I’m enjoying this so far. And thanks to everyone who’s been leaving comments. I’m on Facebook too. So, what am I playing?
This.
Well, I teased on Facebook a few surprises with this Contra streak I’m on. Indeed, before I move onto Super Contra, I wanted to give the MSX2 build of Contra a shot. I really need to do more MSX games at IGC. Then again, isn’t it time that Konami and everyone else who programmed games for this wonderful platform pull the sticks out of their butt and celebrate it? As an American born in 1989, I didn’t know crap about the MSX until recent years. I first learned about it via Metal Gear. When I looked into the NES version, I found out that a lot of people consider it vastly inferior to the MSX game. That and its version of Castlevania is “the weird one. No, not the arcade game. The other weird one.”
It’s called “Vampire Killer” and it is, indeed, weird. Single screens. Keys. I’ll be doing this one sometime soon.
I’ve played enough games for it now to know it deserves to be known in the United States as more than a curiosity from across the ocean. This thing is a bonafide gaming juggernaut, with a seriously loyal fanbase, so I’m not sure why everyone who made games for it has allowed it to fade into oblivion. In the late 90s, there were a whopping three 10-game compilations for MSX on the PlayStation and Saturn, plus an all-in-one collection of those three collections (30 total games) exclusively on Saturn. Sadly, those were Japanese exclusives. It had the best name ever for a collection too: Konami Antiques MSX Collection. Antiques! Come on, that’s precious! Also, MSX got Virtual Console releases on Nintendo Wii and Wii U, but again, only in Japan.
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I think with retro collections as scorching hot as they are right now, the time has come for MSX to be celebrated globally. I think Americans would be chomping at the bit to play these, and from what I’ve played so far, the games of MSX stand out. Take Contra. It’s NOT Contra like you or I know it. It has 19 levels, among other things. Oh, and no scrolling. I’m pretty sure MSX doesn’t really do scrolling in most action games. So far, I’ve only reviewed four MSX games. The first came in February with Parodius, which I didn’t love. Then there were three in Pac Man Museum: The Games They Couldn’t (or Wouldn’t) Include. I didn’t love the MSX builds of Pac-Man and especially Pac-Land (one of the worst games I’ve ever played), but the MSX Pac-Mania was genuinely fun and scored the first YES! for an MSX game. I suspect the second YES! will happen later today. And it won’t be the last MSX game of 2024 that I review. Oh no. Tetris for MSX will be a bonus review in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review. Much like with Making of Karateka, I’m tacking-on some games not included in the collection as “just for funsies” reviews at the end that have no effect at all on the main reviews. It’s 2024 and I’m most excited for a Tetris game. Party like it’s 1985! Let’s all drink New Coke and sing We Are the World!
Rotating is down? Buttons are instadrops? Yea, I’m going to need to remap.
Contra aka Gryzor Platform: Arcade Released February 20, 1987 Directed by Koji Hiroshita Published by Konami Included in Contra Anniversary Collection Sold Separately via Arcade Archives
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When I reviewed Contra for the NES yesterday, I didn’t mention the arcade game at all. That’s because I think the conversation belongs here, in the arcade review. I don’t know if the fact that the NES game is superior to the coin-op is impressive or shameful. Maybe a little from column A and a little from column B. By any metric, the NES has the better game of Contra. Yes, that includes the graphics. I think Contra in arcades is pretty ugly. The graphics look washed-out, but not in a cool, stylized type of way. It’s just so drab looking, especially compared to the NES. But, who cares about looks? Gameplay matters, and I’ll still take Contra on the NES. Despite being a coin-op, Contra Arcade feels like a smaller game. Which is technically true because the NES game has more levels, but what I specifically mean is probably more related to the use of a vertical monitor. The game doesn’t benefit from a taller playfield, even on the waterfall stage where you climb upward. All the vertical screen does is subtract from the playfield without adding any benefits like a sense of claustrophobia or heightened urgency. It’s just cramped, period. The whole game is. By all rights, the arcade game should feel more grand and epic, but here’s the third boss in the NES game that came out a year after the coin-op:
Giant alien monster with two tentacle arms that shoot fireballs.
And here’s the original arcade version:
Two normal turrets, a five-gun turret, and a target.
One is unforgettable, and the other is so pedestrian that it could be any game. The NES version is a gigantic alien. In arcades, it really is just a base, and not even as grand a base as the first boss. It doesn’t even have to be an alien base. It could be a G.I. Joe‘s Cobra-like terrorist organization you’re fighting that has a bad H. R. Giger fetish. It’s just so generic and forgettable. The funny thing is, most of the bosses are almost identical in appearance and gameplay to the NES game, except they feel less important, and others genuinely are. By that I mean they’re bosses on the NES, but not in the arcade. The jumping alien isn’t. The giant UFO that drops smaller UFOs isn’t. Hell, you fight two of each of those in the arcade version. And the base boss before the final level from the NES game? It’s not even in the coin-op. In fact, after you beat the second base, the rest of the game kind of plays out as one large, continuous level. It’s strange, and it doesn’t work. I’ve always felt that bosses are a game’s metronome. They set the tempo, and build a player’s anticipation. Levels are always a little more exciting when you know you’re inching closer to a boss. Contra gives up on that design mentality early on, and it’s not better for it.
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I had a developer friend once half-jokingly tell me something to the effect of, “thank god we started with transistor–transistor logic. If they had access to today’s computing power in 1972, we might still be waiting for the first great video game in the 2020s. They would have had so many options that they wouldn’t have known what to do with themselves!” In essence, great games wouldn’t have happened because the steps that created great games happened due to limitations and not despite them. He was kidding, but I’m not. He was right! Look no further than the arcade Contra. It’s the first game. Not based on anything (well, any video game). Much more powerful hardware than home consoles had at the time. And, when home releases did happen, such as the NES game, it’s pretty dang close. All the set pieces from the arcade game are on the NES, and in fact whole sections of some levels are. The NES game is a faithful adaptation, all things considered. But even with all the potential advantages in terms of hardware and resources the coin-op had, the NES just totally outclasses it. Remember how the vertical screen didn’t improve the waterfall? The one vertical-scrolling stage? Well, it did even less for the bases. They’re much smaller in scope and scale on the arcade version, with the only exception being the illusion of moving left and right at the end of them.
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Some people really don’t like Arcade Contra, but it’s fine. It’s not amazing. It’s alright. If it seems like a bad game, it’s only by virtue of how amazing the NES game was. The arcade port has less personality and none of the charm. It has fewer levels. But, it’s still an okay game. Harder for sure, and there’s limited continues (the NES has this too, but the arcade has no 30 lives code). Except the laser is especially valuable now, and probably crosses the line into overpowered territory. It cuts through enemies like butter, but admittedly in a fun way. But, otherwise, it’s just a lesser game. I once said the SNES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time was perhaps the first coin-op action game outclassed by the home version, but I was clearly wrong. Contra on the NES completely blasts its arcade counterpart. And yet, what has the arcade version done so wrong? It controls fine. The action is good. Bosses are fun. Co-op is decent. The finale is memorable. It is Contra, only if Contra was okay instead of phenomenal. I’ve played hundreds of bad versions of great games. This isn’t bad. It’s just not as good.
Golly, this review sounded like a eulogy.
Don’t get me wrong. Even if the NES game didn’t happen, Contra would not be an elite arcade game. It would be a B-lister Konami coin-op, and there’s a lot more of those than I realized when I started my retro adventures. Yet, none of those are vilified to the degree Contra is. I kind of feel sorry for it. History will continue to look back more and more kindly on NES Contra. Its reputation is not done growing. Ironically, that’s why the arcade game’s fate is sealed. There will be no historic reevaluation. Contra Arcade is what it is: an okay game, and nothing more. Except, it does get credit for being a proof of concept for a superior game. The blueprints to one of the greatest video games EVER made. That has to count for something. Verdict: YES!
Hey everyone! Contra did pretty good, and THANK YOU for that! The first review after the shut-down was always going to be the toughest, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. I suspect more Contra is coming today. Wait, I can’t tease this. It’s literally called “What I’m Playing Right Now.”
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So, yea, I’m playing the arcade version of Contra. I think I’m probably going to marathon a few of the early Contras. At the very least, I’ll be doing Super C (NES), Super Contra (arcade), and Contra Force (NES). The one thing I didn’t bring up about Contra on the NES is the arcade situation. That it was one of the first home games that outshines the coin-op. Which it did. Easily, handily, and embarrassingly. The review of the arcade game will talk about all the ways how, and why. The Contra arcade review should hit later today.
