Super Mario Bros. 2 aka The Lost Levels Platform: Famicom Disk System, SNES FDS Original First Released June 3, 1986 Super Mario All-Stars Released July 14, 1993 Directed by Shigeru Miyamoto & Takashi Tezuka Developed by Nintendo Both Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)
Listings on Mario Wiki: Famicom Disk System – Super Mario All-Stars
Super Mario Bros. 2 (1986 – Famicom Disk)
Super Mario All-Stars (1993 – SNES)
Super Mario All-Stars (1993 – SNES)
Does the “bounce off the turtle shell for easy 1ups” trick seen above count as cheating? If the answer is “no” then I just beat the infamous Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels twice in one day without cheating. Sort of. I also didn’t warp, but one time in each version, I would have warped if I hadn’t rewound the game. Since a full tour of all the levels requires you not to warp, and since I had no intention to replay these once I was done, I used rewind to take me back to the start of the branching path. But that’s it. If I died or lost my power-up, I didn’t undo it. Now, at the start of this process, I didn’t intend to play the original FDS version as anything more than a sampling. In the original Famicom Disk Version, if you want to see four out of the five bonus worlds, you have to beat the game an absolutely ridiculous EIGHT TIMES. On Super Mario All-Stars, they’re lumped-in with the ninth world that you get for not warping. Besides, I was certain I would be miserable playing Lost Levels. I wasn’t, and thus:
Oh I didn’t beat the game eight times. I’m not that insane. Also, my FDS session came after I’d already beat the game with Mario on Super Mario All-Stars. One thing became really clear when I played the game with Luigi: the overwhelming majority of Lost Levels’ challenge is based around Mario, and only Mario. The only real difference in movement physics between Super Mario 1 and Super Mario 2 is that this game introduced the concept of Mario springing off enemies. It’s not as dramatic as it would eventually become, but Mario 2 is clearly the prototype for that gameplay concept. If that’s not the tough stuff, the sheer amount of long jumps and single-block platforms is.
Oh I died here. Damn turtle needed to be a little higher.
But all those jumping challenges were designed with Mario in mind. Platforms or long jumps that you need a running jump for with Mario can typically be handled by Luigi with a lot less effort. Luigi jumps a lot higher and a lot further, so unless there’s a low ceiling, he nerfs most of the tough jumps from the Mario side of the adventure. Luigi’s biggest drawback is how far he slides before coming to a stop when you use the B-run. Most of my deaths with Mario were from shorting jumps. Most of my deaths with Luigi were from some form of sliding, mostly off the edge of platforms. But, I had a much easier time adjusting to Luigi’s quirks than Mario’s shortcomings.
♫ Fly through the stage, Cathy! Zoom, zoom, zoom! Forgot for a second it’s not the thing to do! Lost another life sliding! Boo hoo hoo! This ain’t the red plumber! It’s a different hue! Luigi’s traction doesn’t stop like glue and I skid to my doom my darling!
One other thing became clear while playing this: I was wrong about Super Mario Bros. 2 or Lost Levels or Super Mario for Super Players or whatever else you want to call it. I always dismissed it as a glorified ROM hack, no different than any of the hundreds of fan-made ones of the original Super Mario Bros. I wasn’t entirely wrong, but I wasn’t entirely right, either. Yes, it’s just a mod of the original game with some changes to background graphics and a new whammy: the poison mushroom. I think the poison mushroom is a flop that only works the first time IF you don’t already know it’s coming. Once you adjust to it, it’s not that hard to just not pick it up even if you spring one from a question mark block. More problematic are the red piranha plants. Normally, the plants become shy if you stand next to the pipe, but the red ones require you to be ON the pipe to trigger their bashfulness.
They also added wind, but I didn’t think it was that big a deal. I didn’t lose more lives than average because of it. It’s not unpredictable. It’s just another fixture. Part of the level design. Hell, if anything, I welcomed it when it showed up because it broke up the monotony of playing more of the same with Super Mario Bros. I wish it had more gimmicks like that. It was certainly better than the green springs. They launch you so high into the sky that you can’t even see where you are. Well, except you can use the scrolling to aim. There’s two stages built entirely around them that both feel nearly identical. Launch off the spring, clear a massive gap, land on the next spring, or maybe it’s a small platform. They weren’t very hard, and I honestly didn’t remember losing a single life on either version. Actually I did lose one but it’s because I got greedy and tried to make it further than I realistically could.
This is the one I died on.
For all the hoopla of how hard Lost Levels was supposed to be, thanks to the 1-up trick (which is literally possible right at the start of level 1 – 1), I never came that close to a game over. The stages are hard but not insurmountable. I only timed-out once on one of the castle mazes. I only dropped ten lives or more in a single stage twice, and never when playing as Luigi. Hell, I was acing levels even late in the game. It’s tough and there’s a lot of trial and error, but once you get a feel for the design logic, it’s not that bad. Like, if a jump seems TOO impossible, chances are there’s invisible blocks around to provide some kind of assist or boost. That’s the part I was wrong about. It might be a glorified ROM hack, but there is a predictable method to the madness. Once I approached Lost Levels as a challenge of my gaming skills instead of as a gaming experience, it’s kind of an exciting game.
Really, just the act of taking your time should reduce the difficulty by 50%. I think a lot of the moaning is probably based on how quickly players are able to run through Super Mario 1. It’s one of the most speed-run games in history. But for Lost Levels, I noticed the more I paced myself, the fewer attempts I needed to beat a stage.
Where the game still feels kind of janky is in the difficulty scaling. One thing that the original Super Mario Bros. got right was the progression of the challenge. Well, that’s out the door here. Lost Levels has a difficulty curve that resembles a heart monitor. One of the levels I dropped more than ten lives on was 4 – 3, which it turns out is actually a cut & paste from the coin-op version of the original game, Vs. Super Mario Bros. Okay, that’s kind of funny, especially since I’m pretty sure that was the stage I died the most on. But then I breezed through worlds five and six and even got my first fire flower in a few worlds, which I still had to use against world six’s Bowser. Now, some of that can be chalked up to adapting to the types of challenges in the game. But certainly not all of it can be.
By the way, I was STUNNED by how easy World 9 was, though it seems that was meant as a kind of reward and a winking nod to the minus world from the original game by the development team. The color scheme for world 9 is especially weird on the Famicom Disk. It’s worth mentioning that the FDS version has an additional twist for world 9: you only get one life. Don’t worry though, because it’s not THAT tough as long as you remember to jump on the ceiling during the home stretch of 9 – 4.
But, to the shock of my friends, I had fun on Saturday playing this. Lost Levels became one of those games that I thought I’d knock out in a morning and instead I played it for the better part of a day and never really got bored. Okay, the whole “beat the game eight times to get the final four hidden worlds” thing is ridiculous, but future re-releases dumped that. I think Nintendo made a big mistake not bringing this out in America in the 80s. They really underestimated gamers. There’s people who beat games blindfolded, and they vetoed making millions off this because there’s a poison mushroom near the start of the first stage? Really? Oh, I’m totally fine with our version of Super Mario Bros. 2 getting the “#2” label, but if Nintendo was worried about alienating the fan base by releasing such a hard game, don’t call this Mario 2. Call it “More Super Mario Bros.” or something like that.
Skid to my doom……
….. my darling!
Lost Levels is actually very modern in many ways. I know I’ve said a lot of games feel like DLC packs, but in the case of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, it REALLY feels like a prototype for modern DLC. It wouldn’t be hard to make this even more modern. Replace the lives system with a death counter and maybe a clock for speed runners and Lost Levels could pass for a 2025 design. So, yeah, I was wrong about Lost Levels, kind of. I really don’t think it’s for EVERYONE. If you’re not specifically seeking a challenge for your platforming skills, don’t bother. Nothing new it offers over Super Mario Bros. is worth the suffering you’ll experience, and that’s before I even consider that most of the elegance of the original game is lost. But if you want an often clever platforming challenge that maintains the purity of Super Mario 1, then I’d say Lost Levels is worth dying for again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again…………. Verdict: YES!
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon Platform: Game Boy Advance Released March 21, 2001 (JP) June 11, 2001 (US) Designed by Koji Horie Developed by Konami Included in Castlevania Advance Collection
Bats are basically just sacks of blood, apparently.
I got Circle of the Moon on the day the Game Boy Advance launched in North America. Oh, I didn’t play it then. Did you ever watch the White Walker battle in the final season of Game of Thrones? Probably not, even if the TV was tuned into it, because you couldn’t see a damned thing. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was kind of like that when it launched. Even after my father installed one of those aftermarket, warranty-voiding light kits to my GBA, visibility wasn’t very good and I still didn’t play it. Actually, because the Game Boy Advance screen was so impossible to see, I didn’t play a lot of GBA at all until the SP and the Game Boy Player (for my younger readers, this was a device that let you play Game Boy Advance titles on the TV via a GameCube) came out in 2003, both of which came with the novelty of being able to see the games you bought. Well, the Game Boy Player did. The original SP was front lit, because Nintendo never admits to mistakes until they’ve exhausted all other possibilities. But, for me at least, the killer app of the Game Boy Player was Circle of the Moon. In fact, I binged the three Castlevania GBA games back-to-back-to-back. And it was a couple of the happiest weeks of what would be a very crappy year for me. So, I cherish the Castlevania GBA trilogy. But, did they age well?
Find the right enemies and grinding can go so quick that it’s kind of shocking. Does it still count as “grinding” if you can get a couple levels in under five minutes?
As the second “Metroidvania” game in the series and the first since the legendary Symphony of the Night, Circle of the Moon had a LOT to live up to. Circle of the Moon doesn’t attempt to be quite as RPG-like as that game. Actually, it’s more like a noncommittal hybrid of a traditional Castlevania game and a Symphony of the Night-style adventure. While the actual map is massive and sprawling, your only primary weapon is the Vampire Killer whip. Apparently this is not THE whip of the Belmont clan and instead is called the “Hunter Whip” but who gives a f*ck? It’s the Vampire Killer, period, and there’s no permanent upgrades for it and no alternatives. Luckily, the whip is one of the most satisfying of any Castlevania whips, with plenty of OOMPH and a lot of magical spells to buff it and the standard assortment of Castlevania subweapons to complement it. The action is top-notch. Controls really well, too. This is one of those games that plays so well that it completely lives and dies on the merits of the design.
This was my map when I finished the game. Dracula is directly to the right of the first yellow block from the left. With his room filled in, this is a roughly 90% complete map, and I have no idea how many HP/MP/Heart boosts I missed along the way. I didn’t use a guide for them, and actually, I only used a guide for which enemies drop which weapons.
Instead of finding weapons, there’s only armor and accessories which are dropped by enemies. In fact, each individual enemy drops only two potential things, one common, the other rare. I’m not the biggest fan of this design because I hate having this type of thing come down to tracking down lottery tickets. Like, the second best armor in the game is dropped by an enemy that exists only in one specific room. Also, the base drop rate for this armor is 0.5%, and since there’s only one of these enemies in the entire game, if you don’t get it, you have to leave the room and come back and fight it again. Something about that is really inelegant to me, and for this game, I decided not to play along. Instead, I used save states to make some of the drops go quickly. Sometimes it made a big difference, but other times? I’m not at all encouraging you to watch this whole video, but even cheesing the game with save states, it could take quite a while for the item I was seeking to drop.
By the way, the dice seem to be rolled the moment the fatal shot is THROWN, not LANDED, so if you have a boomerang about to kill an enemy on the return trip, reloading the state won’t change whether or not the enemy drops something or not. Speaking of the Boomerangs, they’re pretty rare in this. I’d recommend holding onto them when you first get one because they’re seriously overpowered for all bosses.
Additionally, some enemies drop cards that allow you to cast spells. Unlike armor, card drops happen only once, but if you want to do THAT, logically the first kill against the target enemy should result in a drop. It doesn’t. Lame. There’s two tiers of cards that have to be combined. These mostly enhance your whip. For the most part, I only used two combos, one of which gave me a fire sword and one of which made my whip twice as long. I might switch to one that increased the damage I inflicted by 25% for bosses, but otherwise, I mostly stuck to those once I had them. The problem is the same as the accessories: they’re random drops from enemies. Every treasure that can be found (besides post-boss upgrades) are either upgrades to hit points, magic points, or max hearts you can carry. I didn’t start cheesing the game with emulation trickery until over halfway through the game. If the drop system had been remotely rewarding, I would never have done it. Random drops might be great for the surprise factor, but I can assure you, it gets old. I really think it would have been more satisfying to hide the big armor and accessories as treasures in the castle.
Mercury Card + Golem card ended up being, no joke, my favorite Castlevania whip ever. It reaches nearly half the screen and, although it comes at a cost of speed, it sure made backtracking a lot less painful.
So, this is awkward to say, but I found the RPG elements of Circle of the Moon to be some of the worst in a good game I’ve ever played. Too many enemies that are pushovers pay off too many experience points. Like this room here:
That “frozen shade” paid off so much that I was able to grind up about ten levels in under half-an-hour. It’s not up to players to use the honor system to protect the integrity of the game from lazy design. Designers are supposed to discourage that through challenge, right? Clearly that enemy was not something I was supposed to be fighting then and there. It had easy-to-dodge attacks and, with the fire sword spell and the star bracelets it dropped for me, I was wasting it in four or five hits, before it even fired at me. And since magic refills slowly (another bad choice, in my opinion) I didn’t have to hold back while fighting it. I have no idea how they determined some of these XP totals, but it makes Circle of the Moon one of the most exploitable RPG systems in the entire history of gaming.
One neat thing that it does do is replace weak enemies with strong ones as you make progress, though it waits a little too long to do this, and it doesn’t implement it nearly enough. If you want to put such a heavy emphasis on backtracking, you need more of this. These enemies are at the start of the game, but they don’t show up until you’re nearly finished.
There’s just absolutely no sense of balance, and no balance means no risk/reward to calculate. This is where you have to give turn-based RPGs props. In those, if you encounter an enemy that pays off so huge that you can hypothetically grind out hours worth of leveling-up in under half-an-hour, a punch-for-punch battle would see you go tits-up, lights-out in probably the first attack the enemy got on you. Action games can be that way too, but if you don’t PERFECTLY distribute the enemies or accessories, at some point the opportunity to cheese the game will present itself. Circle of the Moon does that a few times. It’s really badly done in that regard.
Don’t get me wrong: finding the hidden stuff is f’n awesome. I cracked a smile every single time a wall broke.
Now here’s the good news: the level design is mostly pretty good. There’s a ton of annoying backtracking and not nearly enough fast-travel tunnels. According to the game’s clock, it took me six-and-a-half hours to finish the Circle of the Moon, and I’d guess at least a third of that was spent making my way back to areas just to get one previously inaccessibly stat upgrade or find an enemy who dropped a card I missed. If the combat wasn’t so damn satisfying and the level design some of the best in this genre, I wouldn’t have been up for it. Yet, there’s a lot of really weird design choices that made me shake my head. Stuff that shattered my immersion that I was a badass vampire hunter exploring a castle. Like, this for example:
Are you kidding me?
One of the very last items you get from defeating a boss is the ability to shove boxes. Okay, that’s a time-honored staple of the genre. EXCEPT, one of the very first upgrades you get in Circle of the Moon is the ability to shatter stone blocks with a dash move. So, let me get this straight: Nathan Graves (hero of the game) masters the ability to shatter stone with his shoulder before he learns how to push a wooden crate out of the way? I had a spell that turned my whip into a goddamned flaming sword that, by all rights, should have set the box on fire, but I had to wait until the game was almost over to schlep a box? And by the way, they put a lot of those boxes throughout the “levels” of the game, so after getting this upgrade, if you want to boost your stats you have to spend about an hour just making your way to them so you can push them out of the way and pick up the boosts.
When the game is over, you get a series of passwords that allow you to replay the game in a different way, though the hero sprite is still Nathan. Thankfully, you don’t have to beat the game to get these, but honestly, they’re all really boring and feel like the type of challenges that pro gamers come up with to keep themselves amused. The Wizard (pictured here using a spell that turned me into a skeleton) is activated by putting FIREBALL as your name, which is also the name of Angela’s dog. Funny. The wizard is weak in everything except magic, and you start the game with every card so you basically have to magic your way through it. GRADIUS is the fighter, who can’t cast spells but his strength is insane. CROSSBOW is the “shooter” who has weak stats and has to use sub-weapons (including a new version of the dagger) that come at half the cost of hearts to use. This is one of the worst ways to ever play a Castlevania game. Finally, THIEF has weak stats but enemies drop stuff at a significantly higher rate. Sorry, no upside-down castle this time.
In terms of a pure action game, Circle of the Moon is clearly one of the most elite launch games in the history of the medium. It’s actually astonishing to think about: this was a day one Game Boy Advance game. I mean, pity about the vision thing, because the wide variety of enemies, settings, and huge boss fights make this legitimately a pretty good Castlevania adventure. While the RPG aspect is a complete airball in my opinion, the epic scale of the boss fights almost makes up for it by itself. This includes one of the best Grim Reaper fights of the 21st century, a memorable encounter with a gigantic minotaur that’s practically trapped in a pillory, and an even more gigantic two-headed dragon. Sadly, after several top-notch boss fights, the game ends with back-to-back AWFUL fights: the battle against Nathan’s rival, the insufferable Hugh Baldwin (who was originally going to be a playable character) and one of the most sloggish Dracula battles ever. Seriously, the final form of Dracula includes this dashing attack where he’s invulnerable and it’s just the worst. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon sticks the landing about as well as that pole vaulter who landed ass-first on the pole.
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Okay, so Circle of the Moon wasn’t as good as I remembered it. Not even close. I can’t stress enough: this WAS the killer app for the Game Boy Player twenty-two years ago. It was the reason I wanted to own one in the first place, and I suspect I wasn’t alone in that. In 2003, at the age of thirteen/fourteen, it felt like it lived-up to my high expectations. But, it certainly didn’t hold-up perfectly two decades later. As great as the map is, it’s not an optimized map. More fast travel points would have been transformative of this game. Hell, just get rid of those and turn the save stations into fast travel points. Why not?
I’m a complete idiot, because it turned out I had the ability to do this much sooner and I just somehow skipped past that card.
Plus, the lack of balance really shows a roughness that I never noticed the first time. Like, the first time I played the game, I beat levels out-of-order because the way you clean the toxic water out of that level is so far away and disconnected from that area that I actually missed it back in 2003. I beat the toxic water level without ever cleaning the water. I just thought it was a really hard stage. That’s on the designers. Actually, knowing where to go next is not intuitive. The first time you play this, expect a LOT of aimless wandering. Thank god for the combat. Circle of the Moon is lucky that Castlevania’s core combat is so bulletproof that you can tack on a terrible RPG system and some haphazard Metroidvania progression and still have a good game. But I’ve been wrong for the last twenty years, because I thought Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was great. It’s pretty good, but nowhere near great. Verdict: YES!
