classic. Consult Home of the Underdogs for the PC version and Jambo! for the Amiga version. Again, I'm not sure how to find the ST version, so you might ask around. But not me, obviously.
8.8/10

[weasel]

Pepsi Man
Platform: PSX (Saturn too? I don't remember)
Developer: Unknown - the copy I have was a Chinese pirate copy so it has the movies replaced with the pirate's logo
Genre: Action platformer (sorta)

Alas, the legendary Pepsi Man. The strangest promotional game I've ever seen, a Japan-release only import classic. At least, classic in the eyes of the few people I've ever seen make any mention of it. Let's cut into this baby!

Gameplay
This reminds me a lot of the riding sequences from the Crash Bandicoot games, and the chase scenes too. Basically, Pepsi Man (a leather-clad super hero type person sporting the Pepsi logo on his chest) is running REALLY fast down a street. You guide him along so he doesn't hit anything, speeding up and slowing down accordingly, sometimes jumping, sometimes sliding under things. Occasionally he'll get into a change of pace by riding a skateboard, crashing into a doghouse and getting a barrel stuck on his head (reversing your controls), riding a barrel (making your controls much slower)...

Along the way, you must collect cans of Pepsi. There's 100 in every scene, and every so many you get at the end of a level will get you an extra life.

If Pepsi Man hits something, he'll either die or lose one of three hit points, depending on how severe the hit is. If you just trip over a fence or something, that warrants loss of a hit point. If you're hit by a speeding car or motorbike, you'll die after being launched about 100 feet into the air.

Well...it's not terribly original in terms of gameplay (I'm sure you've seen this sort of thing before after playing any of the Crash games). But I find it fun for the sheer number of places Pepsi Man runs along.

8/10 - I find this rather addicting.

Graphics
Well-represented. Pepsi Man, being clad in a tight leather body suit, would naturally be showing off some muscle, wouldn't he? Well, that's exactly what's going on! His suit is also shiny, with some good usage of environment mapping. He's pretty well animated too, with the right amount of comic exaggeration in his motions. The environments are well represented, with intense amounts of crowds (2D sprites). The levels are all very believable, with good texturing and the like. The screen also motion-blurs when Pepsi Man starts speeding up (by holding Up and hitting Square).

Everything about the graphics is good. I haven't found any glaring errors whatsoever.

9/10 - Well, nothing's perfect. Pepsi Man doesn't have a face, he has his mask entirely over his head with no eyeholes or anything. Probably explains why he has such a hard time seeing things (ie. smashing his head into the title logo).

Sounds
Being a sound designer myself, I can seriously criticize this game. Pepsi Man's footsteps are way too quick for as fast as his animations run. There's plenty of variation and ambience in the game's environment sounds, like traffic sounds in the city levels and a nice big explosion in the slum area when a cop car hits the wall. Pepsi Man's voice effects are rather odd...they fit, but they're rather odd...

I heard no music - they probably ripped that too in this pirate disc.

7/10 - Good ambience, but a few errors here and there...didn't hear any music.

Controls
Took me a while to figure them out, being that they're all condensed into two buttons (the directionals, X to jump, Square to slide, Down+Square to slow down, Up+Square to give yourself a boost of speed). They do make sense though when you get them all figured out.

10/10 - Nice and responsive, supports Dual Shock force feedback.

Bugs
Upon speeding ahead in the third stage, I found myself screwing up the animations of a pair of bikers who would speed ahead and skid to a halt. I would see them skidding as they were just starting to move. Pretty minor, and pretty much just a nitpick....

Total Serious Bug Count: 0

Overall
Pretty strange game. Also pretty fun at parts. Not the most original game of all time, but a very unique promotional game.

8.5/10

[weasel]

Jackal aka Top Gunner, aka Tokushu Butai Jackal
Platform: Arcade, NES
Genre: Scrolling shooter
Company: Konami
Year: 1989/1990

An overhead scrolling shooter, with you in control of a Jeep as you drive along the countryside running over people and blowing up buildings, as well as rescuing POW's and making your way to the enemy base.

GAMEPLAY
Simple enough. Drive around, 8-directional movement, game doesn't scroll without you. You are equipped with a .30 cal machine gun (semi-auto, so better get that trigger finger warmed up), only fires straight up; and some variety of explosive weapon (grenades or rockets), which fires in whatever direction your Jeep is moving in. You can kill anything with your machine gun, but you can't blow up buildings with it; while explosives work on anything but they're slow and the blast radius isn't very large. Enemies get ever tougher the farther you go on. Your Jeep will blow up if it's hit by any enemy fire, but you have multiple lives. Some scenes get pretty intense as you're weaving through enemy fire like your Jeep bears the soul of Chow Yun Fat, hammering on your fire button.

7/10 - Not terribly original at this point, but 8-directional manual-scrolling movement is pretty good. Ability to go back is good.

GRAPHICS
Pretty decent for the time. Well animated (but small) people, and all the details of terrain (debris, craters, tumbleweeds and such). Arcade version sports well-detailed sprites on a vertically mounted screen, while NES compensates for having a horizontally mounted screen and actually ports the graphics well. Wouldn't expect any less from Konami.

9/10 - At this point, graphics hardware was getting more advanced, with scaling and rotation. I'm surprised that the graphics in the arcade version didn't support those, with as much time as it could have saved for the tank turrets...but pretty darn good anyway!

SOUND
Arcade: Well-composed, memorable soundtrack running on a YM2612 FM chip, with some pretty good sounds for the explosions and suchwise.

NES: Well ported, machinegun sound is almost exactly the same. Propz.
8/10 - Music can tend to get annoying after a bit.

BUGS
* When the vehicle explodes, a new one is supposed to speed in from the bottom of the screen. Sometimes the vehicle speeds in and ends up in some pretty weird places (like on water, or in walls). Thankfully you can get out of them.
Bug Count: 1/2 (it's there, but safeguards were put in against it)

OVERALL
Good action shooter, good for if you wanna blow stuff up since you can't kill your own men. Would recommend getting the arcade version over the NES version if you can.

8/10

[Goshi]

Nightshade

Console: NES
Genere: Action/RPG
ERSB Rating: Uh... defintly not an E

Back then in NES days Nintendo felt tight aboput games with violence with such and very few games made. Even they did they become very obscure. Nightshade is an example of one.

Plot:
Hmm... Vortex dies and some egyption dude name Suketh decides to take over the world in the craziess way possible. And you Nightshade must stop him from doing his evil plans.
Quite bland for a plot.
4/10

Gameplay:
The game has RPG elements, you simply go round talk to everyone, buy stuff and such.
Bump into some evil guy to fight him/her ect.
In battle however it's kinda like a fighting game, you punch, kick and use items you collected. You also must collect scarbs to access Suketh's secret lair.
You also must gain popularity points to enter some place where you can alot (Not really but it's very important) The problem is you'll get to a point wondering, what the heck am I supposed to do? Because like some games you'll be stuck in one spot without a single clue what to do next.
So uh...
7/10

Graphics:
Not bad, they're quite good actually but some sprites do look mucked up, otherwise the graphics aren't too bad.
9/10

Sound/Music:
Ugh, there isn't many sound effects in fact you probably won't hear any at all. As for music it can be annoying. You only hear a very select few of songs and some of them are very annoying.
6/10

Controls:
The controls are responsive but it sometimes it doesn't allowing baddies to beat you up until you actually press a button to repel them.
So your like "Attack Attack! Stupid button why didn't you punch that idiot!"
8/10

Overall

This game is quite good it's shame you probably won't find it in game store anywhere.

