senjuro's reviews

[senjuro]

With the advent of ScrewAttack.com's Angry Video Game Nerd, a whole new genre of video game reviewing has come around: bashing the fuck out of games that we can all agree suck really hard. All this leaves you with, though, is a list of games to avoid, leaving you with little direction on how to find games that you should pick up and play if you haven't already.

I've long considered myself a bit of an old school videogame afficionado, so I feel it's my duty to dust off the shelves of video game history and review some older titles.

The first on my list is from one of my favorite franchises in the video gaming world: Konami's Castlevania.

A game based on Gothic Romanian legend, you guide members of the Belmont family against the hordes of Dracula, eventually slaying him and returning peace to the land until his next return. The concept is so beautifully simple that there's almost no way to screw it up.

Castlevania was a brilliant classic. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest was a somewhat unpopular departure from the original gameplay. Despite the second's poor reception, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (a prequel to the first two) was released. This game was killer. Awesome music, pretty tight controls, and now you could play as multiple characters!

Then comes one of the best games in the whole franchise: Super Castlevania IV on the SNES. This game kicks so much ass that I'm squirming in my seat as I'm typing this. Though it's really just a huge graphical and gameplay overhaul of the original Castlevania game (and therefore shouldn't have the IV label), it's so different from its predecessors that it may as well be a different game.

So here's a rundown on it:

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Graphics
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Despite being a relatively early SNES game, this game is a great example of the great graphical effects the SNES was capable of. The animation is pretty smooth and fluid. Simon has a lot of frames of animation for just about every action (except for crouching, which happens in one frame). Most enemies have distinct dying animations. Some crumble to the ground; some explode into flames, sending their pieces everywhere; some keel over, turn into flames and drift offscreen. All of the nice little touches are there to make it look like Konami really cared about making a pretty looking game, and they succeeded mightily.

There are transparency effects as well as use of Mode 7, color shifting, and sprite resizing/rotation. The most visually pleasing area would have to be Dracula's Treasury. Not only a great place to get loads of points, the whole place shines and sparkles, chests bursting open with gold coins when you jump on them.

The enemies are crisp and unambiguous: everything looks like what it actually is. The backgrounds are detailed, multilayerd, and some are even animated!

In all, a fantastic effort that came across well. I score it an 8 out of 10. The color palette is a bit drab sometimes and more cutscenes would've been nice, but I'm not complaining with what I got.

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Sound
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Here is where this game totally rocks out hardcore. You've got your classic Castlevania tunes in there like "Bloody Tears," "Vampire Killer," and "Beginning." You've also got lots of new tunes in there, too. The music in the Sunken City, the Treasury, and the Main Hall is all fantastic and memorable and really fits the area you're fighting evil in.

The sound effects all sound pretty good. The lashing of Simon's whip gets a little tiresome, but other than that, no real comments. Certainly better than the bleeps and boops of its predecessors.

I give the sound score a 9 out of 10. The music is just so awesome. I'm glad there's a sound test in the options menu so you can just listen to the awesomeness without having to worry about getting killed. The detraction is for how annoying Simon's whip sound gets.

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Gameplay
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The controls are pretty tight and responsive, which is a must for a successful platformer. If Simon ends up dying, it's generally because you botched a jump or ran out of health. The learning curve is pretty shallow: you'll pretty much master the controls by the end of the first level. From then, you just fine tune your accuracy with the whip and do more jumping maneuvers. Speaking of the whip, Simon can lash in 5 directions while standing, and in all 8 directions when jumping. He can also hold the whip out and lash it around, causing less damage to enemies but function as a decent shield against projectiles and weaker airborn enemies. Figuring out which subweapon works best for you is something you can establish in the first level as well, since you can pick up each one of the Knife, Stopwatch, Axe, Cross, and Holy Water.