Super Mario RPG Platform: Nintendo Switch Released November 17, 2023 Directed by Ayako Moriwaki Developed by ArtePiazza Published by Nintendo Listing at Mario Wiki $59.99 is never going to get 100 jumps in the making of this review.
SPOILERS AHEAD for a nearly three-decade-old video game. You’ve been warned.
This is going to be a largely whinny, negative review focused on the changes (and lack of changes) from the original, so I wanted to state right here and now: this is some of the most fun I’ve had in the last couple years playing a game. I loved this remake. I recommend even non-fans of RPGs who have held out on Mario RPG check it out. But, it’s a remake and I have a lot of opinions on it, and remakes in general.
If you think this looks bad for our heroes, you should see what happens when they say “I don’t know!”
I have a bonkers conspiracy theory about Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars that is 100% for sure not what really happened (based on the concept art that you can see at Cutting Room Floor), but I’m sharing it anyway. I think the game was originally going to be Mario fighting a demented mechanical Santa Claus who, instead of making fun toys for good girls and boys, made weapons that caused kids to turn violent. The whole “machines want to take over the world” thing is a little too Power Rangers Zeo for me, but is it just me or do these weapons look a little.. toy-like? They crash into Bowser’s castle for no reason, and when you finally enter the thing that crashed into the castle, it turns out to be a factory of these toy-like weapons. A workshop, if you will. Perhaps the story was about saving Christmas and Santa Claus, or maybe even saving ALL the holidays. And what does the final boss look like? EXACTLY like an evil Santa Claus.
“MECHA-SANTA WANTS A HUG! HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUG ME!”
I’m telling you, I’m on to something. Or on something. Either/or.
Regardless, this is probably the first Mario game where the story matters. I really don’t want to play an RPG with a paper-thin story, but here we are with a story so thin it’s measured in atoms. I played Mario RPG for the first time when it debuted on Virtual Console in 2008, and writing in RPGs had come a long way from the 8-bit/16-bit era. *I* grew up on the PlayStation Final Fantasy games, which were essentially the bridge to the modern well-written/well-translated era of RPGs. Going back to play games with blunt, on-the-nose writing is something I struggle greatly with when I do these retro reviews. I’ve liked a couple old school RPGs, but that’s usually based on the gameplay merits. Like, Final Fantasy VI? AKA the one the generation before me was told was Final Fantasy III? It’s fine but it didn’t “move me” because, again, a different time and era.
“Okay, I found a scenic cliff. Now, according to Simon Belmont, if I just stare at the castle with triumphant satisfaction, it’ll crumble. Okay, HMMPH, there. Okay, crumble. Any second now..”
I won’t say the plot of Mario RPG is deep, and hell, most of the actual writing is just okay. It is somewhat cleaned up in limited areas, but most of the script carried over from the original game. When I first played it in 2008, even though the dialog often had me cringing, I thought it was one of the funniest games I’d ever played. They would NEVER call it a “comedy RPG” but it clearly is. Playing this now, in 2025, most of the jokes still hold-up. That’s why I’m kind of puzzled as to why they ruined the best gag in the game: the introduction of Geno. In the SNES game, when Mario is shot by the child with the Geno doll, it’s a really violent impact with a rocket. In the remake, Mario is shot with what looks like a few Nerf balls. It completely ruins the entire bit. Why’d they do that? Ugh, you just know someone said “we can’t have a child violently shoot Mario! Someone will say we’re being insensitive towards people who are shot by children who fish their daddy’s pistol out of his sock drawer.” YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE! That’s probably why they changed it and it’s stupid. On the other hand, there’s this:
Jesus mother of God. Okay, maybe I’m wrong.
Otherwise, most of the humor still lands. It is somewhat lacking the charm, because it no longer feels like it’s squeezing the most out of the limited technology. Like how the heroes change into other characters to act out the story for new characters? That was done that way because it was a novel and entertaining way to do expository dialog using the limited space of the SNES. They did add a few brief and context-limited cutscenes that are mostly used for major character introductions (and boss introductions). They look great! I mean, like this:
Christ, can you imagine the fan fiction this led to?
Actually, bad example because that was a cutscene in the original game. Okay, the part where Peach joins the team by jumping out the window. That’s a pre-rendered cutscene now.
That looks like it’s straight out of a modern Mario game! Fine with me, but there’s just not nearly enough of it, and the timing of when to use them isn’t exactly perfect. The above whining about ruining the Geno gun gag? Wouldn’t that have been an awesome time to cut to a pre-rendered cutscene? If my hunch is right they were really worried about the visual of a child accidentally no-scoping Mario, change the gag! Have the rocket knock a statue over that falls on Mario. I also found it annoying that they have to spell out that you’re not really joining Bowser’s minions. In fact, they continue to spell out that you’re only pretending to believe Bowser’s bravado basically every time the character is given dialog. It’s kind of condescending, but I assume that’s because the script was written in 1996. I’m surprised Square didn’t have the characters look into the camera and say “DO YOU GET IT?” So, while the humor still works, the writing typically doesn’t. Too on-the-nose, too clunky, and it really doesn’t have a lot of faith in people to get what the intent is.
“Sir, I keep trying to tell you that you can’t always get what you want.”
Okay, so the plot and writing wasn’t fated to age perfectly, but do you know what did? The combat. I re-played the SNES game back in 2021 and by that point, you’d think Mario RPG’s peppy timing-based combat system would have started to show its age. Well, it didn’t at all. Twenty-five years after the game’s original release and I found myself grinding XP just for fun because menu-based combat had never felt so impactful. If there was one aspect of the game that nobody could possibly complain about being copied and pasted as it was to the remake, it’s that battle system. Well, besides the graphics themselves, ArtePiazza barely changed any aspect of the main game. The dialog, script, mini-games, enemies, bosses, etc. are mostly unchanged, with the small exception of the names of a few basic enemies and items. If they’re leaving that much alone, why rock the boat by changing the most famous, celebrated, and evergreen aspect of the game?
Hell, for the Beetlemania game, they didn’t even change the graphics.
But they did change the combat system. The balls on them for doing that, too. The riskiest change to make, easily, and if it sucked, you could insert the Stan Lee “broke, or made better?” meme from the Simpsons and call it a day. Thankfully, that’s not the case at all. The combat is even faster paced and more rewarding, with attention to the little details. I really don’t think there’s any aspect of it that isn’t better in this version. Like, it didn’t bother me but the SNES game paused a little bit when enemies cast spells. In the remake, the pause is briefer and feels like it flows directly into the attack. A small change, but one with profound gameplay results. Most of the special effects for unblockable enemy spells are faster. They turned one of the speediest combat systems in RPG history into an even peppier one. It’s a pretty remarkable achievement.
In the remake, it’s a LOT easier to time the “LUCKY” shell game and double your earnings. Once I figured out the timing and how the game occasionally does a little sleight of hand at the climax of the shuffle, I never lost once. Combined with the Exp. Booster you can buy with frog coins in the back half of the game, I was basically maxed-out going into the final two game worlds.
By far the biggest change is the addition of splash damage. If you hit the timing perfectly on basic attacks, it creates a shock wave that has a high chance of damaging all other enemies. Not as much as if they were attacked directly, but it still made the basic battles and even a few boss fights fly by. This also made backtracking a lot less annoying. If you’re searching for stuff you missed in previous stages and have leveled-up enough, instead of having to fight every enemy, a single basic attack might wipe out the entire battlefield. If the splash damage isn’t the biggest change, it’s the combo system. There’s now a meter for stringing together both offensive and defensive timing. This not only buffs your characters but builds up a new triple-team special meter. The triple teams can be devastating attacks, create unbreakable shields, etc., and each three-character combination has their own unique move. Assuming one of the three characters is KOed, the special is replaced with Toad providing a roulette wheel to buff you in the battle. That roulette single-handedly saved me from defeat in the final-final battle of the game against the 3D Culex.
This is the “!” warning that helps players get the timing down. If you want, you can opt to play “breezy” mode, which gives you a much bigger grace period on the timing-based stuff. This can be toggled on and off any time.
There’s even more changes to the battle system. KOed/transformed characters are allowed to be swapped out mid-battle for a reserve character. And yes, if the situation provides, you can swap one KOed character for another KOed one. The game also now tells you what magic attacks from enemies can’t be blocked, something the original game never stated. There’s also a visual cue of when to hit the action button for both attacks and defense. BUT, here’s the thing about that cue: once the game is satisfied you have the timing down for the thing triggering the action, the game stops doing it, like training wheels. Later on, if your timing gets out of whack, the prompt returns. It’s SO SMART. The whole combat system is!
The improved battle system is also the reason why I can’t overlook all the changes they didn’t make. Jeez, and I thought the Link’s Awakening remake was stubborn about fixing stuff. Like, the lame puzzles in the sunken ship or in Bowser’s Keep are copy and pasted wholesale from the original 1996 game, including the solutions to those puzzles. In the sunken ship, you’re trying to ascertain a six-letter secret word. The answer is the same in the 2023 version as it was in the 1996 version. Would it have really killed them to change it to something else? Some of the puzzles in the first version were just plain not very fun. Like this one:
This is a blind jumping maze. Behind those boxes, you have to randomly jump around until you find your way through it. No visual clues to help once you’re behind the stack. No real way to logic through it besides the abstract shape of the maze. It’s so inelegant, especially for such a rich and layered game. This is scraping the bottom of the barrel. So, like.. replace it! How the hell do you justify so many additions and enhancements to the BEST part of the game while leaving the gameplay elements that were kind of the f*cking pits the same? And I’m only bitching about it because they proved their bonafides with the battle system. The remake designers clearly could recognize areas where quality of life could be seamlessly applied. They’re just too talented to leave the bad parts bad. And by the way, there’s also parts that are significantly worse. Remember this mini-game:
I found it to be a lot more sensitive when turns are made. I never cared for this part to begin with, but I didn’t *hate* it. But in the remake, I really didn’t care for it at all. Or how about the Goomba Whack-a-Mole game with the pipes? I found it to be a lot less precise and I’d never want to play it again. That was actually true of most of the mini-games this time around. I remember grinding-up frog coins by doing the waterfall/river mini-game over and over. Something about it in the remake just didn’t “do it” for me. Very few areas where an improvement NEEDED to happen were actually improved, while the thing nobody would have expected to be overhauled was overhauled dramatically. It’s F*CKING WEIRD! It’d be like bringing your car into the shop because it has faulty brakes, and when you pick it up, the mechanic says “we decided not to fix your brakes, but hey, we installed heated seats and a sat-nav for you!”
They didn’t fix the Yoshi race, either. It’s still one of the most unnecessary and ultimately boring parts of the game.
Speaking of the frog coins, that’s another change to the battle system and overall game that wasn’t capitalized on. In the remake, 20% of enemies will now be “special enemies” that hit harder and have more HP, but when you defeat them, you get double the coins, double the experience points, AND a frog coin. Awesome, except one little problem: they didn’t really create more situations that require frog coins. They’re basically only good now for finishing your journal 100%. There’s a detailed list of monsters in the game that, when you use Mallow to read their mind, get a check mark on the list. Some of these are one-off beasts, and if you aren’t using Mallow, you have to pay a guy hidden in Booster’s Pass three frog coins, and you don’t even get to choose which one he checks off. I’m pretty sure it’s done randomly.
It IS a cool feature. You can watch every attack animation, spell animation, etc.
And, that’s basically it for the frog coins, other than the stuff that was already in the game. I never liked the items sold in the tadpole pond, so the frog that sells accessories like the Exp. Booster in Seaside Town is really the only legit use of frog coins, and in the new system, you’ll be able to buy out his full inventory pretty fast. That’s the extent of ways to spend this massive windfall of what had been a rare and desirable currency in the previous version. Sorry, but you just can’t do that! If you add more of a LOT more of a currency, logically you have to add a LOT more ways to spend it, and they didn’t. So, while I enjoyed the special enemy encounters quite a lot, all they ultimately do is take all the risk/reward out of how you spend frog coins.
If you’re into soundtracks, that also gets unlocked post-game. Not only that, but it comes with a fully decked-out player that also lets you listen to the original versions and even do random play.
I swear I’m done bitching. Well, mostly done, but now, here’s the good stuff. Super Mario RPG Remake is, no doubt about it, an easier game than the SNES one, so, I didn’t know what to expect from the post-game content. The framing device is that, once you restore the Star Road and wishes can be granted again, seven previous bosses had THEIR wishes granted. Now, getting this unlocked is busy work on top of busy work. Toad gives you a voucher for the honeymoon suite in Marrymore. When you use that, Geno looks longingly out the window. You have to go a couple screens into Star Road, and there you’ll discover the boss wishes. Unfortunately, instead of just clicking them and going to the new boss fights, you actually have to make your way to the original chambers where you fought them. Sigh. Okay, so that’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: most of these fights are legitimate RPG challenges, and lengthy battles to boot. The first one, a rematch with Belome, took me over twenty minutes to finish. In the second one against “Leveled-Up Punchinello”, the first thing that happened was he one-shotted Mario to death.
I guess he played Mike Tyson in Punch-Out!! before making his wish.
Actually, the Punch-Out!! comparison is pretty accurate, because the best way to describe these bonus fights is to think of the rematches from the Wii Punch-Out!! Only the final fight against 3D Culex is a normal punch-for-punch RPG battle. The other six all have some kind of twist to them, and for five of them, it’s a twist that makes them almost puzzle-like. Belome clones one of your party members, like in his previous fight. Only, this time you HAVE to fight the clone, because the clone’s first act is to cast a shield that deflects everything. Do you know how I won this fight? HE RAN OUT OF FIRE POINTS! I didn’t even realize enemies had FP, but the fight dragged out so long that he ran out of them.
You even fight Booster in the post-game quest, which never happens in the main game. He’s seen here, about to one-shot my entire party for the second and final time in this fight. Yep, I game overed against Booster, who is, for lack of a better term, a “special” individual. This is one of those “sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done” moments of my gaming life.
Now, these seven extra fights don’t scale correctly at all, at least in the order the page on the Wiki said to tackle them. The rematch against Johnny Jones, the 5th fight, is a one on one, no items allowed Mario v Johnny fight, and I won it on my first attempt when Johnny offered to let me swap my party members (who give you buffs even if they’re not part of this fight) and equipment. I put the best armor on Mario and just whittled him down. So that one kind of sucked. On the other hand, the final battle with Culex 3D took me a whopping 40+ minutes to finish. It has 9,999 health, and the crystals are beefer too AND killing them causes the crystal to buff whatever is still alive as it dies. And IT WAS AWESOME! Besides the Johnny Jones fight, all the bonus bosses were! The best part of the game for me, easily.
There’s still a hard cap on leveling-up. 30 is the max.
Two things annoy me about the bonus bosses. First is that there’s only seven of them. Seriously, they’re SO fun that I wish they had done one for EVERY boss. All-in, I spent about two hours locating them and fighting them. Two hours of additional content sounds like a lot, but this is a nearly three decade old game. Come on! The second annoyance is that this type of post-game beef is entirely limited to those seven boss fights. They didn’t enhance the overworld basic enemies post-game at all. Why not? Now granted, they added fast travel via the map, so it doesn’t take THAT long to reach them, but there’s also the emphasis on finding all the enemies you didn’t use Mallow to read the mind of. Post-game, those fights are spent having everyone else do nothing but defend while you wait for Mallow’s turn to read another mind. Had the developers added some muscle to the post-game overworld enemies, I honestly ain’t sure I’d be writing this review right now. I think I probably would have felt compelled to go out and fill out the whole monster checklist. So, I’m pretty frustrated with Mario RPG Remake. In fact, I don’t remember a game I liked that disappointed me off more. That KEPT disappointing me consistently.
Spent a solid 20 minutes trying to jump from the yellow vine to the green one, kept grazing it, but I couldn’t hold my grip on it. I was getting angrier and angrier, until my father asked “are you sure there’s not a platform there?” I said “I checked” and I truly believe I did, but yea, there was a platform there. So embarrassing.
But, even through all the disappointment, I never had to remind myself “this is one of the best video games ever made.” It never lets you forget that. It absolutely holds up to the test of time, changes or not. I guess that’s a big part of why I’m so frustrated by leaving so much of the game unchanged. Because there aren’t a lot of games out there that are honest-to-God contenders for the title of greatest of all-time. Mario RPG surely isn’t in that discussion. There’s just too many head-scratching decisions that were no doubt compromises based entirely around what could and couldn’t be done with the limitations of the Super NES. But, it feels like what’s already in the game could be tweaked slightly and transform Mario RPG into that legit GOAT contender. There’s a big difference between “one of the all-time greats” and “THE all-time greatest.” As much as I loved playing this remake, there’s something heartbreaking about a culture of development where “the greatest of all-time” is on the table and they don’t go for it, Verdict: YES!
“You’re sure he said ‘triumphant satisfaction?’ Sounds like baloney to me! If this worked, why would he go through all the trouble of fighting Dracula? Logically, wouldn’t he just need to stare at the castle whenever Dracula resurrects? Okay, I’ll go back to staring. Just had a thought is all.”
Super Mario Land Platform: Game Boy First Released April 21, 1989 Directed by Satoru Okada Developed by Nintendo Included with Switch Online Subscription (Standard) Listing at Mario Wiki
I used the “Game Boy Pocket” screen filter in the NSO Game Boy app.
2025 is just starting and I’ve got Nintendo launch games on my brain. I can’t imagine why. Now that I’ve reviewed the Game Boy Tetris in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review, I wanted to look at the road not traveled. The game that was developed to be the pack-in for the Game Boy, until Henk Rogers and Bullet-Proof Software convinced Nintendo that Mario Land would make Game Boy a children’s product, while Tetris would make Game Boy an EVERYONE product. The end result? Tetris became a global mega hit, Game Boy went from black and white curio to genuine gaming powerhouse, and Mario Land did okay. And by “okay” I mean it’s the #2 selling original black and white Game Boy title that wasn’t a pack-in (only Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow’s combined sales are greater).
To the game’s credit, especially since the guys behind it weren’t exactly Nintendo’s varsity team, it looks great given the limitations. Nowhere near as silly as the Game Boy version of Batman: The Video Game looked.