New York Liberty, huh? About f*cking time. The 2024 WNBA Finals will go down as the best five game series in sports history, male or female. All but game two was absolutely riveting. TWO overtime games, including the deciding game that looked like the Liberty started the game remembering they’re the New York Liberty and incapable of winning anything of substance. The Lynx were making them look foolish. And then suddenly, the Lynx were the ones that threw away both the game and the championship. In fact, they did it multiple times in a single game. So awkward watching because you know the Minnesota players will be staring at their ceilings thinking of ALL those opportunities they gave up, and hopefully they know that it wasn’t the refs. Do I think the officiating was straight down the line? Nah. 25 to 8 on free throw attempts? Jesus, that’s horrendous. Even if Minnesota was making dumb mistakes.. and they WERE.. this was one of those “one team gets all the ticky-tack foul call” games that feels like it gives the losing team an out to avoid reflecting on anything. But, refs can’t make a difference unless you do your part, and Lynx were bricking wide-open shots all night, including a wide-open trey that would have been the greatest shot in WNBA history to end regulation. In overtime, Minnesota got 2 points. And the.. I can’t believe I’m typing this.. WNBA Champion New York Liberty, got 7. And the coach blamed the ref and not the fact that her team of shooters forgot how to shoot.
Next year, they’re bumping the WNBA Finals to seven games. I really wish they wouldn’t. Maybe the popularity is going up because the amount of games isn’t overwhelming to fans. Do you know what the best part of watching the WNBA is? Nobody has to say “clear my schedule for the next two weeks. The finals are on!” Sigh. Go Valkyries.
Dodgers/Yankees, huh? Hasn’t happened since 1981, but as the 12th Yankees-Dodgers World Series, it’s still the most played World Series even after a 43 year gap. That really tells you how dominant the two teams used to be, huh? I don’t think this will be as good as the WNBA Finals. I’ll take the Dodgers in a gentleman’s sweep. 4 to 1.
Contra aka Probotector Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released February 9, 1988 Directed by Shigeharu Umezaki & Shinji Kitamoto Developed by Konami Included in Contra Anniversary Collection
I imagine the Konami NES NO! streak is about to end.
Ever shut down an account with 18,600 followers? It doesn’t feel great. I need something to cheer me up. I think it speaks volumes that, when I was asking myself “what classic game can I play that I know is guaranteed to be a good time no matter how many times I play it?” Contra sprang to mind. Come on, it’s Contra! What can I possibly say that hasn’t been said by everyone who loves games? “It’s a very fun game, but when do we get to the part where we trade arms to Iran?” Thanks, Dad. I’m sure nobody has ever made THAT joke before. So, I did something a little different with this review. In addition to playing through it, I watched my father and niece Sasha play a round. I just wanted to see if they had fun. No help from me, except I told them the Konami Code, which Dad had heard of but Sasha, all of age 8, hadn’t. Took them a couple tries but they got it right. Dad had played this a little bit before with me, but we’d never really finished it. And, they had a great time! They really liked Contra a lot, both declaring it one of the best games they’ve ever played, and that made me feel awesome. That could be the whole review there, but WHY is Contra fun? Why is it so beloved? Has any game that’s so small and unassuming left a bigger footprint? Arguably, it’s more famous for the Konami Code than the game itself. Plenty of people can’t recite their own driver’s license number by heart, but they can recite how to get 30 lives in Contra, even if they haven’t played it in decades. I HAVE to know: what makes Contra.. well, Contra?
This is arguably the game that introduced the concept of “epic” to gaming.
The obvious answer is “everything.” The music. The sound effects. The guns. The bosses. The two gameplay styles, side scrolling stages and third-person stages, being completely compatible in a way that changes the pace in a fun and inventive way? Something a different Contra game proved matters a great deal, by the way. Super C’s top-down sections are nowhere near as fun as Contra’s third-person stages. Top down? Pssh, what is this? Ikari Warriors? Commando? Top-down is far too common-place on the NES, unlike the third-person stuff. Even the mythology around Contra elevates it above other games. I’m not just talking about the most famous cheat code in gaming history. It certainly played a big role, but it’s not even really Contra’s code. It’s Konami’s code, and it started in the game Gradius because play testers weren’t able to finish the game and needed help. It was a series of inputs nobody could do by accident. Then, they just forgot to delete it before publication, and the code became an icon of gaming. Hell, it’s in the Tengen version of Tetris. Sort of. The “UP UP” part isn’t, but if you pause that game and press “DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A” it changes any block into the Tetris-making long block.
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And that’s just the start of Contra’s mythology. How about the fact that, in Europe, they replaced humans with robots? That’s one of those things that’s just so weird, but in a charming way. There’s no doubt about it: Contra for the NES is in the discussion for the greatest video game of all-time, but I suspect the secret to its success goes deeper. I think Contra is one of the most interesting games ever made. On the surface, it doesn’t really seem like it would make for an interesting review, either. Well, at least my style of review, because Contra doesn’t do very much wrong. What can I possibly complain about? There’s no cheap shots. There’s no gotchas. The jumping is damn near perfect. The levels are flawlessly paced. There’s not one placement of platforms I would consider to be an unfair or bad jump. There’s no trollish enemy placement. If anything, Contra handles all those elements so precisely and thoughtfully that you’d swear a super computer chose their locations based on some kind of scientific formula. The one sort of “dirty pool” part are these hooks, which don’t use a timed interval like previous ones had:
And.. you can just jump over them. There’s enough clearance. Took me a while to figure that one out. Even the weapons are equally fun. While I know what gun *I* like (the spread gun), there’s practical arguments that the flamethrower, laser, and even the machine gun are equally balanced. Hell, did Contra even make a mistake at all, or is this that rare game that’s absolutely perfect?
In Japan, there’s some special effects that don’t happen in the US. There’s also a Ghosts ‘n Goblins-like Map Screen and “cut scenes” like the one above.
It might actually be perfect. Except the co-op, which has scrolling that can double-kill you or worse if you die and then respawn right over a pit without your partner moving the screen far enough over. You can also scroll-kill on the Waterfall stage too. Except, that sort of feels like the type of communication-based challenge that co-op SHOULD have, doesn’t it? So, great, back to “is it perfect?” And the answer to that is “no.” There’s one flaw that I would come down on like a ton of bricks if it were any other game, and fair is fair. So, here is the one and only genuine problem with Contra: visibility issues. And it’s not nothing. Assuming you have a non-standard gun, your bullets are big and highly visible. But, basic grunt enemies and the turrets shoot white dots at you, and sometimes they vanish in the fog of war. Depending on your screen, it can be very easy to lose track of the enemy shots. As a precaution I have to take with my photosensitivity, I have to play my games in a room that’s brightly lit. It sucks, but it beats having a seizure, a headache, or whatever else might happen. Some games it’s not even a big deal, but it absolutely is with Contra. I’m good enough now that, when I die, it’s usually a total surprise because of a stray bullet that blended a little too perfectly with the rest of the screen. Once I was absolutely certain that there was nothing about the graphics or effects of Contra that was dangerous for my photosensitivity, I turned the lighting down a little bit. Visibility was still an issue. So, it’s a thing.
The visibility thing is especially annoying in the third-person levels. The little electric beam that keeps you from running forward is white and bounces up and down. It’s visually noisy and white, while the bullets are visually small, subtle, and white. There’s also white lines to create the illusion of depth, and enemies have white shoes. Hell, the seams of your pants are white. It’s not a coincidence most of my deaths in this feature came during these base stages.
That one flaw is certainly not enough to take Contra out of the contention for the title of best NES game. I obviously don’t think it is (that honor goes to another Konami game: Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse), but it’s no-doubt-about-it in the discussion. Even people not inclined to enjoy pew-pew beefy dudes shooting guns type of games love Contra. I think a big part of that is it’s one of the most clockable games of this type out there. In recent years, one of my proudest gaming achievements was successfully beating the original Castlevania without dying. But, a no-hit run seems so far out of my league that it’s practically off the table. When I had that no-death run, a few people mentioned trying a no-death run on Contra. HAH. That feels well out of reach. Then I played it for this review. Actually, I played it multiple times, but that wasn’t my intention. I was going to play it once single, and once co-op. In the first game, I put the 30 lives code in as a precaution, but I didn’t need it. I ended up making it over half-way through the game on my first attempt before I lost my first life. WTF? Really? In fact, yea, I made it to the “energy zone” before I died right here:
This prickish fire beam that behaves differently than other fire beams is where my no-death streak ended in my first game in this review.