8/10

[Goshi]

(This game appears to be obscure since most people I know never heard of it or haven't played it. If it isn't feel free to move it to the other topic)

Bomberman Kart
Console: PS2
ERSB Rating: E

Bomberman's first attempt at a racing game will this game ever shine or fail miserably. Well, here's what I think.

Plot:
What plot? Racing games don't need dumb plots.
0/10

Gameplay:
The game is like most racing games, first you select your driver then you select the kart afterwards you slect a track/cup and race. Like most racing games there's powerups to hinder your oppodents also there's powerups which will hinder yourself if you don't use it right. There are 5 characters to choose from (White Bomber, Black Bomber, Red Bomber, Gold Bomber and Pretty Bomber who has been renamed to Pink Bomber for some reason) and 1 secret and 5 karts with two secret ones.
It's good but it's been overused it many racing games already.
8/10

Control:
The controls are fine except for the accursed drift turn. It is so dodgy you'll end up screaming becuase it screws you up so easily. It's pure evil!
6.5/10

Multiplayer:
There's kart racing against each other but you'll probably avoid that (Becuase of that accursed drift turn) and go for the classic bomberman mode. It's basically the classic bomberman multiplayer game which is amazing popular and fun. The new feature is the hinder character which replaces the skull powerups however it is not as fun as skull powerups becuase the only way to remove it is to give it to someone instead of waiting for it to wear off which is annoying espically when the game has just started. Revenge mode is back but it just some stupid snipe the bomber thing which makes it easy for revenge bombers, but you can't make the sniper move faster which is annoying. The multiplayer has seemed to lost it's funness in this version.
8.5/10

Sound/Music:
The classic bomberman multiplayer song is boring to listion too but the kart racing songs are quite good. The style of it for some reason reminds me of Snowboard Kids but. It's not catchy but its nice to listion too.
9/10

Overall:
This game is fine but it's controls need alot of fixing.
8/10

[weasel]

Dracula X: Chi No Rondo Rondo of Blood
The far superior PC Engine Super CD-ROM version of Dracula X, widely hailed as perhaps the greatest old-school Castlevania game ever.

DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER: Konami
GENRE: Side-scroller
ESRB: Huh? There's no ESRB in Japan as of 1993.

GAMEPLAY

The game begins with you playing Richter Belmont in the year 1792. After hearing that your town is under attack, you hop on your horse carriage and make your way to town. You're attacked by none other than Death, and must defend yourself until you get to town. Once you hit town, the real game begins.

By "old-school Castlevania", I mean that this is not an exploration/action/RPG like Symphony of the Night and the GBA games. This is semi-linear platform stages, no experience points, and pure skill instead of "this sword does more damage". Traditional whip-slinging action at it's absolute finest - you don't even have to worry about upgrading your whip, because it's at its longest right off the bat.

Richter can use standard sub-weapons, including a spiffed-up throwing knife (3 at once, and they fly faster), axe, Cross Boomerang, and Holy Water, just to name a few. Richter can also use an Item Crash by pressing the Select button. If you have no sub-weapon, Richter will strike once with a flame whip. If you do have a sub-weapon, Richter uses this weapon to use an ultimate attack - a heavy barrage of throwing knives, acid rain, and a screen full of crosses.

The beauty of the stage-based gameplay here is the secrets you can find. Occasionally you can find alternate paths which will give you cool stuff, secret levels, or even a second playable character (Maria Renard). There are only about 8 levels total, but this can be boosted up to nearly 15 if you find al the secret levels.

After progressing a but into the game, you can find Maria Renard and rescue her. Unlike her appearance in Symphony of the Night, she's only 12 years old - but that doesn't stop her from RULING. She can double-jump, she has totally different sub-weapons and item-crashes, and her primary weapon (a pair of doves) is far more versatile than Richter's whip. If you lose all your lives as one character (or reset the system), you can switch to the other character to use at will. Just keep in mind that the characters can take different paths.

10/10 - In my opinion, the best old-school Castlevania ever - two characters, lots of secrets, and just the right amount of difficulty balance.

SOUNDS

All the music in this game is contained on 18 audio tracks on the CD. In addition to the usual new music (some pretty memorable tunes here), there are a few remixes of older Castlevania tunes (like Stage 1 from the first game). By today's standards (and the standards of SotN), the music sounds kinda cheesy, but it is pretty good stuff.

Sound effects are generated from the PCE's FM chips, as well as the occasional digital sound for item crashes, enemies, and other things. It sounds best if you run it in Magic Engine with the interpolation enabled - otherwise it sounds kinda "hard".

7.5/10 - Classic music, but it's kinda cheesy compared to SotN.

GRAPHICS

Dracula X on the SNES sported a bland look. Chi no Rondo has much more definition on colors and tilesets, not to mention much more variety in graphics. Graphical effects are the best they possibly can be on the PCE's limited hardware, and boy do they ever milk this for all it's worth.

You'll find the occasional anime cutscene interlude in the middle of some levels (like when Richter rescues Maria). These cutscenes are animated conservatively - in other words, they only move when they need to. They bear a very serious look about them (unless Maria is involved, in which case she steals the show with her unbearable cuteness).

7/10 - Good for a technological showcase of the PCE, if nothing else.

CONTROLS

Anybody who's played the NES Castlevania games will know that you can't jump on or off the stairs. This has been fixed in Dracula X. You still can't control yourself in the air (unless you are double-jumping as Maria), and Richter doesn't have the multi-directional whipping like Simon does in Super Castlevania 4. Aside from that, the controls feel fluid, and are simple enough that they become second nature after a matter of seconds.

BUGS

Only emulator-related bugs here. I didn't get any sound in the Richter/Maria rescue scene when using Magic Engine's integrated System 3 card, and using an external ROM image of it wouldn't let the game boot. The game itself is flawless, and any bugs encountered would most likely be emulation bugs.

OVERALL

It's up to you if an old-school Castlevania side scroller is worth upwards of $100 - it's nigh impossible to find an ISO with Konami cracking down on any sites that even mention it. You'll also do good in spending the ~$30 to register Magic Engine, because an eBay'd PCE system could be up to $1000.

9/10

UPDATE for Dracula X: Chi no Rondo review
I mentioned in the final notes that you'd be doing good in registering Magic Engine - this is not so. YAME (Yet Another Multi Emulator) handles Dracula X much better than Magic Engine, removing all the bugs (ie. your character turns blue when in a stage with water, no speech in cutscenes) and even sounding better. You can get YAME at zophar.net.

[weasel]

Castlevania: Dracula X (AKA: Akumajou Dracula XX)

American fans of Konami's Castlevania series were totally disappointed when Konami decided not to bring Dracula X directly to the States. Instead, what we got was a half-hearted SNES port, which was actually intended to be a sequel (which is why it was also released in Japan).

PLATFORM: SNES
ESRB: Likely an E.