In fact, Super Mario Land outsold Super Mario Bros. 3. Yep, really! It’s astonishing, isn’t it? This little, unassuming tech demo, the first Super Mario game made without Shiggy’s involvement, defeated a game that many would consider to have been the most anticipated sequel in gaming history, and certainly a game that actively reigns as one of the most cherished and beloved video games ever made. Is it really all those things just because it wasn’t packed-in with the Game Boy? I mean, duh, along with coming out the day Game Boy did as well. Mario Land is fine, but it’s not amazing. It’s not even so good that being one of the best selling games of all-time makes any sense outside the context of being a launch title for a relatively cheap, yet scorching-hot platform. I’d love to see what the attach rate was for the Game Boy and Mario Land through the first two years of Game Boy’s existence. It had to be in the high 90 percentile. It’s a strange game for someone of my era to look back on, because Mario Land is incredibly weak compared to other Super Mario games. Yet, I honestly don’t remember meeting anyone who was around for the Game Boy launch who had anything but glowing memories of it. Mario Land is as beloved as any other 80s Mario title. And it’s SO WEIRD.
I accidentally beat the third boss in about a second, before I even realized I was fighting a boss. Just one running jump, then walking off a platform onto a switch was all it took. I had been prepared to whine about this more, until I remembered that the Bowser encounters in the original Super Mario Bros. ended when you hit a switch at the end and weren’t exactly epics.
Mario Land is certainly the jankiest Super Mario game. It’s the movement physics that threw me off. There’s absolutely no sense of inertia at all. Whether running or landing from a jump, Mario stops on a dime. Hell, he stops on the rivets at the edge of the dime. You would think this would make platforming much easier, since it turns every jump from a calculated, athletic type of action that has to account for momentum into just a matter of raw distance. But, you do have to continue to hold the movement, because you can stop in mid-air too. My brain couldn’t adjust to this, I died just as much from screwing up otherwise basic jumps as I did misjudging enemies. I’m not trying to sound like an amazing gamer or anything, but I suffered the type of deaths playing Mario Land that I haven’t had playing a 2D platformer in a LONG time. I’m talking about screwing up some very basic stuff, and I felt so awkward when it happened. Like “jeez, I know that was on me, too. Yeesh.”
On the other hand, the lack of weight and momentum does make any interval-based enemies easier to get past. No worries about skidding INTO these fish. There’s no skidding! So, the physics engine isn’t totally challenge-creating. It’s just as often challenge reducing. Compare this game to the Cheep Cheep bridges in Super Mario 1, such as level 2-3. It’s not just that they fly out from the ground from underneath you, but it’s just as much your own momentum that makes those some of the hardest sections in Mario games. But, if the levels based around Cheep-Cheeps controlled like Mario Land does, I don’t think they’d be that hard at all.
Presumably, the lack of sliding was done to accommodate the motion blur issues in the early Game Boy screen. It’s also safe to assume that the length of the game was based around being a fraction of the OG Game Boy’s battery life, since there’s no means of saving. Not that you need it, as at only ten standard levels and two shmup levels, Super Mario Land is the shortest of any Super Mario game (at least when playing EVERY level, start-to-finish). Should take you 45 minutes, tops. When I first played Mario Land years ago, I didn’t like it at all. Now, eh, it’s fine. The ten normal Mario-style levels are decent enough. They’re a few steps above “basic” Super Mario gameplay, with things like hidden elevators or invisible floors that don’t really do all that much, but are fun to discover. And yet, outside of the question mark blocks and general hop ‘n bop gameplay, it never feels entirely like a Mario game. It feels like a Mario knock-off. But, like, a really decent, really flagrant knock-off.
You get to where I am by an invisible floor. If you’re not Little Mario, you have to deliberately take a hit, or you can’t go this way and have to fight the robots directly. There’s a couple areas like that in Mario Land.
I have two big problems with Mario Land. While I enjoyed the shmup stages well enough (hey, I like shmups!), ending the game on one was a massive downer. But, all credit where it’s due: this is the rare “let’s add a shmup to a platformer” game where the shump section doesn’t feel completely divorced from the rest of the game. They do a good job of making it feel like it’s the same character in the same world. The other big problem is the game is just too easy. Despite some pretty humiliating deaths, I never had to sweat a game over because there’s too many coins, extra lives, and short-cuts. I won’t say that it crosses the line or anything, because I did lose like six or seven lives along the way, including four to the final boss, but I still finished with around two dozen lives to spare. And when I threw on toruzz’s excellent Super Mario Land DX ROM (review up next), I finished the game with 58 lives. FIFTY-EIGHT! There’s only twelve levels, for Christ’s sake!
I don’t think ending a Mario game with a shmup boss is the wisest choice, but apparently this was the original intent by Miyamoto, who wanted something like this to be the finale for the original Super Mario Bros.
The best thing I can compare Mario Land to is watching the first season of The Simpsons. Everything is alright and certainly the product you’re familiar with, yet somehow also somehow so horribly wrong that it’s kind of a little spooky for it. Weirdly, it’s for the same reasons as the Simpsons, too: everything is off-model, including the locations, and very against the established canon. In the case of Mario Land, it’s full of one-off settings and enemies that never showed up in the franchise again and often feel like they belong to an entirely different franchise. Hell, the first three bosses can be defeated in the same way you beat Bowser in Super Mario 1, AND EVEN THEN, it never feels like they’re Mario villains, and the last boss sure as sh*t doesn’t. But ultimately, Mario Land doesn’t last long enough to bore, or even really to frustrate. I imagine a child in 1989 was probably thrilled that they had something that was a LOT better than the Super Mario Game & Watch for a portable Mario experience.
The most remarkable aspect of the game is it actually does make you feel like you’re in different worlds instead of against a static screen. It’s immersive, and in a way that holds up well in 2025. I didn’t expect that at all.
I played Mario Land twice in black & white and twice on DX (coming up), and I never shook the feeling that I was playing a glorified tech demo. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s the reality of a launch title. When I look back on those Mario games that served as springboards for new platforms, most are pretty rough. Even Super Mario 64 feels like the whole engine could collapse at any time. Which makes sense, because they had to cut a ton of content from the game to make the release date, and even then, Miyamoto kept asking for more time to polish it, until Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi told him the game was good enough. What strikes me most about Mario Land is, yea, it’s only twelve levels long, but there ain’t a stinker in the bunch. Every level is solid. Hell, you can’t even say that about every level in New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe’s first world. So, maybe Super Mario Land hasn’t aged particularly gracefully in terms of its build. This is the roughest game in the entire franchise, and really there’s nothing even close to it in that regard. But, they still managed to show that the Mario formula is so airtight that it’s almost impossible to screw-up. Mario Land is solid, and as the Grand Marshal of the Game Boy, it’s hard to imagine getting the platform off to a better start. Verdict: YES!
Super Mario Land DX Platform: Game Boy Color Latest Release: April 20, 2022 Unauthorized ROM Hack of Super Mario Land Developed by toruzz Link to Patch at ROMHacking.net I use THIS tool to apply patches.
Super Mario Land DX isn’t merely a colorization of Mario Land, but that part certainly stands out the most. I’d previously played toruzz’s colored version of Super Mario Land 2 (which I will do a review for both the original and the DX version at some point in 2025), but Mario Land DX is equally impressive. The new sprites for Mario and enemies look great, and the whole game POPS as it never has before. It’s so visually pleasing that you really wish Nintendo would just buy this build and make it official. It’s beautiful, and Mario games should be beautiful, right? Plus the notorious slowdown in the hard mode (IE the replay of the game after you beat it) is gone too. I’m pretty sure the version on Nintendo Switch Online also corrects the slowdown issue but don’t quote me on that.
Yep, that’s Luigi. Yep, he controls kinda like you think he will. No, it’s not as cool as it sounds.
Mario Land DX’s big-big-big addition is Luigi, which is done in the same style as Luigi in the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka The Lost Levels). He moves looser and jumps higher. However, it’s just not as fun as it sounds. I think it’s too loose. It’s probably best to think of Luigi as “Mario Land if the controls weren’t as good.” Unlike Mario, Luigi does have a little momentum. It makes lining up with the tiny blocks pretty hard. There’s a few sections in the game where you can smash a block between other blocks to reveal a hidden elevator. It’s insane how long it took me to line up Luigi to get that. I also went back to skidding off platforms. Yea, I wasn’t building up 50 lives in this run. Nope, not happening. With Mario’s platform games, for me, what makes them stand out in the genre is precision controls and precision movement. Mario took off as a franchise because, above all else, they control the best. Turn those controls rotten and Mario games wouldn’t be the biggest franchise in the genre. There’s a reason why Alex Kidd isn’t an icon, folks.
This took FOREVER for me to get.
I’d only recommend the Luigi quest if you’re a REALLY big fan of Super Mario Land and want to experience it in a new way. I’ve never been a fan of games that use deliberately bad (or if not bad, difficult) controls for challenge. This is NOT made for me. But, it’s super easy to recommend Super Mario Land DX to anyone who wants to dip their toes in the wonderful world of ROM hacks because, golly, what an effort. And if you like color but really hate the new sprites (and some people do), you can toggle them off. There’s a few ROM hacks out there that change the levels, but I really sort of get the impression that the original design team already wrung every single drop of gameplay out of the limited Super Mario Land engine. I don’t really want to play more levels of it, especially when the only option left is to become trollish with the stage design. What toruzz has done here is EXACTLY what I want, and all I want, from a Mario Land ROM hack. Good job. Verdict: YES!
Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review took hundreds of hours of gameplay and writing. If you enjoy this and want to show your support, please consider a donation to your local food bank. If you’re in the United States, you can find your closest food bank using the tool provided by Feeding America. I’m also a big fan of Direct Relief and the Epilepsy Foundation. And just remember that there’s nothing that improves lives and costs nothing quite like kindness. Be kind to each-other.
Everything you need to know about Tetris can be summed up in the language used to describe its creation. Games are something that are usually “made” or “developed.” Super Mario was made. Minecraft was developed. But Tetris? It’s so ubiquitous that it was “invented” just like indoor plumbing or the light bulb. I’ve been really excited for this interactive documentary because I have much love for Tetris. What’s not to love? When the first chapter of Tetris Forever declares Tetris to be the “perfect game” it’s not hyperbole. It IS the perfect video game. Perfect for all ages, skill levels, and levels of interest or disinterest in video games. Even the shapes themselves are perfect. When other games (including ones that wear the Tetris label) try to tinker with the roster of seven blocks, the result is almost always disastrous. Not that the core gameplay by itself is perfect, as you’ll learn from my reviews of the actual games, including the bonus reviews of titles not included in Tetris Forever. But, the basics of Tetris are certainly the perfect foundation to build an amazing game on.
Tetris Plus might not be in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review, but only because I found so many amazing Tetris games that I have to do a Part Two with around 45 more bonus games. Tetris Plus WILL be in Part Two, along with games like Tetrisphere, Tetris DS, and more.
There’s not very many games that I would consider to be absolutely perfect. Tetris, Pac-Man, Portal, a strange NES one-off indie called Böbl, the pinball table Attack From Mars……. and that’s the list. Well, at least MY list, and only two of those are really perfect for everyone. If you don’t love pinball, AFM isn’t going to “do it” for you. Böbl is a one-and-done 30 minute experience, and let’s face it: Portal is perfect for gamers, but if my mother tried to play it, it wouldn’t be pretty. Tetris is clearly the most perfect, because I’ve met plenty of non-gamers who love it. That’s why it’s the ideal game for the Gold Master Series, because it’s not just the perfect game, but also a perfectly fascinating game. Who needs an in-game story when no other game has a legend quite like it? Or, to put it another way, Pac-Man is awesome, but it didn’t signal the end of the Cold War. Of course, as I found out playing the nineteen games in the collection, and the slew of extra games I added for funsies, Tetris as a concept is inherently perfect, but the execution matters a great deal more than I realized. This was probably my favorite review process ever, because I think I walked away with an understanding of what makes Tetris great.
Tetris Forever retails for $34.99 and therefore needs to create $35 in value to win my seal of approval. After I finished reviewing the games, I assigned extra value for the emulation quality and the quality of what would be called “extra content” or “bonus content” in most other collections. For Tetris Forever, that content is equal to the games themselves, but I’m still going to treat the games like they’re the reason people would buy this. I’m not setting fixed value on any YES! game, but I’m limiting the max value to 50% of the goal.
The guided tour menu that Digital Eclipse created for Atari 50 returns, and that’s fine with me because it’s pretty much the greatest interface in gaming history. Someone had to say it, and it might as well be me. This is perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Guys, it’s impossible to improve upon this. Don’t even try to. In 2094, when you do a Gold Master Series based around the first batch of games developed by heads in jars, so help me mother of God, you better be using the same menu or my jar is going to bubble so much at you.
What makes the story of Tetris so amazing is that these two are just about the most likable game developers out there. Alexey Pajitnov is like a big ‘ole friendly St. Bernard. This is shallow and superficial, but I’ve always thought that Pajitnov has the kindest eyes of any major gaming pioneer, and whenever he talks about the story of Tetris, even when I know his story and I know it has a happy ending, I find myself pulling for him as if it’s the first time I’ve heard it. His eyes are so soulful and deep, but above even that, his eyes are filled with gentle kindness. It’s in the eyes. It’s ALWAYS in the eyes. Then there’s Henk Rogers, who dresses like Willy Wonka crossed with Al Pacino, and I mean that in the most flattering way possible. He oozes charm and tells his story with such passion that I found myself saying “thank God the right guy found Pajitnov.” The story works because of them. Tetris will always be Tetris, but I don’t think the legend of Tetris would be what it is today without Rogers being the one who found it.
But, Tetris Forever isn’t just the Alexey Pajitnov story. It’s equally the story of Henk Rogers, who is also a fascinating character. He basically invented the JRPG with his bestseller The Black Onyx. Granted, the emergence of JRPGs was inevitable, but someone had to be first! Rogers transitioned to game producing, and proved to be a savvy, intelligent businessman with a keen eye for both talent and trends. He recognized the value in Tetris and he just so happened to have a direct pipeline to Nintendo thanks to his love of the game Go. Everything you need to know about how personable and friendly Rogers is can be summed up with his unlikely friendship and relationship with Nintendo’s famously private President, Hiroshi Yamauchi, which is touched upon in Tetris Forever. One important note that Rogers rarely got proper credit for before Tetris Forever: he’s basically the co-creator of Tetris as you and I know it, because the scoring system was totally different before Henk’s first builds. As you’ll see in the game review section, you originally didn’t score points for creating lines. Scoring was based entirely on speed (how fast you drop the blocks) and how high the stack was in the well. Tetris was a game based around efficiency, and consequently there was absolutely no risk/reward dynamic to it. The multipliers for doubles, triples, and Tetrises was Henk’s idea, and that’s what opens up Tetris as a proper video game. I honestly didn’t know that about Henk Rogers. So, there’s a lot new info to be found in Tetris Forever even for those familiar with the story.
When Henk Rogers says that Tetris is the video game that will outlast all other games, I believe it. It’s easy to imagine Mario, Link, etc. getting lost to time eventually, but people will still be playing Tetris in a thousand years.
Tetris Forever features more interviews than any previous Gold Master release, and, in my opinion, it has the BEST interviews they’ve ever done. Even if you lump-in Atari 50 (which isn’t TECHNICALLY a Gold Master Series release), the interactive documentary/museum aspect of Tetris Forever is far and away the best this emerging genre has seen. The full story is covered, from Tetris’ creation in Russia to the insane publishing rights fiasco up to the modern game of Tetris and how protective they are of what a Tetris game must be. The interviews are riveting, and I could honestly say that they make up nearly the entire value of Tetris Forever by themselves. Digital Eclipse has really figured out this format and realized their audience is made up of people like me, who want to hear the stories and not just get the broad picture of history.
I want to scream about that one damn hair that is so distracting. You’re very successful now, Digital Eclipse. Hire a mustache groomer for future Gold Master Series installments.
Tetris Forever discusses a LOT more than I thought it would, and I’m blown away by the pacing and the amount of people they get involved. Despite his heavy Russian accent, Pajitnov is a compelling speaker. We’re forty years removed from the creation of Tetris, but he still has this sincere humility, like he can’t believe that he made this thing that is so beloved the world over. Rogers and his daughter Maya are equally well spoken and clearly passionate about gaming and Tetris, and it just makes for a wonderful interactive museum. I found myself wiping tears frequently and at one point even openly weeping because this is the rare story where you can cheer almost every aspect of it.
I went bug-eyed when I saw that there were three versions of Hatris in this release, but then I found out each version plays differently enough that it really is like three different games. The PC Engine and Arcade versions of Hatris aren’t in Tetris Forever, but I reviewed them in the bonus section.
Tetris Forever features seemingly every single print advertisement of Tetris ever made, along with items like box art, instruction books, and more. To give you an idea of how far this went, among the treasure trove of box art and magazine ads, Tetris Forever includes the full instruction manual for a never-released Genesis port of Tetris. There’s also a video covering Tengen Tetris and the litigation surrounding it, which to be honest, I thought that would be so radioactive that Digital Eclipse, Atari, and the Tetris Company wouldn’t touch it. I’m happy to report I was wrong. As with Making of Karateka, if you have no interest in box art or advertisements, you can safely knock at least $5 off the value at the end of this section.
The Simpsons is nearly as old as Tetris. I’d be weird if they hadn’t mined it for a joke at some point.
What’s missing? The most obvious answer is “games” since the Game Boy version is cited in the feature itself as the most famous (and maybe the best) version of Tetris. This is one of those situations where you wish Nintendo would allow at least the Game Boy version of Tetris to appear in this, even if it’s going to be on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. I’m pretty sure the Nintendo “brand” wouldn’t have been damaged if they allowed a 35 year old port of a game that has appeared on over a hundred platforms to appear in an interactive documentary that celebrates two of their most important partners. Hell, what a flex that would have been! “Our brand is so strong that we can put one of our catalog titles on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam!” It would also do wonders towards building goodwill for a company that isn’t considered very fan-friendly at times. But, Nintendo stuff isn’t the only games missing. They have several Spectrum Holobyte games, but there’s no Faces, Super Tetris, etc. Hell, I would have wanted to try them, even if they sucked. I’m not deducting any value for missing games, but they’re the elephant in the room for sure.
Why didn’t Digital Eclipse/Atari include this? You cheap ass mother f*ckers! I paid my $30 and I want a twenty-nine story tall version of Tetris that has to be played a mile away from the site! I fine Tetris Forever one hundred bazillion dollars! Everyone bang their spoons on the table until they patch this is! Boooo!Boooooo! ATTICA! ATTICA!