Am I just fantastic at games? Nah. If you want to completely trivialize Contra’s difficulty, all you need is a controller with autofire, the spread gun, and enough experience playing Contra that you know what to expect. It’s not even that much experience, either. I hadn’t played Contra in a long time when I made that first run during this review, and I finished the entire game with only two deaths thanks to cautious gameplay and the autofire. On its own, with a regular controller, Contra is genuinely pretty tough, right? Maybe the first time, but if you know what to expect, it’s really not that hard. I know this because I just created a challenge for myself: Contra, with no thirty lives code and no autofire. Can I beat the game without needing a continue?
That was a warm-up, everyone. Warm-up.
Let’s try that again.
Oh for f*ck’s sake, Cathy.
Alright, seriously, starting over, and this time I’m going to remind my brain there’s no autofire and I can’t just barge through the game like I want to talk to the game’s manager. No BS, how far can I make it in Contra with zero extra help? No thirty lives code. No autofire, no rewinding, no save states. Go!
Death #1 happened during the last room before the boss of the second level. I tried to get too many shots off at the primary target before smartening-up and taking out at least one of the turrets. The worst part was losing my spread gun. I basically traded it and one of my lives for the flamethrower, which is my least favorite of the four non-basic weapons. I didn’t get the spread gun back until over halfway through level three, which is where I also scored my first free life (CORRECTION – IT WAS MY SECOND FREE LIFE).
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Death #2 happened during the third boss, which is one of the few bosses that shoots large projectiles you can’t blow-up with your own bullets. I think I just died from a bullet that spawned in the same space I was occupying. Death #3 happened in the first room of level four. Yep, I’m in trouble. I got a flamethrower (sigh, why do the third-person things give me that POS first?), then ended up with the laser, and soon after, another free life. Made it to the final room which has three turrets, tons of barrels that come at you, and enemies that never stop shooting. Death #4, but I got a machine gun for the first time since the start of the game and got out of the boss fight with two lives left. Without any third-person levels left, for a moment, I thought I had a shot at it. I got ANOTHER free life soon into the next stage, and I got my spread gun back. And then I remembered the big f’n tanks in the next level.. which I defeated easily. In fact, I had my first level since level one where I didn’t die! I also didn’t die in the 6th level and got ANOTHER free life.
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This was my Homer Simpson moment. “I’M GONNA MAKE IT! I’M GONNA MAKE IT! THIS IS THE GREATEST THRILL OF MY LIFE! I’M QUEEN OF THE WORLD AND..”
Death #5
Are you kidding me? A pack of three guys had been running to the edge of the platform below me and then turning around. I shot two of them, but one jumped and got me. Goddammit so much. Except.. uh.. that was my last death. Holy crap, I just beat Contra without gaming-over, without the 30 lives code, without cheating, AND without autofire!
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Granted, I had a two-death game with autofire already in the making of this review, but I literally squealed with joy. It just feels like it matters for some reason. So, now that I’m really warmed up, how far can I make it with autofire? How much does that completely neutralize the difficulty of Contra?
Warm up. WHAT? WARM UP! (I didn’t make my jumps across the exploding bridges).
After that false start, I did it. No death run on Contra. With autofire, but no cheating. The game continues afterwards with another cycle. I couldn’t find anything on if the second cycle is supposed to be harder. I didn’t think it was, but I wanted to see how far I could make it without dying. I wasn’t as cautious this time. The first cycle, I paced myself, especially with the turrets. I made sure to take them out as soon as I could to lessen the chances of a stray bullet. I didn’t the second time around and I made it..
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Contra, like Castlevania, has a overstated difficulty. It’s tough, but not unclockable. Random elements are kept to a minimum, and enemies are predictable. Your bullets travel the full length of the screen, and it’s not like enemy fire is blanketing the playfield. This isn’t a bullet hell, or even remotely close to that. On top of all that, if you die, there’s never too much distance between you and the next opportunity to upgrade your gun. How many video games with a reputation for being difficult are there where the difficulty is based on the fact that you’re absolutely f*cked the very first time you lose your current loadout? That’s not the case at all with Contra. In my no autofire run, I only finished one boss without the default gun. Enemies are never too spongy. Bosses aren’t, even with your basic gun, but the odds are you won’t have your basic gun for long anyway. That was my revelation about Contra: as far as this type of game goes, it’s almost unprecedented in how generous it is with power-ups and extra lives. Mind you, there’s no extra life pick-up. Extra lives come from points only, yet, I was constantly hearing the pleasant chime of a +1 to my stockpile. I’ve played a lot of NES run & gun games way more intense than this. Compare Contra to something like Capcom titles Gun.Smoke or Commando. Contra is downright kind.
In Europe, the franchise is called Probotector. It sounds like a satire of a game name, doesn’t it? But, it’s the same game. Oddly enough, I didn’t find the difficulty better or worse on any of the three versions (including the Famicom). That’s rare. If there was any difference, it was so subtle that I didn’t feel it.
And I think I know now why Contra is so universally loved: challenge isn’t the point. Fun is. It’s generous with the special guns because they’re more fun than the basic gun. It’s not spongy with the bosses because that would make the novelty of fighting them wear off quickly. The developers have nothing to prove or gain by demoralizing players. Contra is tough to start, but it’s easy to memorize where enemies are going to be. It doesn’t even slow gameplay down that much to play conservatively. It’s the most doable of any “hard” game on the NES. It was A LOT harder for me to beat Castlevania without dying than it was to beat Contra without continuing or, with autofire, without losing a life.
It helps that not one single level qualifies as “the bad one” or even the “not as good one.” Contra is a masterpiece of level design. They’re all a lot of fun.
When people talk about “Nintendo Hard” it’s usually about games like Battletoads which are so prohibitively difficult that they just become boring after the first couple stages. Then there’s Contra, which thanks to the 30 lives code, anyone can finish with a continue or two. It’s a cinch. But, without that code, it’s a game hard enough that beating it without continuing is an accomplishment I’m proud of. At the same time, it wasn’t that hard. It just took a lot of replays over the years. And that’s where Contra’s credentials as a bonafide gaming legend are revealed. Hell, I could probably brute-force memorize any game and get myself to the point where I can beat it in a way that feels like a big deal. Some would just take longer than others. But, for 99.9% of all games, the process for getting to that point would be so boring. Not Contra. No matter how many replays, it’s as fun the last time as it was the first time. It might not be anyone’s #1 game of all-time, but it’s up there for EVERYONE, and there’s not a lot of games you can say that about. And THAT’S why Contra is one of the all-time greats. But, certainly not THE greatest.. right? RIGHT?! I don’t even know. Verdict: YES
“What about the coin-op? What about Super C? What about..”
I did it. I deactivated my Twitter. Here’s the explanation in case you missed it. And I think it’s a safe bet that I shouldn’t be doing reviews while I’m both sick to my stomach and emotionally devastated. I played through Contra three times, and I was a complete zombie. Contra! One of the greatest games of all time, but the lights were on and nobody was home. I wrote a review with all the emotional punch of a turnip. So, what am I playing? Nothing. I think it’ll probably be a couple days before I feel.. anything.
A few months ago I started LCD Games XI, and I never finished it. So, here’s a thing from it.
CUPHEAD!! “Homebrew” by Itizso Gameplay Type: Spinning Plate
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Cuphead is an original creation by recreation master Itizso. While it’s a typical six-channel spinning plate game disguised as a gallery shooter, there’s a big twist to this one: you’re not scoring points. Instead, you’re just trying to survive for as long as you can, with scoring measured in minutes and seconds. Unfortunately, there’s no auto-fire here. You actually do have to mash the shooting button. This isn’t a game I could put extended playtime into without annihilating my hands. I suppose the question is “does it feel like Cuphead?” And the answer is “not even a little bit.” The pea shooter’s noise, that now apparently iconic clicking sound, is here for the LCD, but otherwise, nah. I think most fans of the franchise would be disappointed that the LCD is themed more after one of the platforming segments instead of an encounter with one of the humongous, transforming bosses. But, while I don’t think this necessarily works as a Cuphead game, the addition of leaderboards makes this a one-off spinning plate experience that I enjoyed, in small doses. Verdict: YES!