GAMEPLAY

The game plays much like Dracula X on the PC-Engine. However, the original levels (and all the secret things) have all been removed, and new levels were put in their place. The game is now sickeningly linear. And add to that, while you CAN still rescue Maria and the like, you can't play as Maria OR save your game every stage. Even the final battle with Dracula himself has been ruined - the battle is fought on a series of columns, and if you fall, you are dead.

Richter now moves slower than he did before. His whip is still always at its longest, and you can still Item Crash - however the crashes are toned down a bit in terms of awesomeness. They do mostly the same damage (barring the Holy Cross).

7.5/10 - Why couldn't Konami just give us the original game? It might have helped the Turbo Grafx 16 do better on the US market if they had some name recognition!

SOUNDS

Richter's voices have all been re-recorded at slightly higher quality than on the PCE (though that may just be because the SNES sound hardware has gaussian interpolation on it). The music has been expertly ported to SPC, and in some cases the soundtrack is better than the CD version (first stage in particular). The whip also has a nifty little chain-slink sound when you use it, and when it comes in contact with anything, it makes a rather satisfying punch sound.

9.5/10 - Memorable and very cool tunes, including remixes. Almost better than the CD version overall.

GRAPHICS

Nowhere near the CD version. There are some cool effects that are only possible on the SNES, but Konami had to sacrifice too much to fit a 500 meg game onto a 2 meg cartridge. The special effects for Item Crashes (ie. Holy Cross) have been toned down, and Richter now animates a little too fast on the ground in relation for how fast he actually moves.

On the plus side, you get to see some cool things like the flames on the first stage.

Tilesets for backgrounds aren't as varied, and are often times quite bland.

6/10 - Argh!

CONTROLS

Controls are worse. It takes more work to get Richter to get on stairs, and jumping is a serious pain because of the lack of air control. Too many times on the first stage, I would try to jump a small gap and get knocked into the abyss by a Medusa head. This would not have happened had I been given a bit more control.

They DID keep in Richter's backflip move, which comes in handy on some cases.

BUGS

None to speak of.

OVERALL

If you don't feel like spending over $100 to get the PCE version, try and find this one. It's decent, but it's nowhere near the quality of the PCE version.

7.5/10

[weasel]

Let's kick it into over-drive with a REALLY obscure game!

Amulets & Armor
Developer: United Software Artists
Publisher: Unknown, probably self-published
Genre: First-person action RPG
ESRB: None given, but likely a T (animated blood and violence)
Platform: PC/DOS
Website: It got domain-squatted
Release Date: March 1997

Like System Shock? Deus Ex? Ultima Underworld? Daggerfall? This here is an attempt by an unknown company to make their own version of at least one of those, armed with a ripped-off copy of the Doom engine (I know for a fact that this is the Doom engine - the map behaves similarly, and the game exhibits many of the same quirks that Doom did - I'll get into those in Bugs), proprietary file formats, and the HMI sound system. It isn't as classic as any of the above-mentioned titles, but it holds a special place in my heart.

GAMEPLAY

You begin by selecting a class. Your class dictates your starting equipment, stats, equipment restrictions, what kind of magic runes you need for spells (three kinds - Cleric, Arcane, and Mage), and audio taunts. There's probably about 15 different classes in the game, ranging from the hard-hitting tanks (Knight) to the magic users (Mage, Warlock, Cleric) to the thieving bums (Mercenary). Each class is represented by a decently-drawn full-color portrait.

When you have finished with your class selection, you get to choose a quest. I have never finished the first quest (Visions of Jugurtha), but thankfully, you can skip it and go through other, more challenging quests like the Knights of Andrew, or (my personal favorite) Exiguus and the Orb of the Undead. Quests typically last through three or four different sized maps.

When you finally get into the game, the interface is Doom-like, with an element of System Shock thrown in for good measure. You have your movement keys, a strafe key, Use key, and Jump key (for bunny-hopping action). Attacking is done with either the Control key, or clicking the "USE" button below the icon that shows your weapon. This is also how you use items - which can be a pain sometimes, rifling through your five-page backpack to find your healing potions, then picking it up, dropping it into the Weapon slot, then hitting Control and getting your sword readied again. There is a trick to be seen with this, too - if you ever have a need for two weapons at once (ie. a sword and a crossbow), you can pick up one of them by clicking on it, then firing with your current weapon, and quickly switching to the other when the need arises.

Of particular note are the ranged weapons in this game, particularly the wands and crossbows. The game has high-level autoaiming in place, and puts minor effort into leading your shots for you. The crossbow holds 8 different kinds of bolts, which can be switched through the Ammo tab with the mouse. Normal bolts come in handy in the earlier missions, but later on they are far too weak to be of any use. Piercing bolts are essentially Normal bolts that do more damage. Also availible are Poison bolts (attack like Normal bolts and add Poison to an enemy), Acid bolts (which eat through armor and do more damage), and Fire bolts (which are, essentially, rockets). Wands are varied and cast several different spells - from utility (Push, Pull, Knock), to Attack (Homing Dart, Fireball, Disintegration). They cost upwards of 10 Platinum each, so they are really only worthy investments for Mages and the like (who won't be buying armor heavier than Leather) - but if you can find one lying around in a level, use it! They are virtually limitless (they use your own MP, which regenerates at a moderate pace).

The Spell system is one of my favorite spell systems in any RPG. Each character class can support one of three types of Rune - the Cleric runes (which cast healing and utility spells), Mage runes (which cast more Attack spells), and Arcane runes (which are balanced out). You can find 9 of these runes per type. You enter the runes with the numeric keypad (or click them with the mouse), in a sequence of up to 5 runes, then hit Cast to see what it did. To ease the process of experimentation, you'll find scrolls around the levels that bear spells for each of the magic disciplines. These scrolls are stored in your Journal. (If you experiment and find a spell by accident, you can use the Notes tab to keep track of them.) While you can easily buy all 9 of your runes from the store between maps, it's not recommended (4 platinum per rune), and you can easily find most of them lying around the earlier quests (4 out of the 9 Arcane runes were found in Knights of Andrew).

All the swords and sorcery are useless without things to use them on. Enemies are dirt-stupid in this. They can do serious damage to you if you're not careful, but their AI is worse than Doom's. If you hurt them enough, they start running away, and will have to turn around to attack you. Most of the time, they won't turn all the way, and will attack the wall instead. Not to mention that hitting them in the back does slightly more damage.

Finally, we have the Multiplayer aspect of the game. While it's difficult these days to find two computers that can run the game flawlessly and can link to each other, the result is fun. Up to 4 players can gang up on the Sorcerors of the Star, tossing things at each other, fighting over the gold, and protecting the tank while he picks his armor back up. Fun for the whole family! (Note: may not apply to extended families. "Mommy, when am I gonna get to play?")

Best of all, dying presents virtually no penalty - you drop everything. It's not hard at all to get it all back, as it is all dropped into a neat little pile of carrots, coins, and iron pants. Just hold Alt and rapidly click on the pile (Alt-clicking will instantly pick stuff up and wear it if it applies).

Now the bad side of things. Some quests are designed rather poorly, in that the way to go is not always apparent. Visions of Jugurtha suffers greatly in that respect - I still have not found the way to go, after rifling through the entire thing 3 times (with and without my Magic Map Ring). Other quests have traps that are impossible to escape from - for example, there is a trap in Elmore's Retreat that will endlessly teleport you back and forth and not allow you to get off the teleporter.

9/10 - Fun and involving, but you may have to restart maps several times to memorize all the traps.