Another aspect of the Tetris mythos that’s mostly ignored is Vladimir Pokhilko, for obvious reasons. I’m 100% totally fine with that part of the legend being left out. The story of Tetris is a feel-good story, and there’s nothing good about the ending of Vladimir Pokhilko, his wife and 12 year old son. I can tell you that I was 9 years old and lived just a few miles away from where those murders happened, and it was terrifying. People here still talk about it all the time. If it still leaves a scar on our community a quarter of a century later, yea, I don’t want it to scar the story of Tetris. Good call, Digital Eclipse/Atari. I would have also liked to have seen more games that Pajitnov designed that aren’t Tetris on here, which is why I opted for an extended bonus section for this review feature. He didn’t just make Tetris. He’s done a lot more games than people realized. Have you ever played Hexic on your Xbox 360? That was Pajitnov! Come on! Certainly Bullet-Proof Software, or “The Tetris Company” owns more than just Hatris. But, beyond that, this section is specifically about the feature, and I wish they had at least an interview on all the non-Tetris stuff he’s done. But, overall, Digital Eclipse really has outdone themselves with this format. For all the features of the interactive documentary, I’m awarding Tetris Forever $25 in value. If you’re really not into box art or old advertisements, knock $5 off that.
The Game Boy titles offer Super Game Boy enhancements, but you have to select it before starting the game. There’s also a variety of looks if you opt to play the Game Boy titles colorless.
EMULATION
Tetris Forever features a nearly full-powered Infinity Gauntlet of Emulation for most (but not all) games. Two gems are missing entirely from the gauntlet, though there’s a good reason for it. There’s no optional hardware enhancements, but this is Tetris we’re talking about. Overclocking would likely have unintended consequences, and it wasn’t ever really necessary anyway. There’s also no full gameplay videos with jump-in. Again, it’s Tetris, not a linear game, so that wouldn’t work even if they wanted to include it. All seventeen emulated games have screen filters and size options. Some of the games allow button remapping, including the infamous Famicom Tetris, though that’s a monkey’s paw “be careful what you wish for” type of deal that I’ll get to in that review. For all the emulation features, I’m awarding the max $10 in value to Tetris Forever. HOWEVER, The biggest problem with Tetris Forever is games that featured battery back-up, such as Tetris 2 + BomBliss/Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss, sometimes just plain didn’t save my progress. I thought it never did, but then I went back and played a couple games, and the save files were there. (Shrug) If you want to keep your progress, remember to use save states, and never hit “reset game” because I think that might have been my problem.
When the games have mapping, I appreciate that the menu is as clean as it gets. The menus are accessed by right-clicking, by the way. It took me a while to figure that out. My dear friend Elias didn’t tell me how to do it. Why would you think that? I found it all on my own.
GAME REVIEWS
For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account, at least for the games themselves. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!
YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.
NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.
Quick warning: there’s no translations for the Japanese games. Brush up on Japanese, or have a translator ready on your smart devices. Any games that have Japanese menus, there’s a walk-through in the menu (it’s titled “HOW TO PLAY”), so I don’t think you’ll ever need a translator outside of Tetris Battle Gaiden, which has some Japanese that appears in real time.
Special Note: I am NOT an expert at Tetris. Part of the reason this review took so long to finish wasn’t just the volume of games, but rather because I quickly realized that what makes or breaks Tetris isn’t the core gameplay. It’s the idiosyncrasies like rotation of blocks, whether you can perform “wall kicks” and the drop algorithm (literally called THE RANDOM GENERATOR or the 7-Bag, which is what I’ll call it from here out). I wanted to discover those things for myself through gameplay and not look them up. That takes time. I approached this feature the same way I did Pac-Man/maze chases or LCDs: I don’t know what I’m doing or what I’m looking for, but I want to know those things. I did the best I could to familiarize myself with what is and isn’t expected of a Tetris game or a falling block game in general, and I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. I hope you are too!
ALL 19 GAMES INCLUDED IN TETRIS FOREVER
Tetris (Electronika 60 recreation, 1984)
Tetris (MS-DOS Prototype, 1996)
Igo: Kyū Roban Taikyoku (Famicom, 1987)
Tetris (MS-DOS, 1988)
Tetris (Apple II, 1988)
Tetris (Famicom, 1988)
Welltris (MS-DOS, 1989)
Hatris (Famicom, 1990)
Hatris (Game Boy, 1991)
Hatris (NES, 1992)
Tetris 2 + BomBliss (Famicom, 1991)
Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss (Super Famicom, 1992)
Tetris Battle Gaiden (Super Famicom, 1993)
Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss Genteiban (Super Famicom, 1994)
Super Tetris 3 (Super Famicom, 1994)
Super BomBliss (Game Boy, 1995. Okay, I sort of skip this one.)
Super BomBliss DX (Game Boy Color, 1999)
Super BomBliss (Super Famicom, 1995)
Tetris Time Warp (2024)
IN ORDER OF RELEASE
Tetris Platform: Simulation of Electronika 60 Recreation Developed for Tetris Forever Originally Released June 6, 1984 Recreation Released November 12, 2024 Designed by Alexey Pajitnov Developed by Digital Eclipse
Can you tell that I forgot “hard drop” means “HARD DROP” and not “speed-up the fall?”
Much like how there’s really no emulated version of Pong in any collection, it’s impossible to directly play the real version of the original Tetris that started it all. But, a perfect recreation works fine. While the core gameplay is still Tetris in all its glory, the scoring and rules will be unfamiliar to anyone who played the more famous wide release versions. The most obvious example is that the idea of doubles, triples, and Tetrises scoring more points wouldn’t be invented for another four years after this. All this version of Tetris does is keep track of how many lines you’ve cleared, while “scoring” is based on how many hard drops you make. The higher up in the well the block is when you press the hard-drop, the more points you score. And it makes a BIG difference, fundamentally changing the feel of Tetris as you or I know it. It practically swaps genres and becomes a quick-draw type of game.
This incoming Tetris is worth nothing but a +4 to my line count and whatever the hard-drop scores. Huh.
Tetris without dynamic scoring is a game with almost no risk/reward factor. There’s no incentive at all to stack the well in any way but the most efficient, line-for-line manner. The one exception is that, the taller the stack is in the well, the more points hard drops score. It’s a lousy risk/reward element because of the figurative low ceiling for strategy the literal low ceiling creates. Trust me when I say, it’s something you have to experience to appreciate, especially if you’ve played a lot of Tetris over the years. My instinct told me in my first game to play Tetris the way I always have. Create a “dam” leaving a single-segment gap between the pile and the wall to slide the Tetris Makers into. It took me a couple games for my brain to not go straight to my Tetris muscle memory, but I wanted to play along. Without dynamic scoring, why bother to try for a Tetris? Since the points are awarded by quick drops, I tried to stack as flat as humanly possible. I was convinced I’d be bored. I wasn’t. It speaks volumes to how addictive Tetris is that, even with a completely inferior scoring system, my brain still went into Tetris mode. I would never want to play this version again, but as the first game in the collection, this really warmed me up for the better stuff yet to come. Verdict: YES! – $2 in Value added to Tetris Forever
Tetris Platform: MS-DOS Developed in 1986 Unreleased Nearly-Completed Prototype Designed by Alexey Pajitnov Ported by Vadim Gerasimov Developed by AcademySoft
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Ironically, what will likely be the worst game included in Tetris Forever (Cathy from the Future: HAH, wrong!) is also the version of Tetris we wouldn’t be here without. This port, made in less than a week by a teenager, spread like wildfire through Moscow and ultimately throughout the Soviet Bloc, where a version in Budapest caught the attention of a western game developer. We owe EVERYTHING to this version of Tetris, but I don’t factor history into my game reviews. And, as far as Tetris goes, this is one of the weakest builds I’ve ever played. The scoring system from the Electronika version returns, which is fun once, but only once. I’m too spoiled by modern Tetris scoring to get excited for it a second time. But, it all comes down to the lack of responsiveness. I’m one of those people who likes to start on level 0 and build up from there. Level 0 on this version of Tetris is ultra-laggy. Tetris with lag is unplayable. It just is, and that’s enough to earn this a NO! by itself. That’s before I get into the tiny little idiosyncrasies common to the Tetris I grew up with that aren’t here. Like having the walls of the well block rotation is tough. I was raised on Tetris with “wall kicks.” I can adjust to the lack of that, but it combines with the lag and the hard drop to make Tetris so much less intuitive than I’m used to. The lag is better on higher levels, but it’s never perfect. I’m very happy this version is included, because it’s an important stepping stone to Tetris becoming the game we all know and love. But, I wouldn’t want to ever play it again. Verdict: NO! But, I will be awarding bonus value following the Spectrum Holobyte version.
Igo: Kyū Roban Taikyoku Platform: Famicom Released April 14, 1987 Designed by Henk Rogers Developed by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
What the hell just happened? Did I win? Did I violate one of the 103,719,406,297 rules and/or etiquette of the game of Go? I have no clue! You mean to tell me Digital Eclipse, the greatest retro game compilation studio in the entire world, couldn’t do an English ROM hack of this?
The game above was my first game of Igo. I won before a single piece was captured. The computer just surrendered to me. That was nice of it, especially since I lost the next dozen or so matches. Igo: Kyū Roban Taikyoku is a simplified version of the game Go. For those unfamiliar, Go is the oldest continuously played recreational game in human history. There are older games, and tools like dice easily predate Go, but no specific game has an unbroken link of continued popularity. By the time Jesus was born, there was twice as big a gap between his birth and the creation of Go than your birth and the creation of the United States. So, it’s a pretty old game. Even more astonishing is that, in its 2,500+ year history, Go’s basic rules appear to have remained, more or less, unchanged. Most ancient games we lost the rules to, but Go’s popularity and the fact that it wasn’t something played exclusively by the ruling class (which was common practice for ancient board games) creates an uninterrupted connection from the ancient game to the modern day. It’s only the standard size of the board that has verifiably changed. Most ancient Go boards and writings confirm that it was played on a 17 x 17 grid. Today, Go’s standard playfield is a 19 x 19 grid. This Famicom game is the first console version of Go, and the grid is 9 x 9 because Go is so complex that the Famicom, at least at the time, couldn’t have hoped to calculate a 19 x 19 board. It’s included in Tetris Forever because it was Bullet-Proof Software’s foot in the door for Nintendo. And here’s the English instructions in their entirety:
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Even with the simplified 9 x 9 board, Digital Eclipse and Atari seem to be taking it on faith that anyone who boots up Igo will be familiar with Go, and there’s no logical reason to assume that. This is supposed to be an interactive museum, right? Educate us! I have no idea what the rules are, or if I’ve won or lost a game. Did I win this game?
I don’t know what a winning condition is. I don’t know how scoring works. Maybe Igo: Kyū Roban Taikyoku was an excellent teaching tool for a Japanese child in 1987. This is probably one of the best looking board game adaptations up to this point. The presentation is good. The ninjas are a fun touch, and the interface is clean and simple, but visually satisfying. I’m sure Henk Rogers, a competitive Go player, was very happy with this. But, I’m playing this on a collection of games in 2024. Not only do I have no clue what I’m doing, but there’s nothing in Tetris Forever that can help me to figure it out. If I want to learn this, I have to go somewhere else to figure out the rules. There’s a reason why people need teachers to learn Go! Because the written rules are so vast and complicated that, when I attempted to read them, my tear ducts started pouring blood. I expect better from Digital Eclipse. Verdict: NO!
Tetris aka “DOS Tetris” Platform: MS-DOS Released January 29, 1988 Directed by R. Anton Widjaja Developed by Spectrum Holobyte
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For 1988, and for the types of games that could be popular on computers during this era, I’m sure the first commercial Tetris was fine. The presentation is fantastic. There’s no music, but hey, I’m notorious for playing most games muted anyway (I’m tone deaf, literally. It’s called amusia, which is funny because there’s nothing amusing about the isolation that comes from not hearing most music the same way everyone else does). It’s like this version was made for me! The decision by Spectrum Holobyte to lean heavily into the Russian theme was indeed a wise one. But, with all that said, I’m still not feeling this build of Tetris. It lacks dynamic scoring, as your points are only based on both hard drops and how high in the well the drop is made. Granted, scoring multipliers based on doubles, triples, and Tetrises wasn’t the original intent by Pajitnov, but it opens up Tetris as an actual video game instead of a glorified fidget spinner. I’m going to repeat myself a lot in this feature, but that’s the nature of the beast, so I’ll say it again: there’s no incentive to go for Tetrises, because you are not rewarded for them in any way. It turns an intense game of quick decisions and calculating risk/reward into a game of efficient stacking, and nothing more.
I was constantly finishing in the 90 to 95 range, but in probably fifty or more rounds, I never got over the hump and got 100 lines. This game looks like it’s going to happen, but I was dead not long after this screenshot. Tetris is famously a game where good games go south quickly. MS-DOS Tetris really exemplifies that more than most.
I could still get behind that because the core Tetris gameplay is as rock solid as any foundation in gaming history. But, the rebuild of the original Electronika that led off the feature is the only game so far with one-to-one movement accuracy we all want from a game of Tetris. DOS Tetris isn’t quite there yet. MS-DOS Tetris has a speed issue that greatly affects the long game. Once the stack reaches a certain height in the center, there’s simply not enough time to rotate AND move. The point of no return is lower in the well than you really need to maximize excitement. One of my favorite aspects about the modern game of Tetris is close calls and last second saves. Well, that’s not really possible in this build because movement isn’t fast enough. There’s no 7 bag generator in this version, which is the algorithm that assures even distribution of the seven blocks. Multiple times I got situations like four or five squares in a row, or even four Tetris Makers in a row. This game of Tetris was certainly good enough to launch the craze in 1988, but it doesn’t hold up today. Verdict: NO! But, I’m awarding $1 in bonus value for including the MS-DOS games because of the extra effort (and headaches) I know Digital Eclipse and Atari had to jump through to get these games in the collection and make the story of Tetris as they are able to tell it that much more complete. Happy they’re here as bonus features. Doesn’t mean I want to play them.
Tetris aka “Apple Tetris” Platform: Apple II Released July, 1988 Programmed by Dan Geisler Developed by Spectrum Holobyte
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Jeez, and we think the Nintendo Switch has hung around for a spell. That’s nothing compared to the Apple ][, which was eleven years old when Tetris landed on it. Sadly, this port comes from the same company that did the MS-DOS version, and thus it has the same scoring as the previous game. No bonuses for lines, and no incentive to go for anything greater than a single. Scoring is based on hard drops and how high the stack is in the well. So, I hated Apple Tetris, right? Well, it’s a lot more complicated because the controls are much more responsive. You have more time to save a game at the top of the well. Even with graphics so blurry and bright that they made my eyes water (seriously, switch to the monochrome version), Apple II completely annihilates the MS-DOS build. I peaked at 90 to 96 lines in my best games on MS-DOS, but my scoring average was higher than that on the Apple II because I had enough time to cover for mistakes or make tight squeezes. I still think the scoring system is lame as all hell, but this is the best way to experience an authentic emulated (oxymoron) classic PC Tetris. Verdict: YES! – $1 in Value added to Tetris Forever
Tetris aka “Famicom Tetris” Platform: Famicom Released December 22, 1988 Programmed by Bob Rutherford Developed by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
Dynamic scoring! WOOO! And.. lives? What the f*ck?
The first ever console version of Tetris (assuming you don’t count MSX as a console) is also one of the weirdest builds of Tetris I’ve ever played. First thing’s first: I love how Digital Eclipse felt compelled to put a warning that the controls are so stupid that players will want to change them. It doesn’t say it like that, but it’s not wrong. In this Tetris, pressing DOWN rotates the blocks, while the buttons do hard drops. I assume they did it this way because people hit DOWN accidentally. I sure have, but I’d prefer doing that sometimes to how the controls are set up. It’s worse because the only remapping is via the emulator itself, and while it is an option, remember that changing what button is the hard drop means that new button, presumably DOWN, is now “enter” for the menus, and now you can only scroll one way when you enter your name. So awkward, but the weirdness of Famicom Tetris is just getting started.
Dad called this “Christmas Tetris” because of the color scheme.
So yes, dynamic scoring is here and players FINALLY have some measure of risk/reward to deal with instead of just stacking for efficiency. But, there’s a catch: this Tetris is played in 25 line intervals. There’s no uninterrupted marathon mode, and also I might have a concussion for banging my head on the desk. It’s honestly incredible how many versions of this game needed to happen before the Tetris we all love emerged. I’m six games into this feature, five of which are Tetris games, and I’ve still not reached a Tetris that feels like my Tetris. And the weirdness keeps coming in the form of lives. You get to fail three times, and when you die, you still get all the points you earned for this 25-line interval, but then you restart with a new 25 line target. You also don’t get to know how well you’re doing until the breaks, as the score isn’t tallied until you die or reach 25 lines. It’s like Game Boy Tetris’ B-Mode as a solo game.
My motto of “find the fun” took a little longer with Famicom Tetris. The 25 line or bust gameplay engine put up a fight. But then I realized, screw it, embrace it by jacking up the handicap to the max. And lo, the fun was found.
Not strange enough for you? If you play with handicap and clear 25 lines, whatever progress you’ve made is retained for the next 25 line batch. But if you die, you start from scratch with a fresh pile of garbage blocks on the playfield. I don’t recommend playing on level 0, as it’s just not fun. Even if you use handicap, start on at least level 5 for speed. This is one of the rare Tetris games where the garbage blocks are the best part of the game. Without a marathon and a much slower sense of progression, challenging tall stacks of garbage is the best thing Famicom Tetris has going for it. What stood out to me the most about Famicom Tetris is how everyone involved still had no idea what they had with Tetris. I appreciate that they realized what they were doing, and what Spectrum Holobyte had done, was certainly not maximizing its potential. This was a big step, and while they had a ways to go, I did manage to “find the fun” by treating this as a hybrid of a logic puzzler and Tetris. BUT, if you just hate the standard Tetris B-Mode, feel free to imagine this verdict flipped, because this is ALL B-Mode. Verdict: YES! – $2 in Value added to Tetris Forever
Welltris Platform: MS-DOS Released November, 1989 Concept by Alexey Pajitnov & Andrei Sgenov Designed by Dan KaufmanPublished by Spectrum Holobyte
It’s really hard to explain how the gravity works. The best way I can explain it is “imagine the bottom is a continuation of any wall.” So a block that enters the well from the left wall will slide all the way to the base of the right wall. It’s not intuitive and takes forever to get used to. Hey, maybe that’s why the set is called “Tetris Forever!”