So, I’m not going to be posting updates to the former Twitter. I’ve decided to keep my account open for at least for a couple days so that my followers can see my parting message. I might just keep it open so that the plethora (great word) of indie developers who I’ve already connected with can still reach out to me and so nobody else can claim my handle there. But I’m ceasing updates to it, effective immediately with the link to this post. And it’s not really a politics thing, whether anyone believes it or not. I’ve quit following politics. It’s because social media is worse for you than cigarettes. Hey, I’ve quit smoking already. I quit opiates before that. I’ve been sober for years and years now. I’ve quit every addiction in my life, except that stupid Twitter account, and for what? Because I didn’t want to lose my followers? Actually, I trust the followers who want to read my reviews that they know where to find them, and it’s not on Twitter. The reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I ain’t going anywhere. I had good times there, but it’s not like it was all positive. I’ve been wiping tears all day, and I imagine I will for a while to come, but I’ll have no shortage of bad memories to look back on and know that this is what I should have done years ago. I wanted to, but I have over 18,000 followers, and that’s tough to give up. So, why do it?
UPDATE: The Contra Review is up! And I shut down the Twitter. Like pulling off a band-aid. I don’t know why they say that. I don’t remember a band-aid ever hurting. But, I’ve had my legs waxed. That’s a better metaphor. I leg-waxed my Twitter.
A few years back, some person who had, only five minutes earlier, discovered that, yea, epilepsy in gaming is a problem tried to whip-up a mob to cancel me, because this person decided I was an enemy of gaming accessibility. Me. As in the person who has been writing about epilepsy for a long, long time. She was having a tantrum and acting like developers were deliberately hurting people with flashing visuals in their games, which helps not at all. She literally didn’t know what she was even mad about. She didn’t know the science. She didn’t know the history. She didn’t know the particulars. She didn’t have a f*cking clue what she was talking about, and she didn’t care. It was just the latest thing to cross the path of a person who is perpetually raging. If this woman had done more than read half a tweet and a quarter of an article and actually did research, she would have understood that epilepsy is among the most misunderstood medical conditions in the world. When I started Indie Gamer Chick, in my experience, most developers during my early years (2011 – 2013) thought that people with epilepsy just didn’t play games. It made perfect sense to believe that, too. I believed it when I was diagnosed in 2005. My literal first thought was “oh no, I think I just lost video games forever.” Thankfully, it’s not that simple. Medical stuff rarely is. A lot of people think most or all epileptic people are photosensitive. They’re not. Take a random sample of 100 epileptic people and try to guess how many of them will be photosensitive enough to have seizures. Half? Two-thirds? Twenty? Twenty-five? Forty?
Three. Only 3. That’s 30 for every 1,000 people who live with epilepsy.
So, why is it such a common belief? The media, mostly. I’m sure every Nintendo fan has heard of the episode of the Pokemon anime that gave hundreds of kids seizures. Actually, most probably didn’t have tonic–clonic seizures (that’s what they call grand mal seizures now), or seizures at all. That’s because you don’t have to be epileptic to be photosensitive. You, the person reading this, could be photosensitive. Ever get blurred vision from a flashing light that lasts longer than it takes for your eyes to normally focus? How about a headache? Ever get a headache from a strobe light? Even a little one? YOU’RE PHOTOSENSITIVE. Welcome to the club. It’s a big club, too. The things that can give ME a seizure can give a SIGNIFICANTLY greater portion of the population what were the most widely reported effects of that Pokemon episode. Headaches. Dizziness. Nausea. Loss of balance. Confusion. Blurred vision.
There’s also a lot of myths about “triggers.” It’s best to think of it as a range. Even in the days where I wasn’t taking care of myself and seizures were more common, I had moments where I accidentally saw a strobe in full view and didn’t have a seizure or feel any consequence at all. But, there’s the time that it’s suspected I had a seizure from looking at a lamp, looking away from it, then looking back at it. Isn’t that scary? But that’s not an anomaly. That’s how it works. The scariest part by far of having epilepsy is how unpredictable it is. There’s no on-off switch that’s activated by something specific. It’s a scale, and an epileptic person only knows a moderately certain range. If you’re lucky (or maybe it’s unlucky, given the circumstances) you might get a feel for when you’re more sensitive than normal. I’ve had intuitions like that before, but really, it’s just a range where you don’t know where you’re at on any given day. It’s like the Range Game from Price is Right, only I play it with a strobe light and instead of winning a new refrigerator, I have a seizure.
“Ms. Vice is so excited to have won that she’s shaking. Hey, wait a second.. uh, medics?!”
That’s epilepsy. A series of dice rolls where you only get a vague set of rules. I don’t have “photosensitive epilepsy.” I have epilepsy AND I have photosensitivity which can result in a seizure. And I don’t even always have a seizure if the trigger “hits.” All those symptoms I listed above are far more likely to happen than a seizure. In fact, these days I rarely have seizures at all. I had a LOT when I started IGC. As many as one every three to four days. But, that was because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I felt sorry for myself, so I took drugs, but not the drugs I should have been taking. Robin Williams had a joke where he said a doctor told him “Robin, if you keep taking drugs, you’ll die” then later in life it became “Robin, take these drugs or you’ll die!” That’s my life these days. The “fun” drugs are out and the good ones are in, and seizures are very rare. In 2024, I’ve had two verified seizures and two suspected ones. So the betting favorite isn’t “death by seizure” anymore (who am I kidding? Overdosing was the favorite!) I think “crushed by a pinball table following a fit of rage” is the new favorite. Sh*t, I’ll take $10 on that.
So photosensitivity is a lot more complicated than people might think. Hell, you’re probably thinking of strobes only, aren’t you? While that is the most common trigger, it doesn’t even get you two-thirds the way there. What if I told you repetitive patterns can trigger some people? Shifting colors can too. And, by the way, there’s no such thing as “epilepsy safe.” Neither epilepsy nor photosensitivity work that way. Game developers need to discontinue using medical language in their option menus. You’re not a doctor, and calling your well-meaning toggle “epilepsy mode” or “photosensitive mode” implies safe for epilepsy. It’s just not, no matter how many things you change, because there’s no safety from it. Gaming will always be a risk for me and people like me. I’ve decided that it’s an acceptable risk, but make no mistake: it could kill me. That’s not off the table and WILL NEVER be off the table, so the best I can do is build a very big table for myself. What you’re doing might be “safer” but you don’t know who’s playing your game, their medical history, or their triggers. I prefer the term “effects intensity” for those toggles. It’s not medical jargon, so it implies no safety. Also, most photosensitivity goes undiagnosed, but “effects intensity” is neutral to that and invites more people. By the way, I’ve been doing this for over 13 years, and I’ve never met a single developer who was anything short of horrified to learn their game might be potentially dangerous for me to play. They’re not idiots or willfully ignorant. Our culture has led many people to believe that people like me don’t play games at all or can’t play games at all. It’s a stigma that makes logical sense if you only know this stuff from watching TV. People like Karen.
So, Karen, like, chill the f*ck out. People aren’t born smart to everything. Stuff gets stigmatized, and medical stigmas are not overcome by screaming at people. This is a complicated topic that the adults are handling. I love video games, so I’ve participated in this topic. This woman was “outraged” (really faking outrage) because I actually do not care if I ultimately can’t play a game because of my condition. A condition she hadn’t thought twice about in her entire miserable life, but one that I once genuinely believed would likely kill me someday. Not from a “trigger.” I have epilepsy. Seizures JUST HAPPEN, no trigger needed. I’ll be minding my own business when ZAP and then I wake up with no memory of what the f*ck happened, feel like I’ve pulled muscles all through my body, and glance around the room to see worried faces and people asking “are you okay?” That’s what it’s like. The most common question I get is “do they hurt?” I dunno. I don’t remember any of them. Some people say they’re alert during their seizures and remember everything. For me, it’s like it happens to someone else, and even if I’m up and at ’em an hour or two later, that doesn’t mean I’m all there. That could take a while. Maybe 12 hours before my short term memory is working again. The most common side effects are severe body aches, usually a headache, and my body’s internal clock is well off track. “It’s not 3am Saturday! It’s only 1pm Friday!” is what it’s genuinely like. It’s not hard for me to imagine that at least one of those people who think they’re abducted by aliens and cite the lost time as their proof might actually have epilepsy and not know it. It’s a heartbreaking thing to think about, but I figure it has to be true for at least one of them.