GRAPHICS

For a game from 1997, it sure looks dated. It still uses the Doom engine, with none of the enhancements to come from newer incarnations (barring the transparency tables). Considering the Doom technology, the maps are undetailed and rather bare at times, and textures are misaligned much of the time. For those of you familiar with Doom editing techniques, I also found several doors in which the door-tracks were not set with the "Lower Unpegged" tag, making the "tracks" move upwards with the doors. It looks very newbie-ish.

Characters look really cheesy - they're from pre-rendered models, and they all appear shiny and smooth. Shiny and smooth isn't the best way to go, people, especially not when you're rendering hair or leather armor. Characters appear really pixellated and blocky, and they pick the weirdest colors for things (the guards in Level 1 of Exiguus and the Undead are bright orange, and mithril armor is green).

The interface at the very least appears decent.

6/10 - Ugh.

SOUNDS

This could easily be the work of one man and his vocal chords, and a few household objects. I heard two or three stock sounds (lightning and a modifed explosion from Doom), and the rest involved annoying creaking doors and (to quote Thief from the intro to Arfenhouse 2) "REEEEEAAALLLY BAAAADDDD VOOOOIIICCCEE AAACCCTINGGGG!!!!!111". Kill an elf in Visions of Jugurtha and see what I mean. The character's audio taunts are pretty cheesy too, but in a Resident Evil type of way. With the Knight, there is one taunt that stands out - "DEFEND THYSELF!" When he shouts this taunt, he sounds exactly like Michael Dorn (Worf, of Star Trek: The Next Generation). This was really the high point of the sounds to me - I spent countless hours playing the demo, using this taunt as a good-luck charm. As I ran into a room, I would repeatedly shout "DEFEND THYSELF" at its inhabitants as I cleaved their skulls in with my sword.

6/10 - Cheesy, yes, and sometimes annoying - but this gets a point up for being able to use audio taunts in single player.

BUGS

Several bugs that were exhibited in Doom come back here. I spotted a major "Slime trail" bug in Elmore's Retreat, as well as several mis-aligned textures. When enemies were killed too close to a wall, I would notice their heads or feet sticking through the floor later on as I would walk on top of that wall. I also had several experiences of losing my armor (dying under a crusher and having it eaten by the crusher). The disappearing items bug is really rare, but it's pretty nasty when it happens.

OVERALL

This is a worthy download - it's availible on Underdogs, for the low price of a 50 meg download (free). If you like System Shock, Underworld, or other games like that, give this one a try.

7/10

[weasel]

Intelligent Qube

Platform: Playstation
Genre: Action Puzzle
ESRB: E (or, K-A as it was back in 1997)
Developer/Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America

Very few people remember this incredible puzzle gem of a Playstation game that was released back in 1997. Critically acclaimed, highly addictive, and never sold more than...oh, maybe 5 copies. Thankfully, those five copies were distributed over BitTorrent, otherwise I'd never have been able to find the game.

GAMEPLAY

You are placed on a gameboard made of cubes. Your objective is to "capture" all of the cubes and get through alive, lest the cubes smash ye into tiny bits (in thy mercy). You accomplish this by marking a single cube with the X button, waiting for another cube to roll over the marker, then triggering it to capture it. This is complicated by several matters - you can't capture the black "Forbidden" cubes, or a row of the play field will be hacked off. There are green marble "Advantage" (or Bomb) cubes that you can take, that when captured, leave a green marker in their place. Hitting Triangle will trigger these markers and capture all squares around the marker (including Forbiddens if you're not careful). You can rig up all sorts of chain reactions by triggering a Bomb marker next to another Advantage cube, then triggering that marker, and so on.

Later in the game, the sole objective becomes more obvious - survive. Hack a path through the playfield, and make sure you end up on the other side (and not squished flat). Just make sure you get all the Advantage blocks taken care of, otherwise you'll lose a row for wach one that drops off the playfield.

You die by losing enough rows that the cubes push you clear off. You gain rows by clearing all of the blocks (aside from Forbiddens, natch) for a "Perfect" bonus. For each time the cubes roll over, a move is added to the meter in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Clear all the blocks in exactly the number of moves given to you, and you get a 5000 point bonus. Do it in fewer moves, and you get 10000 points, and extra IQ points in the end of the game (that's good, because the game indirectly calls you stupid if you die in the first or second stages. IQ 48 on my first try.)

To sweeten the arcade-game deal, there are several unlockables you can get from beating the game and meeting certain conditions. Just beat the game, and you get a new playable character that runs faster. Beat it with a high IQ rating, you get another character. Fit enough conditions, and you'll unlock Survival Mode, more characters to play as, and even an editor mode that lets you make your own puzzles.

There is a two-player mode, but I never tested it.

10/10 - Ingenious gameplay, lots of tricks and traps, gets very challenging, and has plenty of unlockables and a two-player mode.

GRAPHICS

Well, what can I say, considering that this is a game about cubes? The graphics are very simplistic, and I'm actually surprised they used polygons instead of a cube-mapping engine (cough, cough). But yeah...the player characters are low-poly, untextured, and animated pretty decently. The cube-grid is reflective on some stages, making a rather nifty effect.

7/10 - Minimalistic approach certainly doesn't make this the best-looking PSX game ever, but it works, and there aren't any glitches.

SOUNDS

Here is one of the many games that really shines in the sounds department. The sound effects are abstract and highly effective, there is speech to a very limited degree with a pseudo-announcer (First stage! Perfect! Again!), and the music is just incredible. It portrays the same kind of mood that the battle scenes in the Star Trek TV series and films did, and puts a kind of urgent tone to the game. This whole thing is done with an orchestra, and it's highly effective for the game.

10/10 - One of the best-sounding games I've ever played, and one that I wouldn't mind letting people listen to (if I could turn off the sound effects and just listen to the music, this would get an 11/10 score).

BUGS

I haven't found a single one.

OVERALL

Absolutely, positively worth your time - provided you can find it, of course. It goes on eBay for anywhere from $7.50 (used, decent condition) to $115 (mint, unopened, factory sealed).

[Razerboy]

Kid Niki

Platform: NES
Genre: Pointless Sidescroller

We start off the game with the main character (Kid Niki) jumping through a wall made of ricepaper, and the slogan "NINJA SCHOOL WILL HELP YOU" plastered over the screen.

You then start the game, running across repetitive green grass. Blue people in hockey masks keep on coming so you put a large cross-shaped metal thingy in front of you and the blue people magically fall down.

When you die, a strange "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" noise is heard, as Niki flips around and around.

The most entertaining thing about this game is if you play the rom on the NESticle emulator, when Niki dies, it never stops. It just repeats itself, with the annoying "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" sound playing over and over.

This game is FAIL.

2/10.

[Goshi]

Woah... Wildweasel sure makes a little too many reviews... uh... anyway...

Ganbare Goemon 3
Console: SNES
Genere: Action
Developer: Konami
ERSB: E

As far as I know this game is obscure, main reason is because this game was never released in english. But anyway, onto the review.