The difficulty scales up gradually as you go. When you reach the entryway to Dracula's castle, most of the enemies now take an extra hit to kill. Those skeletons that used to fly apart at one lash now take two, and so on. By the time you get to the later levels, however, some of the bosses are really fucking hard. In the last level you have to fight Slogra, Gaibon, and Death all in a row. It gets pretty frustrating after several failed attempts, but if you manage to take them down, then Dracula himself will be a cakewalk.

When you finish the game, you start back at the first level with your powered up whip with your score and all your items carried over, and all the enemies now have this power boost, with new enemy positions in some levels.

The game also features a password, which is really the only way you could even come close to maxing out the score. After one and a half times through the game currently, my score is only 225,790, and there are three more digits on the score meter. So with a score of, say, 200,000 per completion, you'd need to finish it about 500 times to break the 100,000,000 mark. There's a goal for you!

I give the gameplay a solid 10 out of 10. Simon does exactly what you tell him to, the difficulty eases you into the game, and there are lots of different tactics you can use to take care of your enemies.

Graphics: 8
Sound: 9
Gameplay: 10
= 27 out of 30 = 90%

An all around solid game. If you've only heard about the Castlevania franchise and never played it, this is a great place to start. Go pick it up and give it a try! I doubt you'll be disappointed.

[UnknownH]

I heard some people say 2 was a good game on the NES. But I also heard people will argue about it.

[Harie Krauzer]

Oh, and don't forget Castlevania IV Simon could actually whip in various directions other than forwards. That feature isn't even in the GBA "remake."

As for Castlevania II. I never really played it, but it did sent some ground work for Symphony of the Night. Wether that is a good thing or not, I don't know. It's like Final Fantasy II, excpet I've actually played that one.

[senjuro]

I heard some people say 2 was a good game on the NES. But I also heard people will argue about it.

The flow of the game was pretty unambiguous. You were never really given any indication of where to go, and there are some things that I just don't know how people could ever have figured it out.

Oh, and don't forget Castlevania IV Simon could actually whip in various directions other than forwards.

Added!

[senjuro]

Fuck, triple post. The DaD was bein' really slow, so when I got a blank page I submitted again. I'll get someone to delete those.

The next one on my list is Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, part of Technos Japan's Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun, changed and released in North America as River City Ransom on the NES. This game is quite literally everything that beat 'em ups should be. It's easy to play, hilariously fun, surprisingly immersive, and two player! There's even 8-bit nudity!

Here's the story as it appears in-game:

"I hold your city captive &
Ryan's girlfriend hostage.
With my gangs of students &
evil bosses, nobody can stop
me now. Meet my demands - or
else!... P.S. Alex & Ryan if
you interfere, you'll be in
for the fight of your lives!
...Slick"

Poor punctuation and grammar aside, this intro kicks ass. The music is pretty sweet, and it prepares you for a long gruelling battle. Just reading it makes my blood boil and my knuckles itch. I want to kick some ass, dammit!

Let's get down to it!

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Graphics
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When you're talking about the NES, obviously you have to take into account that the game was made in 1989. That being said, the graphics in RCR aren't that bad. Your characters, Alex and Ryan, are super-deformed with a ridiculously huge heads, hunched shoulders, and tiny little legs. That being said, their bizarre proportions do not keep them from doing punches, kicks, high jumps and flips, and getting into all kinds of asskickery. The characters are differentiated by the color of their shirts and their face/head design, of which there are about 20 or so. Alex wears a white shirt and jeans; Ryan wears a blue shirt with white slacks. All the other characters wear different colored shirts and blue jeans.

Basically, if it's not white and blue, KILL IT.

The backgrounds do their job of telling you where you are, whether it be in a shopping district, an underpass, the woods, an abandoned factory, or a school gym. They're charming enough to do the job, but nothing that's going to make you have an orgasm.

I give the graphics a 7 out of 10. I know the graphics are stylized that way for a reason, and it's a charming, but in terms of raw graphical presentation, it could've been better.