With the photosensitivity, I just really have to take caution with games. This is the part where I say “this is not medical advice. If you have photosensitivity, talk to your doctor. What works for me WORKS FOR ME.” The big two precautions are distance from the screen and lighting in the room. Gaming in the dark is not an option. ANY use of televisions in a room with the lights turned off isn’t. I don’t even get in cars at night if I can help it. Any pinball fan knows that the best pinball is played with the lighting turned down and the table lights turned up. I can’t do it. It’s super dangerous. The risks I take with gaming are calculated risks. Trust me, I have the capability to be stupid. We went to Disneyland recently and I opened my eyes on Space Mountain. I snuck away from my family and rode an indoor, flashy rollercoaster with the intent of keeping my eyes shut the whole time like it was the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, I just wanted just a f’n glimpse of what had once been my favorite Disney ride. A glimpse I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, and now that I’m sober, properly medicated, and mostly seizure-free, it was too tempting to resist. They’d updated the effects since I’d last seen them! So, I opened my eyes for a few seconds and ended up with a ripper of a headache that almost ruined the day for everyone, especially since they knew what I’d done and that I was messed up. Stupid and childish, and I’ll never do anything like it again. It doesn’t affect my gaming as much as you’d think. I’ve had ONE instance in the last few years where I was like “HOLY HELL” with a strobe light. Of all the things, it was the Jetsons NES game that had my family asking “what the hell is wrong with you?” until they realized I honestly didn’t know it was coming. The entire last boss and the aftermath have strobe lights going non-stop. EPILEPSY WARNING FOR THIS VIDEO.
That’s an extreme outlier. There was a single boss in the game Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon that went overboard on the strobe lights. The Pinball Arcade version of the pinball machine Sorcerer got me TWICE. And, that’s really all I can remember from games I actually played since 2019, which is around the time my epilepsy became “manageable” thanks to me growing the f*ck up and acting like I actually cared about my health. I let my friends and family make final decisions on what is and isn’t safe and I respect their decision as final and absolute. If they veto a game, that’s it. I don’t play it. The most recent was the NES Zapper game Gumshoe. We bought a relatively expensive light gun so I could do some light gun game reviews, but Gumshoe was vetoed because of how much shooting is involved: constant, non-stop shooting. That’s a problem because of the bright, white, screen-wide pulse the technology of the NES Zapper causes. I think the world can live without my Gumshoe opinion. But, that really is the extent of my recent epilepsy in gaming experience. What does any of this have to do with the Karen mentioned above? I don’t need to play any one specific game. I can play so many other games. In my experience, even the biggest advocates for the epilepsy options will say “if the game can’t work without the flashing lights, then people with epilepsy have other options for games they can play. Make the game you want to make. It’s YOUR game, not ours.” By the way, that’s a hypothetical situation that I have LITERALLY NEVER HEARD OF ACTUALLY HAPPENING, but just saying it lets the developers know that, hey, we respect your vision as a creator.
This was taken by someone at a conference on accessibility given by my friend Ian Hamilton, one of the world’s foremost experts on game accessibility. This was LONG before the scary lady read half a tweet and was suddenly down with fixing epilepsy. There’s a LOT of epileptic gamers out there, and the greatest honor of my entire life is doing my small part to make gaming truly for everyone. Having my parents, who I gave many sleepless nights to in my youth, tell me they’re proud of me, when I had really not given them a lot to be proud of.. let’s just say, I’m biting my lip right now or else I’d burst into tears.
And that’s what she was raging about. That sentiment above was insufficient for Karen, who didn’t even know there was any problem at all just minutes earlier. She was literally looking at my followers list and directly demanding the ones with the most followers publicly denounce me and join the mob against me. Do you know how many of those big names said anything to the effect of “wait, you’re mad at Indie Gamer Chick over an epilepsy thing? Are you f*cking kidding me?” None. They were too scared they would become the next target of this monster, who was known for turning on people on a dime. I got a lot of private well wishes from people she tagged demanding to cancel me, including some pretty big names in gaming, some who acknowledged they were scared to be targeted, but no big names had the courage to defend me against a woman who clearly didn’t who didn’t give two sh*ts about epilepsy. Her timeline was a series of big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day, and she had enough followers to make someone feel her wrath. That just happened to be the day her big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day was epilepsy, because she had just found out about it.
Do you know what *I* found out that day? I found out that I didn’t really have as many friends as I thought I had. To be clear, a lot of people did come to my defense. Friends did. Total strangers did. One of them didn’t even follow me, but they knew me as a person associated with epilepsy awareness in gaming. That meant a lot to me, and I’m not trying to say that those who did stand up for me meant nothing. It meant EVERYTHING that day. I found out who truly cared. But so many others were sending their well wishes instead of saying “you’re wrong” to this woman while I was puking my guts out, sick to my stomach that I was being attacked for not being supportive enough of something I poured my life into supporting.
That’s not why I’m leaving Twitter, obviously. It happened a long time ago. I blocked Karen. I find that it’s better for your blood pressure to block people who attempt to cancel you because they’re furious you got to a good cause before them. Let’s be real: that’s what she was REALLY mad about. What a f*cking child. But, now, I can’t block her. Twitter, or X or whatever it’s called, is doing away with blocking. People can still see what you’re doing now. It’d be like a judge saying “here’s your restraining order, but your ex can still stare creepily through your window and make throat-slashing gestures.” I don’t take blocking lightly. I recently blocked someone after many, many months of him being just plain annoying, and the final straw was he preemptively raged against a developer about how artwork better not be AI generated. No basis for it at all. Just a kid puffing up his chest and putting a developer on the spot, based on nothing. It wasn’t AI art. He could have asked “is this AI art?” instead of figuratively shaking his fist like some kind of big shot. That was not the only instance of preemptive outrage over an imagined slight towards a studio or developer from this individual, either. I don’t want this person seeing my timeline, because they didn’t use it respectfully. I don’t have that option anymore. But, I do have the option to leave.
One of the reasons I’ve stayed is because I didn’t want anyone taking my Twitter handle. I’ve had issues with people either claiming to work with me or collaborate with me to score review codes. I had a whole group of people try to score free copies of a major indie game by saying they worked with me, when they didn’t. I have the emails between the owner and the developer. The developer, by the way, who respected me so much that he put my f’n mascot, Sweetie, in his game. Of all the people to try to pass off a working relationship that doesn’t exist, you did it to a developer who essentially put me in their game? Wow. When I confronted the owner who sent the email to the dev (which I have) he told me I was wasting time he could be using to promote indies. The owner of that group later told one of the few male content creators he had (he mostly recruited women) that he would spit on me if he could. The guy he told that to quit because, yea, that’s major league f*cked and this person actually had integrity. The audacity of saying you would spit on someone whose clout he was trying to use to score games FOR HIM AND HIS PEOPLE. Good f*cking god. By the way, only two people out of close to twenty, if not more, quit over this.
A lot of the people who worked for this group acknowledged it, verified it, and stuck with them to keep the review copy gravy train going. I never called them out in public because I’d already tried that, and I was told I was wrong for it. Even though it was obvious what they were doing, apparently I came across like I was insufficiently grateful for my position of being a semi-popular game critic. To understand what happened, imagine the audacity it would take to make a group called “Indie Game Nation” so your content creators can call themselves “IGN” or say “you’re with IGN.” Well, I’m not IGN big, so I, a small content creator when you get down to it, was fair game. This group even recruited a content creator who had “Chick” in the name and a round yellow mascot. She probably doesn’t even know about this. I tried telling her, but never got a reply. And that almost by itself kept me at Twitter. After 30 days, your handle becomes available for someone else. I could post a million billion things here at this blog saying “that’s not me anymore” but developers would probably still send codes to the person who got my handle. That whole episode messed me up. It feels so awful to have someone who doesn’t respect you get caught trying to use your name to get games for themselves, but then to brag to someone on your team “I will spit on her, any day, any time” (that’s an exact quote, I have the transcript) is such a nasty, hateful thing. To get caught trying to get codes using my name THEN say you would spit on me if you could? Yea, this guy is totally down with female empowerment. I was sick to my stomach over that whole thing, and that kept me around longer than I wanted.
Not that I have the market cornered on yellow round mascots. She’s basically a smiley with a bow at this point, but dammit, she’s MY smiley with a bow. Thanks Scott for all the Sweeties over the years.