Plot:
My Japanese is really poor but anyway, the game starts off when Wise Man calls Goemon and Ebisumaru to his house and he annouces that he has finished making a Time Machine with it he plans to go back in time and chase after all the women in the past (Oddly sounds like Master Roshi from Dragon Ball...) however soon Ebisumaru's hideous twin sister Bisumaru comes and takes the Time Machine with it she plans to go to the future and create a large army to destroy the various times, so its up the Goemon crew to stop her.
7/10

Gameplay:
Unlike the previous games which were solely based on action this game has a few overhead stages which play very simular to Zelda games. With it you must solve some sort of puzzle or rather than you get to go to the action stages, the stages play sorta like Zelda stlye dungeons except you have to use all 4 of the character's abilities to get through them at times also later in the game you receive some Magitek looking armor thing and you have to use to break through certain walls or objects. Also like Zelda you start off with very little health but by collecting Fortune Cats you can increase it works just like Zelda, in fact I think this game is little too much like Zelda. One really nice feature in the game is the first person view boss fights, its graphically appealing plus its lots of fun to do.
8/10

Graphics:
The game makes more use of the Mode 7 engine than it did in the last game, the Impact first person view fights have imroved graphics wise much more, you can now see your characters controlling and anime style faces appear in front of you when the enemy is speaking, also the chase scenes make huge use of Made 7 as well the graphics are pretty good and they're not eye searing at all when it comes to looking at them. However the overhead area graphics are very bland each area looking almost the same as the last which is a huge flaw.
8.5/10

Sound and Music:
The music is nice although the boss tune sounds very cheesy but otherwise the music is fine, although the overhead area lack tunes, in the second world the same song plays for almost each area thus you'd probably end up being sick of that song.
8.5/10

Multiplayer:
The multiplayer is simple I actually never tired but if I'm correct both character get to play through the level instead which adds a slight more fun, I'm not sure how multiplayer works in the Impact fights however so anyway..
7/10

Bugs:
As far as I know this is only an emulator bug, if your using ZSNES becareful when using Save States as it still stores the data of watching events or collecting items sometimes if abuse it you could end up trapped a room where an event is supposed to occur only to end up screwing it up.

Overall:
39/50

Not bad at all...

[weasel]

DOUBLE REVIEW: Stellar 7 and Nova 9
Stellar Fire and C64 Stellar 7 not included

Developer/Publisher: Dynamix
Platform: PC, Amiga, Atari ST(?), Mac(?)
Genre: Action
Estimated ESRB (if it existed back then): E (Animated Violence)

Stellar 7

You're probably all familiar with the tried-and-true tank simulation formula of the original Battlezone of 1980. Imagine a more up-to-date version - one with powerups, multiple weapons to choose from, more enemies, unique worlds, and (gasp!) a story.

The story goes as such: An evil guy named Gir Draxon from the Arcturus system is sending out an armada of his most elite forces to wage war on Earth, occupying other systems as he goes. So you, a guy named John (and his super battle tank, the Raven), have to fight his forces across several levels. The occasional cinematic sequence plays every now and then, explaining events that have happened over at Draxon's place (mostly involving conversations between him and his assistant, Raf Torin, who he eventually vaporizes upon failing to destroy you for the last time).

Well, the story isn't exactly Arthur C. Clarke material, but it provides an interesting diversion when you've grown tired of annihilating Draxon's forces.

On to the gameplay - on controlling the Raven, you are given an initial stock of all seven powerups (three uses each), and a cannon with infinite ammo. The controls are simple enough - the arrows move and turn the Raven (turning controls are inverted when you move backwards, which is a nice touch), the space bar fires the cannons, and the Tab and Enter keys select and use powerups. The game can be played without powerups, but they will come in handy at some point (the powerups range from a shield that protects you from damage, a cloaking device that makes you harder to hit, turbo thrusters that make you move forward really fast, and a more powerful cannon that can destroy obstacles as well as enemies). The enemies have decent enough AI that they can actually shoot you and perform evasive tactics (though their mileage may vary depending on how large the foe is and how good you are at leading shots). Keeping with the true arcade style of Battlezone, points are awarded based on enemies you destroy, and Dynamix also added the additional benefit of a hidden warp system (destroy the right tree or rock, and you get to skip a few levels) as well as some pretty fun bosses (the Guardian at the end of each level is truly large, even for the time).

The graphics, for the time, are pretty good. This was Wolfenstein-era technology, and even though Dynamix opted for a full-3D, flat-shaded polygon system, it doesn't detract from the game's visual style very much at all. Plenty of imagination went into the model designs (even though the trees look like crystal formations at times), and the non-model graphics (cinema scenes, the tank's cockpit, among other things) are also very well drawn and thought-out. It won't hurt your eyes, and it certainly won't tax your computer.

On to the audio spectrum of things, Stellar 7 boasts full compatibility with PC Speaker, Sound Blaster, and Roland MT-32 systems. The PC Speaker sounds are annoying at best, and the Sound Blaster sounds are really only there to use the FM chip (though at some point there was speech in the cutscenes, but not for all of them). But to be perfectly honest, Stellar 7 really isn't worth playing unless you have an MT-32 hooked up. You can hardly tell it's MIDI anymore, the way it's set up - you have booming explosions, computer blips, and a pretty cool soundtrack. It's a wonder to listen to, and I'm quite surprised that it manages to outclass even some modern games' soundtracks despite its age.

Overall, Stellar 7 is great if you have an old DOS machine you want to put through its paces. But it's much more enjoyable with a Roland.

Nova 9

In the sequel to Stellar 7, Gir Draxon crashlands on an alien planet and discovers something that will bring him back to power. After blowing away some poor little creatures, he once again sets up his empire.

Meanwhile, you (still as John) are hanging around Terran Command (a secret base hidden inside an asteroid) when your computer, S.A.R.A.H., picks up a suspicious distress signal. The ones that sent the signal are initially in a panic, shouting something about Arcturans, when the signal cuts out. They send another communication shortly after, explaining that nothing has gone wrong and that they do not need assistance. SARAH recommends that you investigate, so you hop in the Raven II and do some investigating (after blowing up some Arcturans).

The story is much more interesting than Stellar 7's, bringing more depth to the characters (and more characters overall - like Sparky, your robotic maintenance engineer who often complains if you bring the Raven back full of holes). SARAH will even contact you mid-mission, giving you useful intelligence on the situation at hand (she also has a sense of humor at parts - "Hey, John, those land mines can't float on water! What are you trying to do, blow up a dolphin?")

This brings me to the new additions in gameplay. The original powerup system has been axed in favor of a slightly more arcade-styled system. You must pick up powerup modules which will be stored in your ship's inventory, and can be used at will (though some activate automatically, like the invincibility item). The interface for using items is somewhat improved, allowing you to use the Q, W, E, A, D, Z, X, and C keys to select your items. You will also get multiple weapons to select as you wish - your Cannon which has infinite ammo, land mines (limited, and their use is also somewhat difficult), and a laser cannon which Sparky will install if you've been a good boy and not bashed up the tank too much.

Occasionally, SARAH will open a warp gate that will take you back to base (so Sparky can repair the ship, charge the shields, and install new gadgets like a rear-view camera). During these points, the game cuts to a story interlude, so SARAH and John can speak to each other about the latest happenings (plot-wise).