It took me about ten seconds to figure out why Welltris didn’t “take” as heir to Tetris. Tetris conquered the world because it’s one of the few abstract game concepts that both offers instantly intuitive mechanics and instant gratification. Neither of those are true of Welltris. Movement, the drop mechanics, and how the well reacts to cleared lines? Not one single aspect of it is intuitive. It takes a long while to get the hang of Welltris, and even when you have it, jeez, this is one slow and clunky game. The idea is simple: the walls are where the blocks enter, but they’re not part of the playfield. The bottom is the only playfield. There’s no layers, and if a block is, ahem, blocked and gets stuck on the wall, you lose that wall for a few turns. Lose all four walls and it’s game over. Even after hours of playing, my brain refused to adjust to the transitions from wall-to-wall. I was constantly seeing blocks get hung-up on the corners. Of course, I was also doing things like changing the shapes of blocks in the corners as well, and the Digital Eclipse-provided “how to play” tab didn’t tell me why. I had to revert to prehistoric gaming and use the instruction manual like a savage, presumably read by whale blubber candlelight in my cave while the men hunt a woolly mammoth for supper. There, I learned how to use the corners to distort blocks. Like in this slide show, you can see me turn a “T” block into an “L” block.
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How’d that happen? I didn’t have a clue at the time, but it wasn’t intentional. Truth be told, I panicked! I wanted to stick the block in one of the corners and accept that I was going to lose another wall. But then, as the block entered the playfield, it seemed to warp and distort, and by the time I was out of my panic attack, the block suddenly had a different shape and fit perfectly in the spaces around the corner. What the fudge? Well, the manual describes it as “its segments go in a direction appropriate for the wall” which now I think I understand.
In other words, since each wall has a different “bottom of the well” on the playfield, having the blocks fall in the corners, with pieces on both sides, creates two simultaneous bottoms that essentially divides a single block into two or more pieces. It’s something I never got a real feel for. Also, when the blocks enter the playfield properly, the wall is capable of creating an overlapping situation, and in such an event, the extra block is just deleted from existence. Again, none of this is intuitive and I never quite got the hang of it. To be perfectly frank, even after many, many hours spent trying, I never could DELIBERATELY make the corner move work out as well as it did that first time, which was an accident. Actually, when I was trying to use that technique, I mostly ended up screwing things up worse. By the way, is anyone else getting a “it’s not a bug! It’s a feature!” vibe out of the whole corner thing? Because I sure am! I have a sixth sense about these things.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the Tetris game that introduced the strange shapes (like the Plus Block, the Staircase Block, etc.) to the franchise. I hate all the non-standard seven blocks. But, they’re fully optional.
Welltris has other problems. It doesn’t control smoothly at all, which combined with the speed increases that come through the progress AND the latency inherent to MS-DOS emulation, makes Welltris’ mid-to-late game pretty miserable. There’s a noticeable unresponsiveness in movement and especially in rotating the blocks (in fairness, most MS-DOS games in any Gold Master Series thus far have lag). It’s always there and it’s very frustrating. I also found the score sheet to be too conservative. The scoring is a mix of the original Tetris’ emphasis on fast drops and the later games’ emphasis on lines and combos. I’d love to play this with a more logical, elegant scoring system. Oh, and like many early Tetris games, this one charges a semi-hefty tax for having the “NEXT BLOCK” feature turned on. I think Pajitnov’s heart was in the right place with that idea, but all forms of Tetris are better mental exercises with the next block feature. Is Welltris any good? I think it could potentially be. The roughness of this build, with the latency in movement is what ultimately pushed my opinion into the NO! column. But, Pajitnov did right the wrongs here with the coin-op version (reviewed in the bonus section down below). Welltris MS-DOS is boring, but as a proof of concept for a better game, I’ve seen a lot worse. Verdict: NO!
Hatris (JP Version) Platform: Famicom Released July 6, 1990 Designed by Alexey Pajitnov and Vladimir Pokhilko Programmed by Akira Kobayashi Developed by Bullet-Proof Software
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If I didn’t know that Hatris was designed by Pajitnov, I’d have guessed it was one of the dozens of “gimme some of that cheddar” games that followed in Tetris’ wake. Jeez, can you imagine having to follow up Tetris? Whatever sequels followed in its immediate wake were certain to disappoint. In fact, the game is so different in every way but the well and gravity that they should have divorced it entirely from the franchise. “Hatris” sounds like a parody of Tetris, impossible to take seriously and certainly not a game one should expect to pay good money for. It’s an unfortunate name, because honestly, Hatris is decent as its own game. Well, actually some versions are, but not this one. The object is to create stacks of five hats. The hats enter the playfield in pairs and you have to sort them in a way where the pile doesn’t become too high. What complicates things is that, while matching hats take up minimal space, mismatches eat up space. The playfield is only six columns wide, so mismatches become inevitable. A final twist is that if one hat binds to any stack, the second hat can still be moved independently until it reaches another stack.
I tried to play on higher levels, with stacks of garbage blocks already on the playfield. I used this specific level ten times and the closest I got was six matches from the shop.
While the type of hats in the games changes in each separate version of Hatris, what really differentiates each port is how it handles special powers. The Famicom Hatris is the most conservative among the ports included in Tetris Forever. After collecting twenty five matches, you get to enter a shop and remove any one hat from the board entirely, but once a hat is chosen from the shop, you can never pick it again in future visits. While it does add a layer of strategy, it’s just not enough help. Once you reach the full variety of hats, there’s seemingly nothing resembling the modern Tetris’ “7 Bag” algorithm to assure that luck doesn’t completely screw you over. Six channels is not enough when you get no extra help until you pull-off 25 matches. And you know what? I think BPS and everyone involved agrees with me, because the Game Boy and American NES versions of Hatris give you many more options that open-up the gameplay beyond luck-based stacking. Good for them, too. Because what’s here isn’t completely abysmal, but you never shake the feeling that it’s entirely luck-based. Verdict: NO!
Hatris Platform: Game Boy Released May, 1991 Designed by Alexey Pajitnov & Vladimir Pokhilko Developed by Bullet-Proof Software
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Much like the trajectory of Tetris, Hatris needed time to figure out how to make the gameplay more dynamic and video-game-like instead of “Busy Work: The Game.” Game Boy Hatris’ addition of two gameplay mechanics opens-up a more arcade-like risk/reward feel. In the Famicom version, there’s no reward for creating two set matches from a single drop. On Game Boy, it earns you a fireball. The fireball can then be used to clear any one hat that’s on the top of a stack, with the exception of the fireproof crowns. If you build up a stockpile of three fireballs, they’re automatically used up to create a helmet that can crush an entire stack down to the bottom of the screen, with the exception of crowns. These two additions alone yank Hatris out of the cellar and make it a genuinely decent game.
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However, there’s a big catch to the helmets: they remain on the playfield and require four additional helmets to clear. Logically this means that having to (1) create, at the barest minimum, fifteen total fireballs (2) crush the same pile five times, since there’s no diagonal matching. It’s too big of a commitment, and the shame is, there’s multiple ways they could have changed this to work. Make special rules for the helmet that make it three to clear instead of five. If it was three helmets, the temptation of clearing a stack versus getting rid of the dead weight of the used helmets would be agonizing, and awesome. If Digital Eclipse is reading, what you guys could do is create a new Hatris that has a bigger playfield to accommodate wide screen TVs, and then use our space age, futuristic computing power to allow different match requirements for different hats. Hatris has so much potential thanks to the unusual way pieces stack into each-other. The concept has legs, but unlike Tetris, Hatris was abandoned before it ever reached its fullest potential. Flawed and limited as Hatris for Game Boy is, I put a lot more time into it than I figured I would. Verdict: YES! – $2 in Value added to Tetris Forever I’m going to go out of order and wrap-up Hatris for Tetris Forever. There’s two more Hatris games in this feature but they’re in the bonus section.
Hatris (US Version) Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released April, 1992 Programmed by Akira Kobayashi Developed by Bullet-Proof Software
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Unbelievably, Hatris for the NES regresses from the Game Boy version and goes back to the Famicom’s system of not giving bonuses for clearing matches with both pieces of a single drop. There’s no incentive at all to do anything besides stack and clear hats with as much efficiency as possible, and thus there’s no risk/reward. Which isn’t to say that this version of Hatris is the same as the Famicom, because it ain’t. The “clear all of one type of hat” bomb is replaced by the characters Alexey and Vladimir. Alexey allows you to remove any five hats from the playfield, with the only catch being the options are limited to the bottom of each stack. It’s still a very valuable power-up. Vladimir allows you to swap the positions of any two stacks, which is less valuable, but there’s one final bonus: if the current piece dropping is set to screw you thanks to the lack of matches, activating a helper removes it from the game. After the power is used, gameplay resumes with whatever was the next piece in line. I found myself using the helpers (especially Vladimir) just to junk the current piece as often as I was because I needed their powers.
My first game felt like it took hours to finish.
This is the Hatris that offers the most power-ups of any of the three Hatris games in Tetris Forever, and it’s not even close. Each character has specific hats that charge their meters. It only takes five matches of their hat types to score one use of a helper, and you can bank up to eight usages. Consequently, this is probably the easiest of the three versions of Hatris, as the long game is more survivable if you play your cards right and save-up your powers for the end game. Did I have fun? A little. More than enough to score a YES!, but I’m still pretty baffled by the lack of incentive to go for doubles. It’s such an obvious oversight, but oddly one that would be repeated in the coin-op and PC Engine ports. Without question there’s SOMETHING here with the Hatris formula. The varying sizes of the hats and how they interlock and stack is unique and novel. Yet, none of the versions I’ve played feel specifically optimized for maximum gaming pleasure. The same was true of early versions of Tetris, but lots of people kept working with it until they got it right. That ain’t happening with Hatris. I’ll still give the edge to the Game Boy version, even if the ideal Hatris is probably a mix of this version and it. Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Tetris Forever
Tetris 2 + BomBliss Platform: Famicom Released December 31, 1991 Directed by Koichi Nakamura Developed by Chunsoft Co., Ltd. Published by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
The “C” Mode debuts in Tetris 2, where garbage blocks rise up out of the ground in regular intervals. I was constantly dying at 60 – 70 lines on it. Once you get too close to the top, you’re likely to lose your ability to rotate the block. Whenever I died, it was almost always from a situation I would have survived in a modern Tetris game.
The “Tetris 2” in this title is not related to the Nintendo-developed game we call “Tetris 2” in the west, which is called “Tetris Flash” in Japan (reviewed below, in the bonus section). This sequel is labeled “Tetris 2” specifically in terms of the Famicom’s Tetris, and it’s a marked improvement over the original. This is the first Tetris game in the collection with left and right rotation instead of single-direction rotation. That alone makes a huge difference. But, I still wasn’t in love with this version of Tetris. Last second saves are hard because your ability to rotate is limited. The block must be entirely on the screen to be able to turn, and it must have clearance to turn. So obviously advanced moves like t-spins wouldn’t be possible in this build. The biggest innovation here is that blocks make a noise when they land, but they’re not locked in yet. You still have a grace period of being able to move then until they settle. Tetris 2 is actually okay, but Tetris still had a long way to go. You really can’t appreciate how much the 7-bag algorithm transforms the game of Tetris until you get a string of four square blocks followed by three more after a break of one other block. So, the only reason to play this is BomBliss.
I sure hope you enjoy BomBliss as much as I do. Otherwise, Tetris Forever’s lineup might not “do it” for you.
In the west, we know BomBliss better as “Tetris Blast.” Classic Nintendo consoles only ever got one version of it in the West, so it’s a bit startling that there’s six total versions of BomBliss in Tetris Forever. Six!! For those not familiar, it’s basically Tetris, only some of the individual segments are bombs. If you make a line, it doesn’t necessarily clear that line. But, if there’s bombs in that line, the amount of lines you clear at once increases the explosive powers of the bombs. You really don’t want to get just singles, as a single might leave behind garbage in the line you cleared. Only bombs clear the blocks, so you have to cluster them up in 2 x 2 squares to create bigger bombs and/or strategically align all the bombs to maximize explosive power. After a while, the game starts utilizing new shapes of blocks besides the standard seven block roster. I couldn’t put BombBliss down. I don’t recall ever playing Tetris Blast, and I figured there had to be a reason why this was such an uncommon game today. I have to assume it vanished due to oversaturation (six versions?! That’s more than Hatris WITH THE BONUS REVIEWS), because actually, I really liked this. I’ll get more into it in the next review. I wasn’t going to issue a verdict because the next game is essentially the same game, only in 16-bits. HOWEVER, the next game’s Tetris I don’t feel is entirely on the up-and-up, so.. Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Tetris Forever
Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss Platform: Super Famicom Released December 18, 1992 Directed by Masayoshi Takatori & Toshihiko Kitazawa Developed by Tose Co. Ltd Published by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
This was my best game because I kept things nice and flat. But I was done after just one screw-up soon after this pic was taken. Once things start flying, the rotation begins to feel unresponsive, and without wall kicks, it’s too easy for a block to get jammed by the stack and be unable to rotate.
Let’s get this out of the way first: I have never in my life seen the likes of a game of Tetris like. One that just refuses to spawn Tetris Makers like this version does. I’m convinced that some kind of rigging is going on. This is a Tetris game made before 7-bag. Tetris Forever talks about how 7-bag is required if you want to become a Tetris licensee (one of the video segment subjects is essentially about how protective of “the brand” they are). You can feel the lack of 7-bag in many of these early Tetris games, but it’s taken to a whole new level here. I had multiple instances where the game started me with two or three Tetris Makers in a row, at a point when I couldn’t possibly have made a Tetris, then never gave me another one. Ever. Now sure, the odds are theoretically 1-in-7 that any given block will be a Tetris Maker, but over the course of a game, even random chance should level out. That almost never happened. It was specifically Tetris Makers the game would not give out. Okay, so rotten luck, right? I shouldn’t be surprised, because having historically bad RNG is probably the biggest running gag in Indie Gamer Chick history. But, I’m not entirely sure it’s really legit 1-in-7 RNG. I think Super Tetris 2 is cooking the numbers a little bit.
This was basically the highlight of Tetris 2/Super Tetris 2 for me. This was the only Tetris I ever got this high up the well. That’s partially because Tetris Makers become impossible to rotate after a certain height.
Please note that everything I’m about to say absolutely can be chalked up to rotten luck, and not EVERY game had me get hosed. But, it did happen consistently enough to talk about. First, there’s just the obvious observation that it’s specifically Tetris Makers the game often refused to spit out. If I had perfect L-shaped gaps, the game gave them to me about the rate you would expect. No unexpectedly long gaps between the necessary fit. Same with perfect gaps for any other shape. No, it was only the Tetris Makers, and it wasn’t just one game that I filled the well to the top and never got them. It was several games. But thanks to the magic of rewind, I noticed one really peculiar quirk with those games. As long as I kept the gap open, the odds that I got a Tetris Maker were very slim.
But, with UNCANNY consistency, if I opted to clog the hole, creating a layout where a Tetris Maker was the least-optimal block for the current stack, suddenly the RNG wasn’t stingy with the Tetris Makers. Rewound again to unclog, and the game would go back to not passing out Tetris Makers. It didn’t happen every game, but it did happen a lot. This is in addition to a bad “random generator” that tended to do things like start games with twelve-straight Z/Reverse-Z blocks, or four Tetris Makers in a row. And hell, that’s not even talking about Super Tetris’ uncanny ability to give you the worst block for any situation. No place to fit a Z block? HERE’S FIVE OF THEM IN A ROW! Combine that with the lack of a wall kick and how bad the top of the stack plays in the late game and I gotta say, I didn’t care for Super Tetris 2 at all. Also, this is nitpicky but there’s no wrap-ups telling you how many Tetrises/Triples/etc. you got each round.
I was nearly as addicted to BomBliss as I’ve ever been to Tetris. This is a seriously underrated game.
Once again, Bombliss carries the day. There’s two ways to play it, though games have the same object: clear the screen entirely. In Mode A, there’s a starting pattern, and you’re given 100 randomly-assigned blocks to clear the field. Scoring is based around how quickly you’re able to clear the screen. The second mode is a puzzle mode where you have a limited supply of specific blocks spit out in a specific order. Both modes I found to be every bit as addictive and satisfying as the main Tetris. BomBliss is no second banana, but it does have a sharp learning curve to it. It took me a while to be able to judge how much damage and range any bombs bigger than singles would get me. It’s worth getting good at though. Realistically, you can skip the Famicom game and just play this one. It’s the same game, more or less. Combined, they’re worth about five bucks, so I’ll say.. Verdict: YES! – $3 in value added to Tetris Forever
Tetris Battle Gaiden Platform: Super Famicom Released December 24, 1993 Directed by Richard Rogers Developed by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
You’re going to have to trust me: this makes sense.
If I had to guess which review will be the most controversial among the Tetris Forever titles, it’s a sure-fire bet this is it. Because I really didn’t like Battle Gaiden at all. If you have people near you of roughly equal skill level, take this whole review with a grain of salt, because Tetris with local-only multiplayer isn’t worth much to me. Among other things, and this isn’t trying to sound like a flex but there’s nobody in my home who can possibly hope to take me. Dad and my nephew TJ, who have each both won exactly 0 games of Tetris 99, were told to practice specifically at this game. I annihilated both of them so fast their heads were spinning. Mind you, when they played each-other, it was exciting to watch as they were, more or less, evenly matched, and a couple of their bouts went pretty long. If one best of three series didn’t go fifteen minutes, I’d be stunned. That wasn’t the case with me, and although it gave me a tiny hit of self-esteem to hear my father mutter “holy crap” when I played the first match against TJ, the reality is I’m a 35 year old defeating an 11 year old who didn’t play his first game of Tetris until I basically paid him to last month. My best chance at giving Tetris Battle Gaiden a YES! was against the computer, but it quickly became clear a YES! was not happening.
At first, I thought if Tetris Battle Gaiden’s extracurricular ideas had a little more pep in their step, I’d probably have given it a YES! anyway. But the deeper I looked at the character roster, the more I realized where Tetris Gaiden REALLY goes wrong.
There’s four major problems with Tetris Battle Gaiden. The first is that the power-ups completely interrupt the gameplay. There’s too much non-gameplay graphics involved. If the powers worked with a quick, snappy effect, it would have been so much better. But the characters linger on the screen too long, and the effects they create can take too long to apply. This leads into the second problem: there’s just too many power crystals available. Instead of basing the power-ups on how well you play, the game comes down to waiting for blocks that have the crystals and entering into a series of staring contests with your opponent, trying to time it so you’re the one getting the blocks with the crystals. This is caused by the third problem: you both share one pool of blocks. Normally, this would be a good idea. Hell, a GREAT idea, but it doesn’t work with the crystal system. The superpowers they unleash are so potentially devastating that even a novice player knows to base their actions around trying to get blocks that have the crystals, which you get just by clearing single lines. You get them regardless of whether you create gaps in the stack. They’re far too common and far too easy to get, and their presence absolutely murders the flow of Tetris Battle Gaiden. The game never recovers. “Staring Contest” is wrong. It’s a game of chicken, but a slow one. Really slow.