By the way, the good times outnumbered the bad, easily. My followers were always up for donating to charities like the Epilepsy Foundation and Direct Relief. They helped me to discover so many games I never would have found without them, and I hope I did the same for them. I went through a time where I was handing out more games than I was playing. All I wanted was for people to spread the word of the games. Even that had a lot of negativity, so much that I had to quit doing it for my own sanity. People tried to use duplicate accounts to grab double the copies. People didn’t do the work. Some people agreed to the terms, then thought I was being unreasonable to say “can you just play for like twenty minutes and show it off to people? That’s sort of the point of this whole thing.” But, last Halloween, I did it one last time, and there was no drama. It went great. I wish I had quit THAT NIGHT, going out on one of the happiest days of my adult life. Not even a special night, but just a night where it was like “yea, this is what gaming should be.” And hey, I made a lot of friends along the way. I met my best friend through Twitter. I met most of my friends through it. One of my closest friends had a little girl going to kindergarten when I started IGC, and now she’s started college. What? “Where did the time go?” I’ve been around long enough that I’ve fallen out of touch with more friends than I can keep up with. I’ve even had friends who’ve since died. People drift apart. That’s life. This feels like it’s just a larger scale drifting apart.
From a personal point of view, the biggest thrills were always when the people who made the games I played growing up were telling people to read my reviews. I wish everyone could know what that feels like. I wish I could go back in time and tell the little girl who didn’t have a lot of friends that, some day not far from now, the people who made this game you’re playing will be your friends. I wouldn’t have believed it. But, sure enough, even that became a downer. On January 7, 2023. Ed Boon, the mastermind behind Mortal Kombat, told people that he thought my review of Nintendo’s coin-op Popeye was good. “Nice work @IndieGamerChick”
That’s the guy who created Mortal god damned Kombat telling people he liked MY work. That’s not supposed to happen. I do game reviews with lame jokes. You have no idea what that meant to me, and that came during a rough time for me. But, almost none of the replies in that endorsement were about my review. It was almost entirely people demanding he announce the next Mortal Kombat right f*cking now. Still a career highlight, but it’s also like how I imagine everyone who won an Oscar after Chris Rock got smacked by Will Smith felt. It’s not the same, but man, I felt like a complete piece of sh*t reading that thread. And, I probably shouldn’t have, because damn, that was a great day at this blog. But, I have feelings, like anyone else. So, no, it’s not a politics thing. It’s a “what am I even doing here?” thing. Years ago, it wasn’t rare for me to get a few hundred clicks off Twitter from links I’d post throughout the week. Even though the Ed Boon thing was soured, I got over 900 clicks through Twitter that day alone. But, these days, I only get maybe a dozen clicks a day off Twitter on a day that a new review goes up, if I’m lucky. Engagement is way down. And yet, my blog has never been more popular. My reviews have been finding an audience without Twitter. I’ll miss interacting with followers, but it’s time.
Why not jump to another social media? Bluesky or whatever? I think I just want to play games with my family. I wasn’t joking earlier about social media being an addiction. It totally is, at least for me. It’s my last addiction, and I’m ready to drop it. I’m on the patch for it and everything! To everyone who followed me there over the years, thank you! I’m sad, but I’m also excited. God knows my family has been wanting me to do this for years. I’ll miss you, but it doesn’t have to be goodbye. On the sidebar you can put down your email to get updates of my posts. I don’t think there’s spam associated with it. It’s just an email alert of when a new review or feature is up. I’ll miss Twitter, but my reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I’m not quitting. (cracks knuckles) I’m just getting started.
SO, WHAT AM I PLAYING?
Is that building puckering up to kiss me?
Some fun reviews coming to IGC. Contra is coming later today. I need some comfort food, and there’s no better comfort food than one of the greatest NES games of all-time. I discovered that autofire and a spread gun make that game almost trivial. At least one new Pinball FX review is dropping this weekend. Speaking of pinball, you might want to take a look at this pool of games, because it might matter in the coming weeks.
Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey (Super Famicom)
Galactic Pinball (Virtual Boy)
Getaway: High Speed II (Super Game Boy)
Pokémon Pinball (Game Boy Color)
Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (Game Boy Color)
3D Ultra Pinball – Thrillride (Game Boy Color)
Microsoft Pinball Arcade (Game Boy Color)
Muppet Pinball Mayhem (Game Boy Advance)
Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
The Pinball of the Dead (Game Boy Advance)
Pinball Tycoon (Game Boy Advance)
Sonic Pinball Party (Game Boy Advance)
Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire (Game Boy Advance)
Pac-Man Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
I don’t know what I’ll be doing with that list, but I’ve started knocking those games out already. So, I’ll leave you with this, my brand spanking new review of Video Pinball for the Atari 2600, which will be part of whatever feature this ends up being. I’m going to use “What Am I Playing” to post a lot of content from projects that went unfinished. I love you all! Thank you for 13 awesome years on Twitter. This isn’t goodbye. It’s “let’s stay at home for dinner today.”
Video Pinball
aka Arcade Pinball (Sears Label) Platform: Atari 2600 Released in 1980 Designed by Bob Smith Developed by Atari
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Video Pinball is probably one of the most famous video pinball games ever. That’s particularly weird because it never actually feels like pinball. The ball is practically made of Flubber with how much it bounces around. It’s actually not out of the question that you could end up going several minutes without having to touch the flippers or nudge. Not seconds. Minutes! We used a stopwatch and everything! In a game where we never once activated the flippers, one ball lasted 1 minute, 7 seconds AND it returned to the plunger instead of draining. The total time was 3 minutes, 4 seconds, without ever once hitting a flipper, and that included three total returns to the plunger. Designer Bob Smith apparently took inspiration from Atari’s own Superman table. Atari tables were notorious for breaking down, so kudos to Mr. Smith because my PC didn’t catch fire playing this (like Atari pins really did do). But, come on. Including this game is a little tongue in cheek. The control you have over the ball is minimum. None of us found the nudge effective except in very limited circumstances where the ball was bouncing slow enough but in a sharp-enough angle that a tiny nudge pushed in down one of the scoring lanes. The biggest misnomer of pinball is that it’s random chaos. Video Pinball for Atari is random chaos.
With the difficulty toggled, it opens what I assume are double outlanes.
Can You Trap? No. If you attempt to, at best, the ball just reverses direction and bounces until it hits the staircase that represents the slings. Can You Pass? No. You can’t even really aim the ball all that well. Pinball is a precise ball sport. This is just batting a ball back into play and hoping for the best. The world’s greatest snooker players couldn’t calculate the amount of trajectory that goes into “shots” in video pinball. I’m not even sure it’s charming in the way video pinball can be. My family firmly disagreed. Oscar said “all things considered, there’s dynamic scoring with the drop targets raising the bumper value. There’s ‘lights’ in the Atari lane that grant bonuses.” Even 9 year old Sasha found herself defending it. “The plunger is easy to use and has adjustable strengths. You can aim the first shot!” Mind you, defending or not, none of us gave this a YES! It’s like a novelty toy more than pinball, and it wasn’t until after the review that I told my family I only had us start with this to see if they were going to hand out YES! votes like candy to trick or treaters. Verdicts: Cathy – NO! Angela – NO! Oscar – NO! Sasha – NO!
Ghost Manor Platform: TurboGrafx-16 Released in 1992 Designed by Art Huff Developed by ICOM Simulations Published by Turbo Technologies, Inc. NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)
What the hell kind of hero is that? Why does he have an “A” on his shirt? Did Alvin from the Chipmunks make a wish to be a real boy and that’s what he became? And by the way, you can’t see it but the A is on both sides. He’s an A both coming and going.