The coolest new addition to Nova 9 is how the game handles tank damage. Unlike in Stellar 7 where your tank's health was only measured by a simple bar graph, Nova 9's damage system is much more complex. As you take hits, your systems will go out one by one in a realistic manner. It starts with your shields - the front, rear, and side shields each have their own individual health. Once those go down, your tank's hull begins to take damage, resulting in your radar systems shorting out, your inventory slots becoming unusable, your propulsion systems slowing down, and your manuevering jets going out (on an individual basis - sometimes it'll be faster to turn left than right). When your tank is on its last legs, the alarm starts to sound, flashing the whole screen red and emitting a harsh buzzer sound.

The game's graphics have improved from Stellar 7 - the cockpit is better drawn, with more animated elements (like the servos which show you the status of your maneuvering jets). The environments are more convincing, and explosions involve more debris and firey goodness. The models have more polygons, and the cutscenes are even better looking than before.

The game's sound, again, requires an MT-32 for the most enjoyment. The Sound Blaster sounds are competent enough to get by, but you're seriously missing out if you lack the MT-32. The explosions are even cooler, and the music is just incredible. It really drew me into the game. The game's main theme (which can be downloaded as a MIDI file from the 'net) still draws shivers down my spine when I hear it.

Nova 9 is everything that Stellar 7 wasn't and should have been. I am surprised at this point that nobody has attempted to make a full remake in modern technology - it really needs it!

STELLAR 7
GAMEPLAY: 8/10 - Giving you all the powerups from the start makes things a bit easy at times, when you know that you can usually bail yourself out of sticky situations. Difficulty curve is a bit harsh.
GRAPHICS: 8.5/10 - Well-drawn cutscenes and 2D graphics. Models are well-designed, but "natural" objects like trees and rocks sometimes look strange (ie. not like trees and rocks at all).
SOUND: 9.5/10 - Sometimes a bit weak.
OVERALL: 8/10 - It may not be too lasting, but it's fun.

NOVA 9
GAMEPLAY: 9.5/10 - The new powerup system is nice, fun and original weapons (remote detonated cannon shells), interesting enemies. Difficulty curve still a bit harsh.
GRAPHICS: 9.5/10 - Excellent for the time. Natural objects occasionally odd-looking but better represented than before. Nice little effects like the wake of ships at sea, very well-done cutscenes, and unique enemy designs.
SOUND: 10/10 - This is the ultimate Killer App for people with Roland systems. It still holds a special place in my heart, and manages to stand up to even modern game soundtracks (it beats Activision's Battlezone games, even).
OVERALL: 9.75/10 - If you have an old DOS machine lying around with an MT-32, what the crap are you still reading this for? Get over to Underdogs and grab this pronto!

[weasel]

Segata Sanshiro: Shinken-yuki
English translation of title unavailable at the moment

Developer/publisher: SEGA
System: Japan
Release date: 1998
ESRB: What is this ESRB?
Extra hardware required: None - the saves are small enough to not even give the internal backup RAM any difficulty.

Segata Sanshiro - the one true hero in video game marketing. Capable of overthrowing entire rave parties with his Judo throws and choke-holds. Makes perfect home runs with his feet. Performs Olympic speed-skating while barefoot. What's not to like about the guy? He was popular enough in Japan to warrant this small collection of mini-games (small = about 12 different games of varying difficulty) with his name and likeness. And good luck finding this one for a cheap price (unless you got lucky and found it on an emulation site like I did).

And if you're not familiar with Segata-san, go read up on his history and greatness (and for the love of cheese, watch the commercials!)

GAMEPLAY

Segata would settle for nothing less in this game. About twelve different mini-games, all of them based somehow on each of the commercials he's done (like the Christmas present drop, where he's dressed as Santa Claus, or "Burning Rangers" where he runs through a burning building Metro-Cross style). I'm sure the games are explained adequately in Segata's speech before each one of them, but seeing as I don't speak/read/understand much Japanese myself, I was forced to figure things out (turns out, with a little bit of trial and error, this is one of the more import-friendly games out there).

The games themselves are pretty simple in nature - they're all single-button games (which button you press is entirely up to you) with varying involvement from the D-pad (and no, it doesn't support the 3D pad). There are actually a couple that are based on old Sega games to some extent (like a Columns clone in which you must get very large matches in order to prevent Segata from drowning). Some are much more difficult than others - I managed to beat the Home Run Derby in about six tries, but I still haven't finished the Land Mine Judo Contest yet because I haven't exactly figured out how it works (it feels a bit random - and have you noticed I like to abuse parentheses?)

Outside of the game, you can play back any of Segata's pre-game speeches through the Voice Test, watch any of the commercials you've unlocked (each game completed gives you a commercial to watch, and beating all of them lets you watch his music video), and check your statistics on each of the games.

GRAPHICS

Very simplistic stuff. You could mimic this on the SNES if you tried hard enough (outside of the rotational sprites and high-color stuff). Segata is usually represented by either a full photograph of himself (Mortal Kombat style), a chibi-style sprite, or a crazy hybrid of the two (a chibi-style sprite with a photograph of his head pasted on top). The items and characters outside of Segata himself are drawn pretty well, but the backgrounds are just a bit dull and there is really little in the way of fancy effects and stuff.

Though I must say, the quality of the videos on the commercials is pretty good.

SOUNDS

There is barely any music in the game, and the sounds are rather repetitive (Segata's voice, while well-done in general, just doesn't have enough lines). The audio quality in the videos (especially the music video) is pretty high, though.

OVERALL

If you're a die-hard Segata Sanshiro fanatic, you might consider looking up this game - but regular old gamers, keep to your Panzer Dragoon games. Especially disappointing about the game (the fanatics might also be disappointed) is the fact that not all of Segata's commercials are on here. There are actually a few more than this (I believe they continued to make commercials after this one was released - including the Final Episode where he saves the Dreamcast launch from a missile launch).

6/10

Fun Fact!: Insert the Segata Sanshiro disc into your PC's CD drive, and with the right codec, you can look at all the AVI files from the game without having to beat all the games.

[weasel]

Tobal No. 1
YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A MOLMORAN. AND WHEN YOU FIND IT . . .

Developer: Dream Factory
Publisher: Squaresoft
System: PlayStation
ESRB: K-A (Animated Violence)
Genre: Fighting (plus RPG elements)

Tobal No. 1 was the first outing of Dream Factory, a division of Squaresoft that later went on to make Ehrgeiz and The Bouncer.

The plot goes as such: Emperor Udan of the planet Tobal sponsors a tournament to see who will become Tobal's No. 1 Fighter. And...well, that's it really. I guess they elaborated more on the plot in Tobal 2 (unreleased in the US, though playable with a translation patch).

So begins the fighting. You can select from one of ten characters (plus a few unlockables) that have their own sets of moves. The fight system is played out in 3D, but feels a bit restricted. You don't have full freedom of movement - you can move forward and backward, even strafe around your opponent, but there is very little point to strafing aside from sudden dodges (and even those can typically be dodged backwards). You have three Attack buttons - low, medium and high - that each can initiate a combo depending on what order you push them in. It's not entirely clear if a combo works or not because the moves are slow and kinda awkward, though they do have a good sense of style about them. You also have a button assigned to blocking attacks (which only works if you press it at the right moment) and a button that lets you jump, which doesn't do much good unless you have a running start (which almost never happens in the middle of battle since there are no projectile attacks). There are a few combinations delivered from holding Block or Jumping before you attack, like a devastating flip attack if you jump and press Low Attack (but it's easy to dodge and leaves you seriously open to a kick in the head).