Even on the default difficulty, I lost a lot of matches to the AI with some of the characters. But, with the Princess, I flew through the game undefeated, and never came close to losing a single match. I wouldn’t normally consider one overpowered character to be a deal breaker in a local-only multiplayer game, because anyone can make house rules (show of hands, who here has uttered the phrase “no Oddjob!” in their lives?). But Tetris Gaiden was already not a good game. This just seals it.
The three issues above would be enough to lock-in a NO! for Tetris Battle Gaiden. Where it becomes historically inept is in the characters themselves, and more specifically, their game-breaking superpowers. Each character has four unique powers that cost between 1 and 4 crystals to use, and the one good thing I can say about Tetris Gaiden is it doesn’t let you carry more than four crystals at a time. Hell, the actual Tetris playing would just stop if that were the case. I found one character specifically to be so overpowered that I told my family “you better ban me from using her.” It’s the Princess. Only her first power is balanced: clearing a 3-segment long column from the stack, basically creating a giant canyon in it. That’s fine. It’s the other three that are absurd. Her level 2 power is a shield that not only blocks the next use of a superpower by an opponent, but actually reverses it onto them. This was especially effective when playing humans, who might not glance over to your side of the screen to see you’ve used a power.
Hope you can read Japanese, because otherwise you won’t be able to read this curse by a boss. It randomized the buttons, so up might rotate, and left might use your superpower. There are NO English ROM hacks in Tetris Forever. Brush on your Japanese, folks. It’s fun!
Her third power is more useful than pretty much everyone else’s most expensive power. For the low cost of three crystals, you can prevent your opponent from being able to rotate pieces for the next three blocks. Her final power is the ability to turn your stack into an exact copy of your opponent’s stack. When a superpower is activated, both players lose their next block, and the player who activated the power gets whatever is the next piece in the chute. So if your opponent is about to hit a Tetris, not only do you block that from happening, but YOU GET THE TETRIS. It’s too much, but I already hated Tetris Battle Gaiden anyway. It takes away from Tetris gameplay instead of enhancing it, which makes it one of the worst versions of Tetris I’ve ever played. I take a lot of comfort from the fact that Alexey Pajitnov agreed, saying that they rushed this out without balancing it. Oh god, don’t tell me they were trying to beat the release before the Street Fighter II craze ended. Man, talk about misreading the moment. They completely misjudged who their market was on this. They were essentially creating a new genre, along with Puyo Puyo’s emergence as a multiplayer favorite. Crying shame. Verdict: NO! But good job on the instruction screens, Digital Eclipse. The best ones in Tetris Forever, in my opinion.
Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss Genteiban Platform: Super Famicom Released January 21, 1994 Directed by Shunichi Nanto & Shinichi Oguri Developed by Tose Co. Ltd Published by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
Same old rigged game of Tetris. Bleh.
This is a limited edition reprint of Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss. It’s the exact same crappy version of Tetris and the sublime BomBliss, only there’s new puzzles for BomBliss. I chose a couple random puzzles and each time the puzzle was different from its Tetris 2 + BomBliss counterpart, so that’s a good thing. Hey, I like BomBliss’ puzzle mode. I like it a lot! However, no improvements were made to Super Tetris 2. In my one and only game of it, the game started with three square pieces, and the stack was well over halfway full before I got my first Tetris Maker, then I didn’t get another until my stack was practically reaching the ceiling. If Digital Eclipse had included a list of which puzzles had been changed or added to BomBliss, or more importantly, what puzzles in this game ONLY appear in this game and none of the three versions of BomBliss still remaining in this collection, I’d been more inclined to play it more. I suspect some of these “limited edition” puzzles will be recycled in the coming games. Verdict: YES! – $1 in value added to Tetris Forever
Super Tetris 3 Platform: Super Famicom Released December 16, 1994 Directed by Shinichi Oguri & Tarou Matunaka Developed by Tose Co. Ltd Published by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
Look how big the stack is. Look how many blocks are clustered together. Folks, that Tetris Maker is the first Tetris Maker I got in that round. It spit out doubles of identical blocks six times leading up to that, including three squares back-to-back-back.
For games with “super” in them, the Super Famicom versions of Tetris sure are middling versions of the game. I’m not even sure why they bothered with Super Tetris 2 or Super Tetris 3. Like the two previous Super Famicom “Super Tetris” games, the Tetris game is mediocre at best, at least in comparison to other Tetris games. Boring look. Boring backgrounds. No advance moves, or 7-bag algorithm. The best thing I can say about it is at least the B-Mode (called “classic mode”) has a wrap-up between stages telling you how many Tetrises you got. Of course, it’s all based 100% on luck, assuming the game isn’t outright rigged. There’s a four player game of Tetris called Familiss that I barely got to play. It, along with a Tetris variation and a BomBliss variation, would barely be noteworthy as modern DLC, let alone starring in a full release.
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“Sparkliss” is just BomBliss, only if the bombs exploded very slightly differently. Instead of being explosions with a blast radius, the bomb blocks in Sparkliss explode more like bombs do in Bomberman games, in straight lines. In fairness, some of the stages and puzzles feature blocks that now require two blasts to destroy. I enjoyed this fine, but goddamn this is weird. A solo BomBliss game would release for the Super Famicom (and the Game Boy) almost exactly three months after this. Why wasn’t this game saved for that? It would have made sense in Super BomBliss. Magicaliss is probably the worst Tetris variation in Tetris Forever, or second worst, depending on how you feel about Tetris Battle Gaiden. The fact that anything can compete with that trash fire is sad, indeed. What an airball Magicaliss was.
Meh.
The idea is that there’s three colors of blocks: red, blue, and green. There’s also steel blocks that are made only of single, double, or triple segments instead of the standard seven blocks of Tetris. Steel blocks can contribute to a line, but they don’t shatter when you make a line. There’s also wildcard blocks, and the big twist is if you can make a line out of a solid color (including wildcards but excluding the steel blocks), that entire color is cleared from the board, then all the steel blocks are converted into the color that was vanished. It just doesn’t work, folks. It’s BORING. While the blocks come out random in colors, you can change them into the color you want by rotating them 360 degrees (or a single twist counter-clockwise). When I realized that, in my next game I cleared 300 lines. Even then, I never got a feel for the gravity. I’m pretty sure the stack falls after matching single-color lines, but I wasn’t 100% certain on that, and the English instructions Digital Eclipse included don’t mention cascading at all. Either way, this is a slow, boring version of Tetris. The standard 25-line B-Mode was closer to decent, keeping Battle Gaiden in Tetris Forever’s cellar, but it’s closer than it should be. Super Tetris 3 is the first game in Tetris Forever that screams “soulless cash grab.” I feel bad for people who bought this in 1994, but as a +1 to Tetris Forever, eh, at least Sparkliss has the same type of puzzle mode as BomBliss, with 100 unique puzzles to solve. Verdict: YES! – $1 in value added to Tetris Forever
Super BomBliss aka Tetris Blast Platform: Game Boy Released March 17, 1995 Directed by Shinichi Oguri Developed by Tose Co. Ltd Published by Bullet-Proof Software
There really is no reason to play the original Game Boy build of Super BomBliss. The DX version is identical to it, only it has more colors (the original has an optional Super Game Boy-style four-color mode) and a puzzle mode that’s copied, puzzle-for-puzzle, from the Super Famicom game. I make a lot of jokes about sets like Tetris Forever having games for the sake of a +1, but this really is a case of this being a meaningless +1. Verdict: NO!
And I’m going to go out of order again.
Super BomBliss DX Platform: Game Boy Color Released December 10, 1999 Directed by Shunichi Nanto & Takashi Tanaka Developed by Tose Co. Ltd Published by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
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There IS a reason to play the Game Boy Color versions of Super BomBliss. And really, the only actual difference between it and the Super Famicom game, besides the graphics, is what’s called “Fight Mode.” It’s actually a very clever idea that should have been a slam dunk YES!, but haphazard coding and one really bad idea complicates that. Fight mode is essentially “what if there were boss fights?” You fight eight different characters who are physically on the stack, trying to either win by blowing them up enough times to eliminate their health bar OR to completely clear the entire stack, which is an automatic win. This is a GREAT idea I’d love to see explored more, but there are issues. Mostly based around this guy:
Each of the eight characters has a variety of moves and attacks that complicate the game. They might raise the stack, drill through existing blocks, or eat bombs. That’s in addition to the starting configurations of the stacks never being optimized for creating lines, so those moves are challenging enough. But, the 7th boss has one additional ability that was absolutely infuriating. He has the ability to stun-lock your movement for several seconds. ONE SECOND would be brutal enough, but having to wait four or five seconds before you can move again, when the drop speed is already pretty fast (probably level 7 speed), meant the move often gave the thing an automatic win. I couldn’t even cheat to beat this f*cking thing and lost multiple times. I had quit, and it was only when I went to grab a better screenshot of the “haha you lose” move that I finally won. When it happened, it feels like the only reason I was able to win was the game randomly spit out the right blocks for me to not get clogged up immediately. That should have been the last boss, because I beat the actual finale on only my second attempt.
I think this guy must be my mascot Sweetie’s ex. She refused to look at the screen.
A problem with the Fight Mode in general is that scoring hits never feels entirely accurate. I only ever scored a hit with singles if it happened at the bottom of the well. Anywhere else, singles almost always missed, even if the blast radius was (apparently) in the center of the enemy’s body. Hell, this happened a lot even with doubles that blew up with larger blasts. The bombs could explode and cover 90% of the baddie’s body and still not register a hit. For a while, I thought maybe it was required that you stun-lock the enemies before blasting them. This is done by dropping a piece on them, at which point this turns into Dig Dug, where the baddies become a pair of eyeballs that migrate through solid surfaces to the top of the stack. While they’re easier to hit this way, it turns out that it’s not necessary. It’s just sloppy coding and inconsistent collision detection, as sometimes I could damage anywhere, and other times I couldn’t. That, along with the unoptimized starting stacks makes Fight Mode an extremely frustrating experience. And yet, there’s something here. I’d love to see this explored more with better collision and more characters. Because this game is SO MUCH better than the god awful Super Famicom version of Super BomBliss, I’m giving it more value that I probably should. Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Tetris Forever If you’re REALLY nostalgic for Game Boy’s look, add $0.50 in Value for Super BomBliss
Super BomBliss Platform: Super Famicom Released March 17, 1995 Developed by Tose Co. Ltd Published by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan
Very funny.
Super BomBliss’ only unique feature over the Game Boy Color release is that it replaces Fight Mode with a versus mode, including one where you fight the computer. What ruins it is the starting positions. They would be bad enough in single player, but as a competitive game, it’s awful. The computer moves at superhuman speeds, so you can’t really use the “next piece” to plan ahead since both players share the bag. But, against the computer especially, the starting stacks are some of the most trollish, counter-intuitive arrangements, like something out of a sadistic ROM hack. These starting stacks would be difficult enough to work with if you had the standard seven Tetris blocks, but there’s multiple gigantic pieces, and since it’s totally random, I found even the computer was unable to make more than single lines in the Jason Voorhees level. LOOK AT IT!
Kiss my f*cking ass, game.
Why even bother with a versus COM mode if you want to be a complete c*nt about it? Games of it are slow, boring, and usually end when the computer tops out even if you never do anything. Which you really can’t in most of the stages because they didn’t build starting levels around exciting gameplay. They built them to be as obnoxious as possible. The only time I ever did well was when I got lucky with the blocks it gave me. Some levels, that’s not possible on. How did I beat the Jason Voorhees level? I dunno. I never made a single line. The computer died because it dropped blocks faster, but it never was able to arrange a bomb in the right position to drop the stack. HORRIBLE! This was not a game designed to be fun. Super Bombliss is a game that’s actively hostile towards players. It’s reprehensible. Since all the puzzles are in the Game Boy Color game, there’s really no reason to recommend playing a game that seems to loath itself like Super BomBliss SFC does. Okay, this time for real: THIS is the worst game in Tetris Forever, and I’ve never said this before about a retro collection, but Digital Eclipse should patch it out and leave the space that occupied it blank. Stick with Super BomBliss DX. Verdict: NO!
Tetris Time Warp Exclusive to Tetris Forever Released November 11, 2024 Designed by Jason Cirillo
I imagine I saw this right before I was born.
I have much, much love for Jason Cirillo, designer of the best reason to own Atari 50: Neo Breakout. Knowing Jason, I suspect that doing a Tetris game was on his bucket list and getting the call to make this was a dream come true for him. With that said, Tetris Time Warp, made with the best of intentions, was just sort of alright for me. Oh, it wins “best in set” easily. That seems like a tradition with the Gold Master Series. The Digital Eclipse originals show these old games what’s what. Time Warp is the only MODERN Tetris in this collection, IE holds, ghost pieces, wall kicks, T-Spins, etc, etc. And it’s a pretty good version in terms of play mechanics. There’s enough time for me to spend a solid minute sh*tting my pants and holding on for dear life near the top of the stack during the end game, which is my personal favorite aspect of modern Tetris. I wish someone could make a game that was ONLY that. Call it “Tetris Crush” or something. All yours, whoever wants it! If it makes you a billionaire, kick some bucks to epilepsy research or something. But, let’s say you really wanted the old version of Tetris for the Game Boy. Jason built a tribute to that build with a 150 line marathon mode. It’s very convincing, and while it’s not exactly the game everyone was hoping for, it’s pretty close, you know?
For everyone complaining about the lack of Game Boy Tetris, this is “1989 Marathon” mode. One of four single-player modes in Tetris Forever. It’s the physics of the Game Boy game, but the blocks aren’t exact matches (notably the Tetris Makers), and cleared lines are swiped out instead of blinking out. But the music and sound effects are mostly accurate. Also, the game ends after 150 lines. There’s no other modes, so it’s NOT the Game Boy Tetris, as there’s no “B Mode.” But, it’s pretty close, and more importantly, it’s pretty good. I’m awarding $2.50 in bonus value just for this.
Time Warp mode is sort of like Tetris meets WarioWare. It’s a mostly a standard modern game of Tetris, with the twist being “time warp blocks.” Every time you reach ten lines, the next block will be a time warp block. These blocks cannot be held, but otherwise they function exactly like Tetris blocks. However, when you clear any one part of them, you “time warp” to one of three different eras: Electronika, some bomb-based Tetris that’s kind of like BomBliss, and the Game Boy release. You’re not just playing those eras like normal Tetris, either. There’s one specific goal for each. The Electronika version is always “get four lines.” The Game Boy version is always “score a double.” The bomb Tetris that isn’t quite BomBliss is always “detonate a big bomb.” You have twenty seconds to finish each of these goals, and completing them scores a lot of points. It’s a fun idea, but the problem is that you only can play all three modes if you drop the time warp block when it’s in its Electronika configuration. Drop it in the Game Boy configuration, and you get to play two. In the bomb configuration, and it’s only that one mode. My gut feeling is that, with only three destinations, this was an ambitious idea that didn’t quite pan out as the developer hoped. It’s just too limited, to the point that I began opting to use the gold part of the time warp blocks, which doesn’t “send you back in time” and instead creates a cascade that, more importantly, erases all the gaps you’ve left.
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Nearly every game I played of the marathon mode lasted roughly twenty minutes and ended around level 15. I just couldn’t get further than that. It becomes too hard to time the time warp blocks to get the gold side, but the crappy part is, the blocks go too fast to really play the Electronika version. By the time the game started, the first block had already dropped and screwed me up. A single half-second long grace period would probably fix this, and it would do wonders for the long game. It might very well save the endless version of the game. The best part of Tetris Time Warp for me was the three minute mode. With it, I found the potently addictive side of Time Warp that makes Tetris work. It’s not as fun to marathon the Time Warp mode as it should be. But, once everything became a race against the clock, suddenly Time Warp found its groove. Wisely, the primary timer pauses when you activate a time warp, so three minutes is really like four or five minutes, but that’s perfect for this format. I really hate to come across like I’m disappointed in Time Warp, because I really did enjoy it a lot. What a tall task Jason Cirillo had: not only paying tribute to Tetris’ past, but making a game that feels slick and modern while doing so. He certainly didn’t fail, but it’s not exactly a rousing success, either. Again, this is the best part of Tetris Forever’s game lineup. But I don’t think Time Warp will be a Tetris I come back to after this. Verdict: YES! – $5 in value added + $2.50 Bonus for the Game Boy rebuild – $7.50 Total
FINAL TALLY – NINETEEN GAMES (following 12-20-24 update) YES!: 11 games totaling $26.50 in overall value (including bonus value). NO!: 8 games. + $35 for Main Feature & Emulation GOAL: $35 in Value FINAL VALUE: $61.50 $29.74 (normally $34.99) fell down a well in the making of this review.
BONUS REVIEWS
THESE ARE NOT INCLUDED IN TETRIS FOREVER! THESE DO NOT AFFECT THE FINAL VERDICT! THIS IS JUST FOR FUNSIES! IN ORDER OF RELEASE
And I want to thank my friend Dave Sanders who acted as my special consultant for the bonus reviews. Meaning he found roughly 25% of the games featured here and shot me puppy dog eyes until I agreed to review them.
BONUS REVIEWS OF GAMES NOT INCLUDED IN TETRIS FOREVER
Tetris (MSX, 1988)
Tetris (Atari Games – Arcade, 1988)
Tetris (Sega – Arcade, 1988)
Tetris (Sega Mega Drive, Unreleased)
Tetris (Tengen – NES, 1989)
Tetris (Game Boy, 1989)
Flash Point (Arcade, 1989)
BlockOut (Arcade, 1989)
Tetris (Nintendo – NES, 1989)
BlockOut (NES, Unreleased)
Nintendo World Championships 1990 (NES, Competition Cartridge)
Pyramid (NES, 1990)
Tetris (Nintendo Game Watch, 1990)
Pipe Dream (Arcade, 1990)
Bloxeed (Arcade, 1990)
Klax (Arcade, 1990)
Klax (Atari Lynx, 1990)
Columns (Arcade, 1990)
Hatris (Arcade, 1990)
Klax (Atari 2600, 1990)
Knight Move (Famicom, 1990)
Klax (NES, 1990)
Dr. Mario (NES, 1990)
Dr. Mario (Game Boy, 1990)
Klax (TurboGrafx-16, 1990)
Columns II: The Voyage Through Time (Arcade, 1990)
Pipe Dream (NES, 1990)
Klax (Tengen – Sega Genesis, 1990)
Klax (Namco, Sega Genesis, 1990)
Welltris (Arcade, 1991)
Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen (Famicom, 1991)
Hatris (PC Engine, 1991)
Puyo Puyo (Famicom, 1991)
Yoshi (NES, 1991)
Wordtris (SNES, 1992)
Oh My God! (Arcade, 1992)
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine/Kirby’s Avalanche (Sega Genesis, 1993/SNES, 1995)
Poto Poto (Arcade, 1994)
Tetris 2 (SNES, 1994)
Tetris & Dr. Mario (SNES, 1994)
Bust-a-Move (SNES, 1995)
Baku Baku Animal (Arcade, 1995)
V-Tetris (Virtual Boy, 1995)
Virtual Lab (Virtual Boy, 1995)
3D-Tetris (Virtual Boy, 1996)
Tetris Platform: MSX2 Released in 1988 Developed by Rowan Software Ltd. Published by Mirrorsoft NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
THAT is a damn good looking game of Tetris right there.