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Sound
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The music is kickass! There are really only a few tunes that play throughout the whole game and loop rather frequently, but they're pretty catchy. I'd say my favorite is the boss music that plays when you fight Ivan in front of River City High. They're all tunes you can hum along with while pounding the thugs into the turf with your crazy-awesome fighting techniques.

The sounds are typical NES fare. Bleeps and boops abound as your fists meet your enemies' faces, as you throw garbage cans at them, and as you bounce tires across the screen at them. When enemies die, they make the low "byoooop" noise, and then the most annoying sound in the game happens: the enemy's money bouncing on the ground. An aggravating, high pitched "bing" sound, matched only by the equally annoying and higher pitched sound when you pick the money up. It's not that big of a deal, but it is a really annoying sound.

In the sound category, I give it a 7 out of 10. The music is awesome, the sounds of a metal bat hitting the ground differs from that of a wooden bat, and the sound of your fist hitting a punk's face just feels great on the inside. The bouncing coin sound drives me a little batty, and I wish they'd picked a different sound for it. It's really not as big a deal as I'm making of it, but given the amount of money you have to collect to buy the better items, you'll be hearing this sound plenty.

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Gameplay
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Here's where this game rocks out in fine style. The sheer fun-factor is enough to make you want to play this game and mever stop, not even to eat or use the washroom. Your character's attributes grow and change depending on what kind of foods and items you buy for yourself. For example, eating certain foods increases your punching power. Donning a pair of "Texas Boots" maxes out your Agility and Kick stats. Reading the "Acro Circus" book allows your character to do a damaging somersault attack when he does a running jump. There's a surprisingly deep level of detail and customisation available to you. Really, you only need to max out your Stamina and Kick power to beat the game, but there's a nice feeling to maxing out all your character's stats and wading through all the baddies, dispatching them with a single punch.

The controls are tight and responsive. Attacks come out the second you push the button. Fighting is quick and easy and even button mashers will be in good shape to start. Be careful about dying, though. When you die, you lose half your money. This is really horrible if you were saving up like $300 to go on a spending spree only to accidentally fall into a pit.

Fortunately, when the enemies die, not only do you get their money, but they often spout a hilarious death cry. Generally, it's "BARF!!" but the bosses usually say something a little more unique, from "I'm exhausted and all punched out!" or "Sob! Comrades, I've failed you again!" It makes you just want to beat on them more and more to take their money and laugh at their hilarious death quotes.

Because the game can be so long, there's a password feature. Damn, the password is extremely long. It's 33 characters. After thinking about it for a while and seeing a password generation guide, I guess it's necessary because there are a lot of little details. I do caution you, however: if you do write down your password, do so with the utmost care! Make sure your O's and 0's and 1's and l's are all different enough in your handwriting so you can tell them apart. One misplaced character and your password will not work.

Oh right, the nudity. You can get in the sauna at a health club, at which point you see your chubby, hunchbacked character from behind drying his back with a towel. Yay, pixellated buttocks!

Because the gameplay is so immersive and fun, I give it a 10 out of 10.

Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Gameplay: 10
= 24 out of 30 = 80%

I didn't think the average would come out so low...oh well, I guess an 80% it is. Even though there's a missing 20%, I think this game is amazingly fun and it's even more fun with a friend to play with. Don't forget, players can hit each other!

[UnknownH]

Yeah. A good game to use some time. You might can finish it in a sitting or two. If you really try.

[Harie Krauzer]

I played the GBA reincarnation and had alot of fun with that one; however, it didn't come with a two player ability. I didn't mind since I didn't have anyone else to play with. :?

[senjuro]

What with talk of all these next-generation systems coming out with motion based control, cel-processing, BlueTooth, and online play, the holidays made me feel a little nostalgic and made me think of the games of Christmas past.