While the regular old fighting engine is nothing special, the real highlight of this is the Quest Mode - see, Dream Factory may have been Squaresoft's fighting game division, but they still had some Squaresoft design principles up their sleeve, among them being "No matter what kind of game it is, add RPG elements to it."

Sure, Quest Mode isn't River City Ransom reborn - but it's still good fun once you get a handle on the controls.

Essentially, it's a 3D dungeon crawl. The tutorial mode explains all the controls for getting around the dungeon, including how to execute running jumps (which are not needed too often but very hard to pull off properly), picking up and using, dropping, or throwing items. While you roam the dungeon, you find different colored potions (the effects of which are random each playthrough, much like a game of Rogue), different foods (that restore your health, add attack and defense points, or speed your attacks up for a limited time), and Molmoran Stones which can be used to purchase items by walking over purple tiles. There are a few finer points as well, like the fact that you can also sell items at the blue tiles by putting them down (netting you more Molmorans to buy crap), and that some items have uses that aren't immediately apparent (like the Instant Shop canister, the Scales which double the effect of an item in your hand, and Skulls which do damage to enemies when thrown at them).

Battles are identifiable by the large particle flame in the middle of the hallway. Upon approaching the fire, an enemy spawns, doors close, and you shift over to the Fighting Game system (where you can beat the lovin' crap out of many different varieties of monsters, or even the other playable characters).

I must take this moment to mention that battles here aren't necessarily just beating stuff up. Potions' effects aren't always friendly, but once you've identified a potion (by drinking the entire thing, for better or for worse) you can also use the Evil ones against enemies - by throwing them at them. So if a potion contains Poison, heave it into their face and they'll feel the brunt of its effects. Just be careful not to throw a Full Life at them.

The game plays decently enough, but what about the aesthetic quality of it?

Tobal No. 1 sports the design talent of Akira Toriyama, best known for the Dragon Ball series, Chrono Trigger, and Dragon Quest. His artwork is used on the character select portraits, and does show through to some extent in the 3D models - but it's a real shame that the 3D models are of such poor quality.

Everything is low-polygon with flatshading and no textures to speak of. It makes sense with the non-organic characters like Hom or the Puppets in Quest Mode, but people like Chuji or Epon should not look like Lego dudes. The animations are done well enough, complete with simulated cloth effects (for Fei's gi, Epon's hair, and Chuji's belt, among others), but occasionally there will be one animation that just looks robotic compared to the others. The textures in the game environments aren't textures at all, but specially shaped polygons with gouraud shading applied to them (which looks okay in some cases, but makes the bricks on the dungeon walls look a lot like plastic).

The game's soundtrack is equally lacking - the in-game music is tolerable in some cases, with one good track in the fighting mode, but it's generally lackluster (and in the Quest Mode, outright irritating). The fighters don't speak at all, but have one or two battle cries that are uttered at random (do yourself a favor - turn off the sound when you play as Hom!). This naturally gets quite annoying after playing as the same character for about five minutes ("WEE-YU! WEE-YU! YAH!").

The game's controls are also rather clumsy, turning what would be a good fighting system into a very awkward dance contest. It felt much like my first (and last) homecoming dance.

Overall, Tobal No. 1 is a decent fighter that is sadly outclassed by the likes of Virtua Fighter, Tekken, and Dead or Alive - but factoring in the enjoyable Quest Mode, you have something for those of us that are hardcore with our fighters and our RPG's. Just don't get it for anybody else, because they'll likely get sick of dealing with the confusing control scheme.

6.7 out of 10

[weasel]

Graffiti Kingdom
"Um, Pastel? I think he's speaking English, but...what's he saying?"

Developer: Hot-B
Publisher: Taito
Genre: Action RPG
Platform: Playstation 2
ESRB: E (Animated Violence)

Prince Pixel is just goofing around and generally being a kid when he stumbles upon a hidden treasure - a legendary Graffiti Brush used by warriors from hundreds of years ago to seal away an evil demon. He starts toying around with it, without even knowing how to use it, and he inadvertently unseals the demon (who then immediately takes over the world, inexplicably). He also accidentally brings to life this weird dog/box thing named Pastel.

The plot doesn't really get much better than that.

The entire game consists of you running through different areas, beating the crap out of monsters, capturing their attacks, picking up experience points from them to get more max health and attack power, and fighting the occasional boss. There's actually very little emphasis on statistics or complicated battle systems here - it's about as complex in terms of actual gameplay as the first Crash Bandicoot game. Run, whack, dodge a trap, run, whack. The areas in this game are also quite linear, with only one set path to go through to continue through the game (but you can go backwards if you need to). So where's the depth?

The depth lies in character creation.

While Pixel himself is a pretty standard character (runs, jumps, complains about something, has spiky hair) he possesses the Graffiti Brush, which allows him to draw monsters that he can transform into at will.

The interface for drawing is a little intimidating at first - because who's going to be able to work with a 3D drawing interface right away? - but thankfully, the game contains quite a few tutorials. The interface is also pretty simplistic compared to 3D Studio Max - really, it just acts like a 2D paint program. You use the analog stick to move the cursor, the right stick to rotate the view, and the X button to draw. Once you've created a closed shape, the game gives you six choices for how to "materialize" the shape in 3D - from a curved type, to a "muscular" type, to a few blockier types. Then later on in the game, you gain more pens for things like 3D lines (good for things like whiskers on kittens), or drawing directly on your shapes.

Each shape you draw has a specific function - the first shape serves as the creature's body, and from there, you can tack on arms, legs, tails, generic curvy objects, heads, "chargers" which can shoot projectiles, drill-bits, wings, even weapons for your creature to hold.

Once you've finished your Masterpiece, you can feel free to add whatever attacks, voices, and movements you wish. There are plenty of movements (which dictate how the creature animates for walking, jumping, etc) for different configurations of creatures - the game actually has specific sets for creatures with no legs, one leg, four legs, even eight legs. It's essentially taking what Will Wright's "Spore" plans to implement and pretty much beating him to it.

But should you lack the creativity to make your own monsters, you can always use the ones you've collected (by taking cards from certain defeated enemies) and transform into them instead. Or you can take an enemy and customize them instead (did you find the Buddy Cop enemy amusing? Take them and give them better attacks).

The game's graphics remind me somewhat of Katamari Damacy - very low on polygon count, barely any texture on the characters. There's a touch of Yoshi's Story in there too, in that a lot of the environments look like something out of a pop-up book. They're effective, and I imagine it was done like this so the end-user wouldn't be able to overload their PS2 by drawing incredibly complicated monsters (there's plenty of slowdown in some cases anyway).

The audio side of the game doesn't really work though. The one song you'll be hearing more than anything else, if you're anything like me, is the Graffiti Notebook song. The in-game music is pretty good, fitting the environments fairly well, but the Graffiti Notebook theme got on my nerves after spending half an hour at a time in there. Moreover, the voices in the game are fairly annoying, and the sound effects lack variety (because there's only about twelve voice sets you can use on your creatures).

The game's controls aren't perfect either - it's painless to make a 3D creature, but in the game itself, camera angles become very frustrating to deal with. The camera tends to get stuck everywhere, and it's hard to find a good angle to work with.