UPDATE: I messed up and credited this as an original MSX game, but this is, in fact, the MSX2 version of Tetris. I will try to include the original MSX Tetris in Part Two.
Now that MSX is starting to get some modern love, hey Digital Eclipse, Atari, and The Tetris Company: if you keep updating Tetris Forever with more games, or even if you just want a +1 for DLC, this version is absolutely worth a look. Okay, it’s just Tetris and a close cousin to the Famicom version, but judging purely by the look, this is the better game. Annoyingly, it has a similar control scheme to the Famicom Tetris. You press DOWN to rotate while the face buttons (or space bar) are hard drop. My brain couldn’t make the adjustment and so I kept clogging up the damn playfield. This is basically a more colorful version of the Famicom game where the “B-Mode” is the only mode. You’re clearing 25 lines per a round and you have lives. One slight idiosyncrasy: MSX Tetris appears to be a 10×22 grid, but the blocks spawn at the 3rd segment from the top, making this a more common 10×20 grid. The first two rows are inaccessible and will lead to you dying. So the top of the well is NOT the top of the well. Otherwise, if Tetris worked for you on the Famicom, you might want to give this version a try, because it’s more or less the same game but more beautiful, in my opinion. Verdict: YES!
Tetris Platform: Arcade Released in 1988 (?) or February, 1989 Designed by Ed Logg Distributed by Atari Games NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Don’t listen to anyone who says this is, more or less, the same as the NES game. It’s not. At all.
I almost skipped this, and in fact, I’m writing this review a few days after having played and reviewed Tengen Tetris for the NES (coming up soon). I barely liked Tengen Tetris and hung my YES! purely on its co-op mode. I decided, for the sake of thoroughness, I better boot-up Ed Logg’s coin-op original, just to make sure. Thank God I did. This thing has a lot more going for it, and in fact, is not just Tetris. The game is broken up into bite-sized chunks that end after X amount of lines. After just a few levels of normal Tetris B-Mode, twists start coming. Actually, one is there right from the start: this is the first Tetris to incentivize having the stack be as low to the floor as possible when you clear the final line, for bonus points and a celebratory Russian dance. Then, after a few levels, Atari Tetris becomes a more refined, quick and punchy version of Tetris’ B-Mode, with garbage blocks. Okay, so what? I’ve played that mode in over twenty different games now. Then, this happened:
I’ve circled the “magic garbage pixel.”
Brand new garbage pixels appear every few block drops. Just one at a time. Okay, THAT is a one-off twist that I’d like to see explored more. The placement of them does seem to be completely random. If I rewound and did it again, it would appear in a different spot, with the only rule seemingly being the pixel always appears on top of whatever is the highest block in a column. It’s a super small change, but as I learned when I reviewed From Below, tiny changes in Tetris can yield big gameplay results. What I liked about it was that the pixels can both help and hurt you, depending on blind luck. I might have had no “clean” area to place the Z block or even the square block that was next, but then the game randomly bailed me out by placing a pixel in a way that saves me from needing to create a gap. Sure, it screwed me sometimes, but I still totally dig this idea and would like to see more of it. In fact, that gimmick isn’t in this version of Tetris enough! It only happens in a few stages. Atari Arcade Tetris also has levels where the blocks rise up, and the garbage block patterns aren’t random. This is a strong, varied build of Tetris, and I really liked it.
FOUR Tetris Makers in a row. You absolute bastard.
Even the pace is better than most Tetris games. The Atari Games build gets some pep in its step much faster than its NES little brother. You’re going to see this regularly in this feature with arcade games. They need to make money, and players camping on them for hours on a single quarter isn’t a viable business strategy, so they have to kick you in the ass. My father and I placed bets on how long my average first game in arcades would be, no cheating allowed. I said twenty minutes. Dad said seven minutes. In this version of Tetris, I would have lost under Price is Right rules, as I lasted about thirteen minutes before the blocks started coming out too fast for me to work with. BUT, you can continue by ponying up another quarter. Good call that was. You’re reading this second in the bonus reviews, but I’m writing this part last: having gone through all these different Tetris games, Ed Logg’s arcade build scales the best of all the coin-ops, and maybe the best in all of Tetris. The only thing it’s missing is the usual stuff: missing 7-bag, left/right movement late in the game, shapes falling in clusters. At least the blocks are more colorful than the bland NES ones, and the cane coming out and grabbing the dancer cracked me up. I’m about to be pretty hard on the Tengen Tetris, or as hard on it as YES! games get. But for the coin-op, I didn’t even have to think about my verdict. All parties involved really need to figure out the rights situation with this, because this build deserves to be celebrated in the 2020s. Verdict: YES!
Tetris Platform: Arcade – Sega System 16 & Sega System E Released December, 1988 Developed by Esco Boueki NO MODERN RELEASE*
*Included in Sega Ages 2500 Vol. 28 for the PlayStation 2 exclusively in Japan
31 lines. Goddamn, Cathy. Yikes.
Yep, this is a hard version of Tetris. It’s also practically deified by Japanese Tetris players. There’s a LOT of lore surrounding Sega’s Tetris. For example: it’s one of the few Tetris games that players can form a concrete strategy for. Why’s that? Because it will give you the same order of bricks every time you turn it on. It’s called the Power-On Pattern. They have a list of the first 1,000 blocks you’ll get! Whoa! It’s also probably the first Tetris with “lock delay” meaning you get a grace period to move a landed block around before it fuses to the stack. No lock-delay = no ceiling crush, which is my favorite part of Tetris. So, you know, thanks Sega for accidentally inventing the part of Tetris I like most! But, I really don’t get the worship of this version of Tetris. Sorry, fans. Yea, I’m resigned to the fact that this is the review that’s going to get me skinned alive.
SPLIT DECISION – Sega System 16
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Again, this is the first version of Tetris that is basically “Tetris – Hard Mode.” Even on easy, the gravity feels heavy and sluggish with the lock delay, and the speed picks up very quickly. Too quickly, for my tastes, but then suddenly slows down, too. Weird. I like to start on level 0 and tapper-up gradually, but there’s none of that in Sega Tetris. Whether you’re using the legendary starting seed of blocks or not, I found this had one of the worst block algorithms. There’s just too many runs of nearly identical blocks, or large runs of only two types of blocks. Want to know why Tetris Time Warp scored $7.50 in value? In large part it’s due to the 7-bag algorithm. It quickly became apparent to me in the main Tetris Forever review that it was an invention almost equally as important as the game itself. Tetris before then could be pretty demoralizing, and I found Sega’s arcade Tetris, cherished and beloved by generations before me as perhaps THE iconic Tetris, to be not very fun. Verdict: NO!
SPLIT DECISION – Sega System E
The Sega System E version has the same rhythm and similar whiplash-like speed, only with much older-looking graphics. And it’s a better game of Tetris.
Sigh. Yea, this is going to get people mad at me, since I know the reputation is this is the “inferior” version of Sega Arcade Tetris. But, whereas I barely didn’t like the System 16 build, the System E build is a little more kinder and thus I liked it just enough to push it over the threshold. The punishing gravity takes a bit longer to kick in. Whereas I was constantly being wiped-out in 60 lines or under on the System 16, I could get to 70 or 80 consistently on this one. The problem is, by that point the blocks won’t even turn most of the time. Not EVERY time, which is weird. It makes me wonder if I broke something. It’s certainly a blander presentation, but actually I think I prefer the stark, colorful presentation of Tetris – System E to the photographic backdrops of the System 16 version. In my heart, it feels like the two versions are neck-and-neck, but the reality is I wouldn’t hate playing the System E version again, whereas I’m never playing the System 16 version, and that’s about as clear a win as it gets. Verdict: YES!
Tetris Platform: Sega Mega Drive Completed Unreleased* Prototype Intended for Release April 15, 1989 Programmed by Naoki Okabe Developed by Sega NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED**
*Less than ten copies are known to exist of Tetris for the Mega Drive. The carts on the collector’s market were created for press/media to evaluate and review for magazines ahead of release. Carts manufactured and distributed to press/media should not count as “released.” **The version of Tetris included in the Sega Genesis Mini is NOT the same game.
This was with “items turned on” though it doesn’t tell you what they do. It’s just a blinking block that randomly gives an effect if you make even a single line with it. By the time I got to around 260, I couldn’t really get full rotations. Thankfully this game gave me an absolute ton of reverse L blocks that I could lay down. Well, until I couldn’t rotate them even once.
Genesis/Mega Drive fans: if I were you, I’d save your $30,000. The holy grail for Sega collectors is this cancelled at the last possible moment version of Tetris that never got past the first push of the manufacturing button. I assume there’s a button and a machine with a speaker that plays Powerhouse. And if that’s not true, please don’t tell me. I need this to be true. Anyway, “under” ten copies are known to exist. The version that’s on the Sega Genesis Mini is NOT related to this. That version is basically a direct port of the System 16 coin-op I just reviewed. For all of this version’s problems, it IS a home port that scales properly instead of needing to knock you out in ten minutes or less. The only similarity that the holy grail version has to the Mini’s Tetris is that it uses the “Sega Rotation System.” That’s described on the Sega Retro page as “rigid” and I’d agree. MD Tetris has some of the most wildly imbalanced block drops I’ve experienced. One game I got so hosed on Tetris Makers that, even after 100 lines, the meter for it was nearly at the bottom. In the above game, the reverse-L blocks lapped the damn meter with plenty of room to spare. I found this Tetris to generally be unresponsive and poor with its rotation mechanics. Sega rushed this one through production, and it shows. The Tetris created for the Genny Mini is superior, for certain. Verdict: NO!
Tetris Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released May, 1989 Designed by Ed Logg Developed by Tengen (Atari Games) NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
In the game of Go, “Atari” roughly means “check” but my understanding is nobody actually says it except novices. I think it’s actually a social taboo to declare “Atari.” Rude, or something like that. Either way, Atari Games originally had been the arcade division of Nolan Bushnell’s Atari until Warner Bros. sold the company to Jack Tramiel. It’s really best to think of it as Warner split the company into two, selling the home video game and computer division to Tramiel while retaining the coin-op division, which was called “Atari Games” in arcades. But, they couldn’t call themselves that for home video games, so they needed a new label, and thus TENGEN was born. In keeping with the Go theme, Tengen is the center of the Go board. After he was fired from his own company, Nolan Bushnell started a new company named Sente, the equivalent of “checkmate” in Go.
Tengen Tetris is one of the most (in)famous games ever made, and one of the biggest casualties of the whole rights fiasco with Tetris. In a nutshell: Atari Games sure thought they had the rights to Tetris via a flow chart’s worth of sub-licensing. To this day, people who were at Atari Games at the time insist the Russians knowingly double-dipped, but the facts don’t back that up. It turned out, the guy who started this whole sub-licensing tragedy, Robert Stein, only *thought* he had the world-wide rights to Tetris. Why did he think that? Well, it’s because he had the “computer” rights. And, because technically all video games are computers, that essentially means Stein had all the rights, right? From there, Stein licensed the rights to Tetris to Mirrorsoft, who then sub-licensed portions of the rights all over the world. Often, those sub-licensors then ALSO sub-licensed their sub-license. For example, the Sega arcade Tetris came about from them getting the license from Atari, who believed they owned the worldwide arcade rights. The thing is, all Stein really had, in the most generous interpretation of it, is a letter of intent and not a contract like you or I would recognize as a standard contract. What he had, issued from Soviet Russia, would never have been considered legally binding in a million years. Whether or not Stein knew that isn’t entirely clear. Through all of this, the Russians had no idea about any sub-licensing or that Tetris was a hit, and possibly didn’t even realize that their royalties on Tetris were downright lousy. They needed more practice at capitalism. They were about to get it.
Stein comes across as a buffoon in the film, and even a villain if you just read the plain text of the story of Tetris. Like some kind of greedy miser who did nothing but sub-lease a game like a digital slumlord or something. From everything I’ve heard, nothing could be further from the truth. One of the best privileges I’ve had at Indie Gamer Chick is I’ve gotten to befriend a LOT of gaming legends, a few of whom crossed paths with Stein over the years, and they all really liked him. My friends who met him all said Robert Stein was a good man. And he did find Tetris.. for all of us. So, I’d like to ask everyone reading to take a moment and lift a glass to Robert Stein, who passed away in 2018. 🍺 Cheers to Robert Stein! Thank you for bringing Tetris to the world! 🍻
And then, Henk Rogers showed up in Russia to personally negotiate and secure the HANDHELD rights to Tetris for his partnership with Nintendo. See, Rogers had already been burned by Tetris, believing he had secured the arcade rights in Japan from Atari via Mirrorsoft via Stein (you really need a flow chart). But then Sega came in and, going over Atari’s head, undercut him with a bid to Mirrorsoft for Japanese arcade rights. Rogers had already started development of the arcade game, but it was dead. All he had was PC and console rights in Japan. Rogers wanted to ensure that couldn’t happen with Game Boy Tetris, so he would get the rights directly from the Soviets. By the way, you absolutely could NOT just go to Russia at the time to talk shop. You needed diplomatic permission and lots of other paperwork that he didn’t have. He knew he could have been arrested straight out of the airport and detained without trial, maybe even get accused of being a spy, but he went anyway. When Rogers dies, they’re going to need a forklift to stand-in as a pallbearer due to the weight of his massive balls. Once there, Rogers brought to the Soviets’ attention the existence of consoles and the differences between them and home computers.
YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD OF A GAME! Seriously, how did it take Tetris so long for anyone to invent 7-bag?
This is where the story gets so insane that they made a movie about it: unknown to Rogers, Stein showed up the same day Rogers did in Russia, hoping to have the Russians clarify the terms of his contract, unaware Rogers was just a few rooms over. With help from Rogers, the Russians drew up a new contract on the fly that unambiguously defined the differences between computer, console, and arcade games, and then pressured Stein to sign it. They also changed a few of the numbers around, which is all Stein really focused on. He was pissed, but he needed this signed, sealed, and delivered. Everything depended on it, because he had already sub-licensed Tetris so many times, so he signed it. What Stein didn’t catch was the new definitions of what a computer game was, so when he signed the papers, he didn’t realize he’d essentially admitted the only rights he’d ever held were PC rights. With the stroke of his own pen, Stein invalidated nearly every sub-license he AND Mirrorsoft had ever sold. AND THEN, a third guy, Kevin Maxwell of Mirrorsoft, the #1 sub-licensor of Tetris, showed up AT THE SAME TIME, again without the other two being aware of it. He was trying to secure the handheld Tetris rights from Stein with the intent to then sub-license that sub-license to Atari for the Lynx. The Maxwells recognized Stein’s contract wasn’t legally binding, and Stein was already delinquent with the Russians on royalty payments because the Maxwells were broke and not making payments to him. Kevin Maxwell was there to grease the skids with the Soviets to make sure everything became official. Mirrorsoft was offering the Soviets $1,000,000 Maxwell didn’t have as their company was insolvent at the time and soon to be charged with massive fraud. The movie implies that the Soviets would understand the money would never come to them because capitalism = evil and it was really a trade of Tetris for the Russian publishing rights to Collier’s Encyclopedias. I mean, JESUS CHRIST, what a clusterf*ck!
How Tengen Tetris handles scoring is weird. You don’t get any consequential points during live gameplay for lines. But, in thirty-line intervals, you get a wrap-up bonus, then return to the stack you had. The problem is, as you level-up, the values for things like Tetrises don’t increase. It’s better than the old computer scoring systems, but not THAT much better.
When the Russians showed Maxwell a copy of Bullet-Proof Software’s Tetris for Famicom, he told them he didn’t authorize it or know about it and “it must be a bootleg!” With just that statement, Maxwell inadvertently proved to the Russians (1) that Mirrorsoft considered consoles separate from computers (2) that they had no clue what rights they or anyone else held to Tetris (3) had been offering licenses they never had in the first place (4) had very little product knowledge of the worldwide Tetris market and (5) were actively undercutting other good faith licensees, which even the Russians could grasp was bad for business. Because Henk Rogers brought this whole situation to Soviets’ attention and presented himself as an honest guy who genuinely knew and cared about the game, the Russians shocked him by offering him a chance to bid for the worldwide VIDEO GAME rights to Tetris, which he secured with an assist from Nintendo. And that was the end of the story. Oh, wait a second..
Uh oh.
Atari Games thought they already had the video game rights via Mirrorsoft via Stein, and had already essentially finished their own NES Tetris to be published under their Tengen label. Nintendo and Atari Games were already in court over Atari’s unauthorized NES carts when they had to go to court over Tetris as well. Nintendo wanted Atari to stop making their version, since they had the rights. One thing not mentioned in Tetris Forever is that Nintendo’s licensing agreement, straight from the Russians themselves, was so irrefutable that the judge took one look at the contract and immediately cancelled the entire trial, declaring Nintendo the sole owners of the Tetris license. Tengen Tetris had to be recalled, making it a cherished collectable today. The shame is, a lot of people considered Tengen’s build of Tetris to be superior to Nintendo’s.
I’m not among those people. In fact, I think this is one of the weaker console Tetris games. While it has a few bells and whistles, like telling you how many of each block you’ve gotten, there’s no 7-bag algorithm to keep it balanced. I was constantly getting clusters of the same blocks. It’s also one of the uglier games of Tetris. Just very bland on the presentation thanks to the limits of the NES forcing the stack to turn gray instead of the blocks remaining colorful after being locked, like in the coin-op. Worst of all, while this Tetris might offer more flexibility with its modes, the lack of progressive scoring hurts greatly in my opinion. A Tetris is worth 2,500 points whether the speed is at 1 or 9, and that just isn’t interesting for me. Neither is the versus mode. It’s really just two players doing their own games side-by-side, each interrupting the other whenever they reach the thirty line break period.