What horror themed game starring a character named Arthur did YOU think I was going to review? Well the thing is, next year is Ghosts ‘n Goblins 40th anniversary, and I think it’s a safe bet that the franchise will be getting a retro collection in 2025. Besides, what stuck out to me about this is I’ve already reviewed a game called Ghost Manor. It was for the Atari 2600 and the review is part of Atari 50: The Games They Couldn’t Include – Part Two. THAT Ghost Manor was an ambitious genre hodgepodge. While I didn’t ultimately give it a YES!, I admired that the company behind the Veg-O-Matic didn’t phone-in their attempt at carving-out a niche in the game industry. I wish I could say the same about this version of Ghost Manor. This take on the theme is a labyrinthine platformer that shares more DNA with Wizards & Warriors than Castlevania or Ghosts ‘n Goblins. Not good DNA, either. It’s one of those passed-on traits that’s not desirable, like asthma or, in this game’s case, slanted platforms that you slide down in a semi-controllable fashion. It’s not that Ghost Manor is a god awful game by any means. It’s just a basic, boring game that relies too heavily on GOTCHAs to ping your health away. One of this game’s main strategies for challenge is moments like this:
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Placing enemies on the other side of the door so that taking damage is a certainty is a trick Ghost Manor pulls all the time. Or entering a door only to have a monster on the other side on top of where you sprite will first come into existence. If this game had instakills, it’d be impossible. It’s a health tax, and nothing more. Why even do the enemies thing? Just take away some health to pass to the next screen. Weirdly, I still never died from taking damage. The only deaths were, like so many games, instakills from pits, environmental hazards, or direct contact with the game’s only boss. How it handles environmental hazards is so weird. Like, look at this screenshot.
I’m walking safely past the fire. BUT, had I jumped onto the same spot I’m on, I would have been killed instantly by the fire. The background suddenly, inexplicably counts as the foreground when it’s a danger element. This happens with spikes too (though they don’t kill you instantly). I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this before. It already doesn’t help that your character looks like a Cabbage Patch Kid that grew up, but once the scariest aspect of the game is bright lights in the background instead of actual monsters and skeletons, it’s probably time to rethink your game. Everything else about Ghost Manor is as generic as it gets. Hearts refill your life. Red orbs act as your projectiles and kill things. I was constantly running out of ammo and having to take damage.
See, I walked through this door and poof, damaged. By the way, some of the enemies that you kill split into two smaller versions that circle around you until you kill them or leave the room, but they don’t kill you. What are they doing? Taunting you?
On the other hand, there’s treasure chests or boxes all over that have life refills, ammo, points, and occasionally whammies (though nowhere near as many whammies as Ghosts n’ Goblins have). Even with this, there still wasn’t enough ammo. I reached the point where if an enemy wasn’t directly blocking the path I was on or I could easily avoid it, I didn’t kill it. Where’s the fun in that? A bigger problem is the way momentum works. Ghost Manor reminded me of the 3D version of Dragon’s Lair, because if you walked into any wall at any speed, Dirk the Daring recoiled. Well, this game does that too. It doesn’t damage you, but it absolutely grinds movement to a halt. There’s no consistency to it, either. Sometimes I was running full speed and no recoil happened. Other times I was attempting to get close to a wall with a platform so I could jump and my character was like “BOING.” It was just something I had to deal with. It’s such a weirdly sloppy thing to add to a game based around jumping and exploring because it has no benefit. It’s neither immersive nor does it add to the challenge, because I don’t even think it caused me to take damage even once. It’s just a bad idea in a game that feels like it’s grasping at straws.
I’m actually stuck here. I had to rewind the game to unstick myself. I couldn’t find any benefit to clipping through the wall like this so I assume it’s a glitch. There’s no guides anywhere for this game so if I’m missing something, I couldn’t find it.
The best thing I can say about Ghost Manor is that it’s pretty short. I finished it in under 90 minutes even though I’d never played it before. The level design isn’t half bad and the exploration is moderately okay. Weirdly, there’s no graphics to indicate whether something is locked or not, so it’s never quite clear what the key goes to when you find it. At one point, I was in a room that looked like the right wall opened up into another room. I’d seen over a dozen walls that looked exactly like it already. The door appeared open, but instead, I brained myself on it. Well, that’s because the key went to it. They couldn’t draw a door? Really? It’s a stunningly lazy game, and what’s even weirder is there is a logical way to help with that problem built into the game. When you face the final boss in a free-roaming room while riding a ghost, an arrow points you towards where the boss is in the arena. Why didn’t they just use that arrow to tell you where to take the key? It would have cut down on the busy work. And ultimately, that’s the problem with Ghost Manor: there’s no extra effort at all. The combat is boring, the movement sucks, and it doesn’t even really work as a “scary” game, especially with the perpetually smiling hero. I’d like to think Ghost Manor is a game starring a hero who is tripping balls on acid. If it’s true, it begs the question: what were those skeletons I killed, really? Verdict: NO!
Doctor Strange First Released December 17, 2013 Main Platform: Pinball FX Switch Platform: Pinball FX Designed by Ivan “Mad_Boy” Nicoara Set: Marvel Pinball Collection 1 ($23.99) Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
One of the more life-like tables in terms of layout.. OR IS IT? Instead of using a diverter, the left ramps magically change direction, splitting apart and merging again. Neato.
Doctor Strange’s table is a strange one, indeed. Lots of conventional angles and smooth-sailing orbits make this enjoyable enough as a finesse shooter’s table. It’s too bad it can’t just give you the ball when it starts a mode. It has to violently spit the ball out so that it ricochets around, and sometimes it’ll just drop straight down the drain. Come on, enough of that. Seriously, at one point, I had a two ball multiball where both balls were shot directly from the VUKs down the drain, then I had to watch as the balls got stuck in the plunger. Absurdly, that’s not even Doctor Strange’s biggest issue. That would be the short amount of time you get to complete modes. They just don’t give you long enough for a table that has ball movement this loose, and one that deliberately eats up time before you even get your first shot. You could have as little as one shot at each ramp, and if the ball finds its way to the bumpers, you’re probably going to fail the mode. This is one of those tables where Zen desperately needs to go back and redo the rules completely from scratch. They can do an entire advertising campaign about having updated the ROMs for the tables. Nobody is saying “erase the old version forever.” We ain’t George Lucas. No, keep it up and call the reworked versions “The 2025 Builds” or something like that.
Signature Mode – Baron Mordo: One of the most fun modes on a middling table, five portals open in the middle of the midfield. When you shoot them, the ball teleports to the corresponding portal and completes the orbit at super speed, complete with sound effects right out of a 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon. It’s so cheesy and we all love it. We just wish it gave you another ten seconds to make each shot.
Doctor Strange features better than decent modes, mind you, and I especially enjoy how each has its own two shot driver. ONLY TWO SHOTS? Are we SURE this is a Zen table? Sure, they overvalued the modes to finish them, which feels like an over-correction so that players avoid chopping wood with combos. The layout is fine, which is why the modes need fixing. It wouldn’t require a lot of work for Zen to go in, add time to the modes (double, at least) and then cut their value by maybe 25%. There’s a marvelous table in here, and combos are such a cinch to shoot that you can veg out. I just wish the mechanics were more forgiving and/or less aggressive. On the positive side, this is easily the cheesiest table in Pinball FX. It’s so wildly cartoonish that it’s honestly more charming than most recent Marvel Cinematic Universe films and media combined, including the second Doctor Strange movie. The layout is fine. It might lean a little too heavily into defense, but with the smooth shooting combos, it’s easy to relight the kickbacks. Everything comes back to the timer and the fact that Doctor Strange is too aggressive with its multiball serves. They turn what should be one of the elite Marvel pins into a table located firmly in the middle of the pack. Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5) Angela: GOOD Oscar: GOOD Jordi: GOOD Sasha: GOOD Scoring Average: 3.0 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹 Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for.
Deadpool
First Released June 24, 2014
Main Platform: Pinball FX
Switch Platform: Not Yet Released Designed by Tamas “Ypok” Pokrocz Set: Marvel Pinball Collection 2 ($29.99 MSRP)
Links: Strategy Guide – Pinball FX Wiki
Deadpool looks the part. No doubt about it. There’s a ton of Easter Eggs and winks to the audience. But, it comes with a price: it can take FOREVER for the animations to wrap up, which means waiting around. Even holding the flippers, it can take a while. It can mess with your shooting stroke.
One of the call outs in Deadpool has him saying Zen Studios should make an M-rated pinball game, and his stated reason results in him being bleeped for the next ten seconds. Zen? Make an M-rated table? Nah, it’ll never happen. In Deadpool, if you make a skill shot, there’s a very good chance you’ll score 500,000 points and also watch the ball go straight down the outlane that’s directly next to the plunger and fed by the skill shot, losing your ball save. I’m sure this was done to be a troll, because I guess Deadpool could lazily be interpreted as a glorified troll. Cool. Yea, Deadpool the Pinball FX table is quite the frustrating pinball experience. For the record: that skill shot isn’t a “git gud” element that adds challenge. It’s just crap design. Mind you, there’s a super skillshot if you hit the first, which you might not even get a chance at because of this design. Why would you make a table like that? People pay money for these, and your first instinct is to troll? But the whole table is that way. The bumpers are of the Creature from the Black Lagoon variety, and it’s not rare for a ball to get caught in them for a long time. On a table where time is money. Want to experience Deadpool-based agony without watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Try playing this table in the five minute mode. (About an hour after typing that, 9 year old Sasha took that as a bet and shortly thereafter became Pinball FX’s Deadpool 5 Minute Challenge Undisputed World Champion).