Overall, this is the perfect RPG for those of you that like customizable games, but be warned - it's a pretty linear affair outside of character creation, and you might want to mute the TV and put on some music while you're playing.

7/10

[weasel]

Heart of Darkness
From the team behind Out of This World and Future Wars

Developer: Amazing Studio and Tantrum
Publisher: Interplay
Platform: PC, PlayStation (PlayStation version reviewed)
Year: 1998
ESRB: E (Animated Violence)
WSRS (Weasel's Software Rating System): I'd actually kick it up to a T - it does appear to be geared towards kids early on, but once the actual gameplay kicks in it starts getting kinda bloody and very disturbing at times (your character can actually get snapped clear in half by enemies, eaten alive, and roasted) - the monster designs are probably going to freak out some small children.

Andy is just a regular kid. He goes to school, plays around, and keeps a laboratory in his back yard. He's also afraid of the dark. After school one day, there's a total eclipse, and his dog disappears. So what's a boy to do, other than grab a laser gun and a helmet made from a colander and some flashing lights, and hop in your space ship and go find him?

From the very first moment you play, the game will remind you an awful lot of Delphine Software's classic "Out of This World" (a.k.a. Another World for European audiences). You advance, one screen at a time, through various lovingly-rendered environments (there's a reason why this game takes up two discs!), jumping the occasional gap and fending off the hordes of shadow monsters that creep up on you every step of the way. While your lightning gun is fairly effective for a while, it's not long before a big giant monster eats it (along with your cool helmet) and you're forced to go on without any kind of weapon. It's like OOTW's introduction in reverse - you start armed to the teeth, but then you lose your method of attack (unlike OOTW, where it's a short while before you get a laser pistol).

Now outside of the rendered cinema scenes (which, while they look decent, are poorly compressed and extremely choppy), you'll notice that the game's graphics are very awesome. It keeps to about 15 frames per second, with smooth animations to go with it (as well as real-time light and shadow, which looks beautiful and adds a real sense of environment). Andy has very realistic movements (even in death), and about the only details that weren't added in were some of the sillier things from Flashback (like jumping directly into walls).

The game's emphasis is on solving puzzles (mostly environmental and learning how nature works), but don't expect the game to cut you slack if you aren't too big on reflexes. There is a sizeable action component to the game as well. Jumping platforms is kinda tricky, and there are quite a few scenes in which you're being chased or overwhelmed by foes. On the easy difficulty, though, if you can't complete a given section, the game will give you a tip to help you (which helped me a lot near the beginning).

Notice I said "easy" difficulty - but what I really meant was "hard." This game is incredibly difficult; moreso than OOTW - if OOTW killed you at least once per screen, then in HOD you're going to find at least three unique ways to die in each area. To make matters worse, checkpoints are few and far between - usually up to six screens apart. So you'd better work on your reflexes, and your memory skills - you're going to need them.

The audio in this game is half-decent - the voice acting in cinemas is decidedly poor. The sound effects are nice, but they're at a low sample rate (at least, in the PSX version) so they don't sound quite as crisp as they could. The game box mentions an orchestral music score, but I honestly didn't notice it.

If you can find a copy of this, buy it right away. Copies of this game typically go for relatively cheap - a good condition used copy goes on Amazon for a little under $20, and I got my PSX version for $7 (not in original case, no manual, but CD's in good condition). But if you get frustrated, remember to save before you quit the game out of anger.

7.5/10
PROS: Great graphics (for the time), classical gameplay
CONS: Poor cinema quality, voice acting not so great, extremely difficult at times
OVERALL: Good game, sadly overlooked at release - but be prepared for a lot of teeth-grinding.

[Koji]

Name: Incredible Crisis
Year: ???? (don't recall)
Platform: PSX
Genre: Mini game collections
ESRB: E

Run Down: The whole family has to get home in time to celebrate grandmothers birthday. However, many troubles and mass chaos prevent each family member from getting home.

You switch between roles of the family members playing a collection of sometimes hilarious and or fun and sometimes annoying minigames that represent each problem they must tackle before they can get home on time. Everytime you make a mistake in the mini-games a stress meter increases a bit, if it gets full well, you die and it's game over.

The range of mini games include button mashers, guessing games, rhythm, hand eye coordination, pattern memorization, math puzzels and more MUCH more, each one getting increasingly difficult as you progress through the game.

Incredible Crisis is an accurate name for this game. Other than the Incredible odds that HALF of the things going on in the game could ever happen in a row, the game is notoriously difficult and VERY unforgiving.

It IS completable, it just take you a while, even though the game ISN'T really that long, the sheer difficulty of the mini-games extend the time it requires for you to get proficient in ONE mini-game in order to beat it sometimes, only to progress to a COMPLETELY different notoriously hard mini-game.

If you liked wario ware, you'll like this concept, however, wario ware was a blast because the mini-games were easy and quick, it was only a matter of keeping up. Mini games in incredible crisis aren't quick, often they are drawn out, and MUCH MUCH MUCH more difficult.

The sound in the game is quite good actually, the music is done in SKA. Wich was a huge pluss for me. And defeating a mini-game often was rewarded with a FMV cut scene, some of which were quite funny. All in all, it's a challenge to finish the game, and even though the minigames are somtimes ANNOYINGLY hard, it feels GREAT when you progress through them, which you inevitably will.

And once you beat the game, you can choose to come back to it and play any previous level.

Summed up:
The game play has a steep difficulty curve and ends up being TOUGH, but VERY rewarding. Sound was fun up beat and keeps you from KILLING EVERYONE after the 32 time you fail at a mini-game. Even though this may cause psychotraumatic episodes, and cause your hands to NEVER work again. I highly suggest this game.

Score: 8/10

Pros: Challenging, but fun, Great music, nice graphical style, lots of mini-games

Cons: CHALLENGING! Some mini-games are repetative.

[weasel]

Umihara Kawase
Company: TNN (not The Nashville Network...)
Year: 1994
Platform: Super Famicom
WSRS (Weasel's Software Rating System): This one's an E, hands down. Death animations are restricted to your character simply going "poof", and you never exhibit any serious harm to enemies.

This here's a platform game. That's a simple enough description - but this ain't just a regular old run-and-jump platformer. See, the main character isn't particularly mobile on her own. And that's why she carries an elastic fish hook.

Yeah, I know - Japanese games can be weird.

So Umihara-chan must get through the levels, avoiding or capturing any gigantic evil land-fish she comes across, all the while using her fish hook as a grapple to swing and climb through the levels and get home. About fifty-some times.

This is actually quite a difficult game later on. The initial stages are rather easy, which gives you enough room to practice the physics of the grapple, in addition to the fact that the game shows you short demo reels of the more complicated moves (like using the grapple as a bungee and lowering yourself from a high platform). And best of all, despite being in Japanese, the game is almost 100% import friendly - there is little to no text in the game at all! (Well, unless you intend on using the in-game Replay system; but there is a translation patch that changes it into English.)

The aesthetics of this game are pretty good. The graphics are decently done, but nothing "killer-app" quality. The animations and tilesets are unique and interesting. The music is pleasant and upbeat. The sounds, when they occur, are not annoying at all.

But this is not a game of aesthetics. It's a game of skill.

And believe me, you'll need a lot of skill.

8/10

PROS: Fun, easy to pick up and learn, no Japanese knowledge necessary
CONS: Difficult at times.