I played Mega Man 3: The End of Dr. Wily!? a few weeks after it was released for the first time on Christmas Eve of 1990. Having loved the previous game, I had high expectations for this one. While, I doubt that my ability to discern a quality game from a poor one was very well developed at the age of seven, when I was in my senior year of highschool, a tune popped into my head. It wasn't something from the highschool musical, no popular song on the radio, no classical music that I had not yet taken interest in. It was the stage music for Magnet Man. I felt this sudden urge to seek out a copy of this near-forgotten gem to see if my memory of its glory was accurate.

When I finally got my quivering fingers on a cartridge, I couldn't wait to dust off my NES and give the old classic a whirl.

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Graphics
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The graphics for all the NES Mega Man games bear a striking similarity to each other. Well, the sprite graphics do, anyway. For all six of the NES titles, Mega Man's sprite is identical, with no more frames of animation that in any other incarnation, save one additional frame due to his new ability to slide. Despite this limitation, the environments have a higher level of detail than in Mega Man 2: The Mystery of Dr. Wily, which had far superior graphics to the original Mega Man. There is some color cycling in the backgroudns, simulating the flow of lava in Shadow Man's stage, the surge of electricity in Shock Man's stage, and the sparkle of the crystalline structures in which Gemini Man makes his home. These graphical effects are something we take for granted in games these days, but for 1990, this was pretty good.

The enemies you face are the same sort of Mega Man fare, typicall inconcievable contrivances sent out in waves to send you to oblivion. They often aren't overloaded with frames of animation, but you generally have a good idea of the machines you're facing off against.

They're far from perfect, but for the time and the NES in particular, this title shows just about everything the NES can do. The biggest issue is the sprite flicker or slowdown you get when there's too much on the screen, and this happens with unfortunate frequency. Personally, I don't feel it's that much of an issue, but it should be noted. I give the graphics 8 out of 10.

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Sound
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I don't really have much to say here. While the sound effects are predictably Mega Man-ish, the music is out of this world. The whole game is full of amazingly memorable tunes. Starting with the amazing intro theme, a good stage select tune, a new boss intro tune (which sadly is never used again), you get great stage music, boss music, and Wily Stage music. I can't rant enough about how good the music in this game is.

Sound is a clear 10 out of 10.

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Gameplay
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For an early platformer, the question of difficulty is a valid one. On one hand, you don't want a game to be so easy that there's no fun in learning how to play well. On the other, you don't want a game that's so difficult that angry gamers will go on rampages of hurting kittens.

Mega Man 3 is perhaps a little harder than it's predecessor (mainly because you don't get a weapon nearly as broken as the Metal Blade), but thankfully nowhere near the migraine the original is. Mega Man can now slide, a technique that more often than not serves as a functional dash ability. The bosses are tricky enough that they're difficult to beat without the proper weapon, but possible to kill with just the Mega Buster. The stages are pretty much the right length to get through, but just in case you're having problems, you can collect Energy tanks to power up just before you face off against the robot masters, of which there are the formulaic eight.

However, once you beat them, you're treated to longer and more dangerous versions of four levels you've previously finished, fighting incarnations of the eight robot masters from Mega Man 2. I thought this was a really cool touch to make the game longer. After you beat all eight, you have to square off against Break Man, Dr. Wily's knock off of Proto Man. After all this, you have to go through Wily's Skull Compound until you finally defeat him.

This game also introduces two characters who later became staples of the Mega Man franchise: Proto Man and Rush, Mega Man's trusty canine counterpart. Rush is a particularly innovative little gameplay device that allows you to get to places you can't reach by jumping or sliding. And he's cute, too!

All in all, it's a solid title with good gameplay and room for replaying as well. I give it [b]9 out of 10[b].

Graphics: 8
Sound: 10
Gameplay: 9
= 27 out of 30 = 90%

Hell yeah, this game is awesome. If you're looking for a good Mega Man title, then this should be the first one you seek out. The second one I'd suggest would be Mega Man 2, but this one is definitely the pick of the litter.

[Harie Krauzer]

I enjoyed Protoman's theme.
The third Mega man was also (I do believe) the only one to have cheats in it via the second controller.