Signature Shot – Mode Start Filing Cabinet: The one ingenious aspect of Deadpool is how the mode start works. Once you hit the mode start lanes to light the cabinet, you can start the mode and play on EASY right away, or you can use the spinners to light other difficulties. Usually this means adding to the shot requirement or shrinking time limits. This is a great idea, and the modes are just good enough to carry Deadpool over the finish line. Even if it’s doing it one piece at a time. By the way, you’re not guaranteed to actually get the hardest difficulty even if you light it. You still have the ball into the top locker. In Sasha’s record-setting 5 minute challenge, her intent was to play on HARD, but after lighting it, the mode start shot fizzled off the jump and only went into the MEDIUM hole. And she still set the world record anyway. Go figure.
Deadpool has the same problem as Ant-Man: there’s something loose and inelegant about ball movement in this table. You can see it in the skill shot, when a tiny little bump with the plunger sends the ball flying. The bumpers and slingshots are the same way. This is what we call a “kinetic” table, though it feels more in terms of gravity than actual table mechanics. It feels like you’re shooting a marble instead of a steel ball. Maybe the table wouldn’t work without the lighter physics. I hope that’s not the reason, because if it is, that’s the point when a designer should tear the table down and start over, not slap a price tag on it and release it. So, I must have hated the table, right? Actually, it won me over thanks to the way the mode start is handled, plus the modes themselves are pretty good. From shooting garbage that rains from the sky to the miniature Deadpool. The only one I disliked was a button mashing arm wrestling sequence. Button mashing is one of those accessibility things that needs to be phased out unless it’s a specific button mashing genre (like Track & Field games).
Signature Shot – Lil’ Deadpool: Okay, so as far as digital targets go, this is slightly weak since he just wiggles there after completing other tasks. What makes it more interesting is that we started setting records once we began trying for medium difficulty. Instead of three sequences of hitting the spinners and shooting the lockers to set up Lil’ Deadpool, you have to do four. For much more points. Yea, that’s a fair trade.
Even with the physics problems, I have to give it up to Ypok. He did a fairly decent job of balancing the difficulty and risk/reward between EASY/MEDIUM/HARD difficulties. It also helps that the harp-shaped playfield inherently has good combo shooting that feels different from a typical “pick a lane, any lane” out and back again combo shooting. Do I think Deadpool lives up to its potential? Oh, not even close. This thing feels SO WEIRD in terms of speed and bounce. If this hadn’t been Deadpool, they could have just as easily based it on Sonic The Hedgehog with how fast it runs and how much punch you get off the slingshots or even the grenade that acts as a ball save. The story isn’t “Deadpool wins a Clean Scorecard” but instead “Deadpool’s physics prevented it from winning the Certificate of Excellence that the layout and modes deserved.” On the other hand, this is the rare IP that is so enticing that pretty much everyone wants to play it, and it’s actually good enough that everyone should at least enjoy it more than dislike it. That counts for something in my book. Cathy: GOOD (3 out of 5) Angela: GOOD Oscar: GOOD Jordi: GOOD Dash: GREAT (4 out of 5) Sasha: GREAT Scoring Average: 3.33 – 🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹 Some review copies were provided in this review, others were paid for. Read my review of the Deadpool NES game.
This was supposed to be in the 130+ table Pinball FX Table Review Guide, but since it can’t handle posting a review that large, I decided to split up all the table reviews into separate posts. The guide originally included brand new short form reviews for a few tables we already posted full reviews for. So hell, why not just post it anyway? Though I swear on all that is holy this is the last time I’m doing an Addams Family table. Unless they include the gold version eventually.
This is it. This is pinball’s all-time sales champion. The only modern pin that sold over 20,000 units. And, yea, it absolutely deserves that status. While I’ll insist until the day I die that whatever happened to be the best pin of 1992 was probably fated to be the biggest seller ever, it’s also not a cosmic fluke that Addams was the chosen one. It’s probably the greatest example of theme integration in the medium’s history. It just feels exactly like how the lyrics of the Addams Family theme song describe them. Creepy? Check. Kooky? Check. Mysterious? Check. Spooky? Actually, yea. Check-check. Every table with a darker, macabre theme that came after Addams tried to recreate the magic and couldn’t. Tales from the Crypt. Scared Stiff (which is ironically a better version of the Tales from the Crypt theme, only with Elvira instead of the Crypt Keeper). I think the modes play a big part in that. I wish Zen Studios would try to make a pin that replicated the Pat Lawlor 90s style of “doors” as featured in this and Twilight Zone. Checking off the doors isn’t a grind at all, but staying alive might be. Addams is one of the rare pins that can get away with a plethora of house balls and keep people coming back for more. Even that feels true to the spirit of the theme, and it never fails to generate laughs in my house when it happens. Do you realize how SPECTACULAR of a table you have to be to get away with that? Addams is practically in a class of its own. By the way, this is THE greatest table of the 1990s for duels. We’re always down to throw hands at Addams in the Vice House. It’s a guaranteed good time.
Signature Element – T-H-I-N-G Lock: This is one of those things.. literally, in this shot’s case.. where the charm of a real table is lost. When you play a physical version of Addams Family, having a disembodied hand come out of a box and grab the ball is a sight to behold. I can’t imagine what this must have looked like in an arcade in 1992, when interactive toys in pinball were a genuine rarity. It must have been quite the treat. But, thirty-two years later, it’s just an extended break in the action, is it not? Pinball FX has tables where full fledged zombies walk around on the table, and I’m supposed to still get excited to see this slow-ass hand come out of the box? Granted, sometimes the break is a welcome one, since this is one of the more chaotic pins out there. But, if you’re in the middle of a hot streak, it might totally screw up your shooting rhythm, especially if the lock is already occupied and Thing is just going to put the ball right back. So agonizing.
Zen has done a pretty good job with Addams. Hell, the Thing Flips auto-shot is even somewhat improved from the launch version, though it’s still pretty inaccurate. Oddly enough, it’s a pretty good shot exclusively on Nintendo Switch, but that version has major issues regarding the electric chair. In real life, when the ball is dropped from the electric chair and you take a dead flip, it’s very rare for the ball to roll up the right outlane and activate the (temporary) electric chair switch. It does it almost every time on Nintendo Switch. That’s a big problem because it allows you to cheese the doors. That alone almost cost it from winning our Certificate of Excellence, as it barely made it over the scoring average threshold. Also, and this is slightly nit-picky but the extra ball shot feels a little inaccurate regardless of which version (or mode) you’re playing with Addams. The biggest difference between the real life and Zen versions all comes down to physics. Pinball FX’s engine is poor at things like bounces. On a real table, if you brick the Thing Flips shot, you might be able to convert the rebound and make the shot anyway. The ball just doesn’t ricochet enough to do that on Pinball FX. So, in all fairness, I can’t say this is a life-like take on Addams. It’s probably 85% there, but it’s also probably accurate to say the problems with Pinball FX’s engine affect Addams more than any other Williams pin. Maybe someday they’ll find the other fifteen percent, but we all prefer Zen’s build to standard Pinball Arcade port anyway. Addams Family is an imperfect port of what might be the perfect 90s pin. Cathy: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5) GREAT on Switch (4 out of 5) Angela: MASTERPIECE(GREAT on Switch) Oscar: GREAT(GOOD on Switch) Jordi: MASTERPIECE Dash: GOOD (3 out of 5)
Sasha: MASTERPIECE(GREAT on Switch)
Dave: GREAT (Nintendo Switch)
Elias: GOOD (Nintendo Switch)
Primary Scoring Average: 4.5 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Switch Scoring Average: 3.66 📜CERTIFIED EXCELLENT📜
Contra
Contra
PART OF THE CONTRA REVIEW SERIES!
CUPHEAD
Video Pinball (Atari 2600)
Family Pinball (aka Rock ‘n Ball, Famicom/NES)
Psycho Pinball (Sega Mega Drive)
Video Pinball
Ghost Manor
Doctor Strange
Deadpool
Cathy: 
The Addams Family
Cathy: 
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