Now THIS got my attention.
Cooperative mode is the real treasure of Tengen Tetris. Both players control their own block as they place them in an extra-wide well. Actually, it’s 12 segments wide instead of 11, so one segment wider. I’m not sure if that counts as “extra wide” but it’s nice. You can play with the computer, but the AI is absolutely moronic, only going for singles and constantly getting in the way. But, with a second player? It’s an interesting experience to say the least, especially if you’re both game. If you don’t have a second player, I think Tengen Tetris is massively overrated. It comes with the pedigree of being made by the guy who made Asteroids and Centipede, but this is a very boring version of Tetris. Boring scoring. Boring presentation. It also takes FOREVER to get going. In my first game, I scored the most tedious 371 lines I’ve ever had in a game of Tetris. I genuinely can’t believe a lot of people consider this superior to Nintendo’s. I think people want to cheer for it, myself included, because of the story behind it. Everyone loves a plucky underdog, but gun to my head, I’d rather have the Nintendo version. Cooperative is the only aspect worth a look, but in fairness, it is worth a look so.. Verdict: YES!
Tetris Platform: Game Boy Released June 14, 1989 Designed by Masao Yamamoto Developed by Nintendo Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)
7 Tetrises is enough for you. Die now.
It’s the most famous version of Tetris. It’s one of the most famous video games EVER. It’s likely the most played version of Tetris ever made. It’s Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov’s favorite version of his own game. It’s also the last game in this feature that’s older than me, by only 27 days. For many people, THIS is Tetris. And it’s one of the most frustrating versions to review, based on that towering history. Is it good? Sure. If this had been Tengen Tetris, with its ultra-bland presentation, nah. We wouldn’t be here today, talking about Tetris as one of the all-time greats. I’d be reviewing Tetris for the Game Gear or Lynx, saying it’s fine but nothing special. Nintendo was really the first studio to bring out the best in Tetris. That said “yea, blocks can have personality!” That it’s not just the Russian angle, but the kinetic energy of Tetris that makes it work. With that said, this certainly isn’t a perfect game of Tetris.
My best game, and note that I started this one on Level 9. The T block on the bottom right side was the end. My highest total of lines was 212. It’s worth noting that the world record is 441. HOW?!
I tried to play as many games of as many versions of Tetris as humanly possible for this feature, and the Game Boy Tetris was one of the absolute worst for simply not giving enough Tetris Makers. There are versions of Tetris where I walked away convinced that the game was rigged, and GB Tetris was worse about distribution than they were. I don’t think it’s rigged, though, because when I used rewind, I noticed that it gave the same blocks. It just doesn’t evenly distribute the blocks. Regardless of the game, Tetris Makers are just distributed less. This combines with some of the hardest left-right movement in the franchise. In my best game, I was very happy to keep the stack low, and after a certain point, I just couldn’t get the blocks down into the right wall, even if the stack was nearly empty. I got good enough that, with conservative play, I could reach 200 lines or close enough every time. 202. 208. 205. But, I never got more than 212. I don’t remember the left side ever giving me problems, but my trick of flipping the block to get it to the right side of the board stopped working, and as soon as I got an assortment of blocks that I would need to eat more than a couple gaps, the game was over.
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The first time I played the B-Mode on level 9-5, I thought “there’s no way I’m going to finish this.” I even wrote a note that I’d have a section in the review discussing it. But then I got both a favorable arrangement of garbage blocks AND the right assortment of blocks. Happened quickly too, on only my third game. But, make no mistake: I did get lucky. I’m convinced that 9-5 can spit out arrangements that are unbeatable. You just can’t move left/right fast enough. Really, that’s the Tetris Game Boy experience in a nutshell: you’re going to need luck. It brings all the best traits and worst traits for those early Tetris games. It has personality, with charming graphics and music, along with satisfying effects for line clears (my father says that the Tetris noise “sounds like an elephant stepping on a nail”). It’s also one of the few Tetris games in this feature that routinely saw me die at under 50 lines. I was convinced I’d never be that bad at Tetris again. If you only like the modern version of Tetris, you’ll probably hate this game. The blocks lock faster than any other version I’ve seen. It’s the cruelest of all those early versions. That’s why I think fans of modern Tetris should lift a glass to Game Boy Tetris. I have no doubt it inspired the modern game through the sheer volume of people whining about the same things I just did. That has to count for something! Verdict: YES!
Flash Point Platform: Arcade – Sega System 16 Released July 28, 1989 Developed by Esco Boueki Distributed by Sega NO MODERN RELEASE*
*Included in Sega Ages 2500 Vol. 28 for the PlayStation 2 exclusively in Japan
I was excited to play Flash Point in multiplayer, but it’s actually not head-to-head multiplayer. It’s just two separate games played side-by-side. Smart, I guess. It means one machine can accommodate two separate single players at the same time, though I imagine that was crowded. With that said, I gave my father a five minute head start and said I’d race him to level 10. I forgot how damn hard level 9 is.
You know what’s neat? This has a 1 in 31 chance of having been released on the day I was born. So much for that. Missed my birthday by 17 days. Anyway. I didn’t enjoy Sega’s legendary Tetris arcade game, but this spin-off that uses the same engine? I enjoyed it well enough, warts and all. Flash Point (and its sibling Bloxeed) is certainly one of the most underrated games in the Tetris “franchise” for lack of a better term. It shares a lot of DNA with Nintendo’s Tetris 2, aka Tetris Flash (review coming up), but with smarter patterns and the standard roster of seven blocks. Each level has a starting stack with two “flash points” and the object is to knock them out as fast as possible via traditional Tetris mechanics. I’m pretty sure that each level gives you the same blocks in the same order every time, as even when I died, the next virtual quarter I inserted led to the same blocks being spit out in the same order. That’s fine with me. This is a Tetris game where the emphasis is on puzzles. It’s also got a lot more personality than many early Tetris games, featuring cameos from Alex Kidd, Opa-Opa (the ship from Fantasy Zone), Flicky, and Ninja Princess. Hey, this might be the best game Alex Kidd was ever in.
I had played this stage for over four-and-a-half minutes before winning. I literally cheered when I finally got it. The next level I beat in 24 seconds. Flash Point’s difficulty curve is all over the place.
What I wasn’t fine with is Flash Point’s tendency to spit out strings of similar blocks. It’s one of the most prone to “block parades” in Tetris history. Since each level has blocks that come out in specific orders, I have to imagine it’s intentional. With that said, the biggest issue is probably the up-and-down nature of the difficulty. Granted, I didn’t always make the best decisions, but some levels took me quite a bit of work to dig myself enough space to create a line that could clear the flash points. It was uncanny how I could spend four minutes on one level and beat the next stage in a few seconds. But, it was always exhilarating either way. I have one more game in the trilogy of Sega Tetris games to go in this feature, but seriously, Flash Point is good enough that I want to appeal to my friends at Atari and Sega: call each-other, sit down, and figure this sh*t out, because Flash Point (and Sega’s contributions to the legend of Tetris in general) deserves to be celebrated. If it takes doing a $9.99 or even $14.99 DLC set that only has the three arcade games and the unreleased Genesis game, plus a couple Sega-based interviews, I think it’s worth it. Please, figure it out. Verdict: YES!
BlockOut Platform: Arcade Released October, 1989 Designed by Aleksander Ustaszewski & Mirosław Zabłocki Developed by California Dreams Distributed by American Technos Included in Technos Arcade 1 for Evercade
Man, the surprises keep coming with this feature. I would totally recommend anyone who’s skeptical that a Tetris/falling block marathon like I’m doing wouldn’t get old fast, try it for yourself! You’ll be stunned at how rewarding it is to feel the incremental evolution of not just Tetris, but all the games based around it. This is my favorite feature EVER in the history of Indie Gamer Chick. I’m just so happy I don’t know what to do with myself! There’s a reason why I kept adding games. It ain’t for you guys. It’s for me! I’m having the best time and I can’t believe it! LOOK AT ALL THE YES! VERDICTS IN THIS FEATURE! I’ve died and gone to gaming heaven.
At the beginning of this project, I was completely certain that no 3D Tetris would score a YES! And I’m not counting Tetrisphere as a 3D Tetris game. I mean this, Welltris, the Virtual Boy game, etc. Hey, I keep an open mind and give every game a clean slate, but my prior experiences with any attempts at 3D Tetris games was a total disaster of unintuitive controls and incomprehensible wire-frames. Well, here’s the first of its breed, beating even the first official 3D Tetris, Welltris, to the market. Barely, but barely counts. As both a high concept puzzler AND an early attempt at 3D gaming, I did not, would not, and could not believe that this could possibly hold up. And I was wrong, wrong, WRONG! BlockOut is fantastic, even with some of the more common problems of 3D falling block games. It’s hard to adjust to the controls. Even after a few hours, I *still* didn’t have an intuitive feel for the rotation, which is why I struggled on harder stages. The wire-frame problem also happens, and when BlockOut starts dishing-out twisty-turny blocks that poke in different directions in multiple dimensions, that’s when I really struggled. Tetris might be the perfect game, but BlockOut surely isn’t.
This is one of the twisty-turny blocks I’m talking about. I really think that if they had stuck to primary shapes and just increased the speed, BlockOut might be remembered as one of the all-time greats today.
Now, with that said, BlockOut is a very good video game. I think the secret sauce is in the wide variety of wells. Instead of one standardized playfield, there’s a huge variety of wells of different sizes and shapes, so any strategy you have doesn’t apply across the board. Despite being an arcade game, it doesn’t go for the throat immediately, like most of the coin-ops in this feature do. I wonder if this was unpopular among arcade operators, who tended not to like long plays, and I can’t imagine someone lasting under fifteen minutes once they get, at minimum, a feel for the controls. Hell, if the game becomes more instinctive for them than it does me, I could imagine a player lasting quite a while on a single quarter. Makes for a good game, but maybe not a good business model.
That’s nightmare fuel. My sister called it “The Lawnmower Man starring John Malkovich.”
BlockOut does bite off more than it can chew in later stages. A problem in general is that it’s hard to know where you’ve left gaps or not. Some kind of stain on the top block of a column to alert you of a gap would help. The limitations of the graphics are BlockOut’s weakness in general. They just aren’t detailed enough to pull off some of the more advanced shapes. The wire-frames are made of a single, solid color with no shading. A sense of depth only really happens via rotating, and it works fine when the blocks all have flat sides to them. When you remove those flat sides from the equation, it’s the death knell for BlockOut’s appeal. By the time those blocks are introduced to the game, the blocks are also dropping pretty dang fast, so rotating doesn’t help all that much. The best way to describe BlockOut’s place in history is “astonishing for its time, and tragically ahead of its time” Shading, almost by itself, would have fixed every problem with BlockOut, but the tech wasn’t there yet. It’s nothing short of miraculous that, for all its problems, it still manages to outclass many of the early 3D Tetris games that followed in its wake. Verdict: YES!
Tetris Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released December, 1989 Developed by Nintendo Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)
I was happy to make it to 150 lines and astonished that I still got a Tetris. It would be my last one, as I was dead not long after this screen was taken. Looking at this screen, I realize I had remarkable luck with block balance.
The long game of NES Tetris is one of the shorter ones if you’re not using a classic NES controller and capable of doing one of the advanced controller methods, like “speed-tapping” or more recently “rolling” which is like using the controller as a reverse drum. See, Tetris on the NES is notorious for its slow left and right movement speed on the higher levels. Even a non-hardcore Tetris-head like me could literally feel the difference while playing it. I made it to 100 several times, but I didn’t get to 150 until I played very conservatively. Then I got bored with that and went back to trying to make Tetrises. Got one, but then I screwed up a single brick, and I did it in a way where I couldn’t possibly hope to get a brick over the right of it. The drop was faster than the horizontal movement speed, which was fine if I kept the stack low enough. This was no longer “low enough” and that was all she wrote. So, this is a tough cookie, especially compared to the wimpy Tengen version. I spent the better part of a day trying to get 25 lines in the notorious B-Mode’s level 9, height 5, and the biggest problem was simply getting the blocks against the walls when I needed it.
And this is why Nintendo would never in a million years let their version be on Tetris Forever. Though the Bowser, Link, and Donkey Kong in this look, well.. we’ll say “off-model.”
For a Tetris with no 7-bag, no wall kicks, and near instant brick locking, I’m surprised this is one of the most revered among Tetris fans. By the way, there IS a bag, but the bag has 224 pieces, an even mix of the seven blocks except for one less Tetris Maker. For the purposes of strategy, it’s like having no bag at all. I think it’s the stellar presentation combined with the necessity for unorthodox controller skills that makes this an elite game of Tetris for some. It’s probably the single most studied version of Tetris ever made. These days, it’s probably more famous for how the game begins to break on higher levels in ways the developers never intended, like turning the color contrast of the blocks down to being nearly invisible. This is one charming game of Tetris. But, I don’t think it’s the best 8-bit console game of Tetris out there. Hell, I think the Famicom sequel Tetris 2 + BomBliss is better. Not by much, and it’s certainly not as captivating, but it does ultimately play better, I think. It doesn’t matter much to me, because this isn’t my style of Tetris. But, even I admit this version oozes with charm, has one of the best Tetris themes on the planet (it’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy!) and cameos by Nintendo stars for clearing the B levels on level 9. Everything is polished here except the gameplay, but at least it’s endearing for it. Verdict: YES!
BlockOut Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Nearly Complete (?) Prototype Targeted for release in Winter, 1990 Developed by Technos BlockOut at Lost Levels NEVER BEEN RELEASED
Well, it wouldn’t be a Definitive Review without at least one unreleased completed prototype.
A few years back, someone shopping at a Goodwill found this never released prototype of the surprise arcade gem BlockOut. Wow! It was actually the second known prototype of BlockOut for the NES, but the first one was not complete. This one appears to be. The Goodwill buyer sold this to a game collector for a cool $2,000, and that guy, Steve Lin, immediately dumped this ROM, preserving it forever. Class act, right there. Thank you, Mr. Lin! Unfortunately, it’s clear why BlockOut was never released. This is a case of an arcade game with a technology weakness suffering further technological downgrades in the journey home. The coin-op also had three face buttons to control rotation and a fourth button (located on top of the joystick itself) to activate a hard drop. For whatever reason, the designers opted not to utilize select for the third rotational axis. Too much is sacrificed, and it’s actually remarkable how much quality game is left intact. Shocking, really.
Underutilized buttons is one of the worst gaming problems of the 90s. I constantly encounter games that have multiple actions mapped to two buttons on even the Genesis and SNES, leaving one or more buttons completely unused. Not even START or SELECT. Face buttons! I know so many developers from that era and I’ve still never met anyone who can explain how this kept happening in a rational way. Developers of the era (or at least their bosses) seem to assume that gamers were idiots. Like they think their players would have panic attacks if they had to use more than two face buttons. “Studies show even monkeys can use three buttons, even without opposable thumbs!” “Yea? Well give them $50 and see if they spend it on Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball.” “We already tried that, and they bought Super Metroid instead.” “I rest my case!”
BlockOut on the NES doesn’t scale remotely close to the coin-op, where the object is to get X amount of “faces” (completed floors). The game has two modes, each with three sets of maps and three block sets that the player chooses. Mode A is your typical marathon mode, while the object of Mode B is to have an all-clear, however long it takes. The A mode is fatally flawed thanks to the lack of buttons. It just takes too long to rotate the blocks using only two buttons, and once the stack gets to a certain height, that becomes impossible. Like in the arcade game, the blocks “clank” against the stack, and blocks that could be inserted into a gap in two rotations or less in the coin-op take a LOT of work on the NES. Why didn’t they just use select? Sigh.
The B-Mode works better.
It’s not a total wash, because I think the B-Mode is a little stronger. Trying to score an all-clear in this format is tougher than it sounds. Although I had a tiny bit of fun, I have to concede that it often comes down to luck of getting the right blocks when you need them. The best thing I can say about BlockOut in general is it’s easier to work with blocks you don’t need in a 3D space. There’s more room to stack and strategize to get rid of those blocks later. Honestly, I thought the two button set-up, even though it was slower, worked well to start. Strong enough that I thought “maybe they should have released this!” But as the game sped up, it became clear that this just wasn’t going to work. Good try.. really good try, actually. But cancelling BlockOut on the NES was the right call. Verdict: NO!
Nintendo World Championships 1990 aka “NWC 1990” Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released in 1990 Developed by Nintendo NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
COME ON YOU F*CKER!
Got five-to-six figures in cash lying around to spare? The Nintendo World Championship cartridges are the holy grail of game collectors. Personally, for six figures I’d rather buy ten brand new Stern pinball tables, but to each their own. I think when the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition launched earlier this year, based on the name, most people were hoping for something more like this than NES Remix with all the non-speed running stuff removed. The Nintendo World Championships was part of a traveling Nintendo-themed convention, and for extra money you could try your luck to become the World Champion of Nintendo. I’m friends with the guy who won it, who has the greatest name of any of my friends: Thor Aackerlund. You hear that name and you feel like you can punch through a safe. Which is funny because Thor’s a sweetheart. As for the game, what can I say? You have to speed run through three games, one of which is so random that I honestly can’t believe it’s part of this.
I finished Super Mario 1 on this screen almost every time, unless I screwed-up earlier in the run. I was pretty much hosed when that happened and reset the game.
First, you have to collect fifty coins in Super Mario Bros. After this, you jump to Rad Racer, which.. huh? It’s not exactly a game that makes you think “iconic Nintendo game.” It’s not even developed by Nintendo. It’s a Square game that was only published by Nintendo in North America. Square handled it themselves in Japan, where the game is known as Highway Star. After you complete the first course, you jump to Tetris, which is where all the points are really scored due to the imbalanced scoring rules. Your Mario scores are whatever you get. Rad Racer’s scores are multiplied by 5, while Tetris’ score is multiplied by a whopping 25. The carts had arcade-like dip switches that set the timers, with the standard challenge being 6 minutes, 21 seconds. I don’t know how they came to that number. I thought maybe 21 seconds burned up from the buffer-screens, but they’re a lot longer than 21 seconds combined. Also, I found out I initially didn’t have the correct 6:21 timer. It was five minutes and a couple seconds, which hey, my 500K game feels a lot better now. Regardless of which setting you use, the sheer amount of downtime is beyond annoying. It eats up roughly a minute by itself. Here’s the complete list of unskippable down time.
The “GET READY” followed by the “PLAY SUPER MARIO” screens that start it.
The title screen of Super Mario Bros.
The “Level 1 – 1” title card.
The level wrap-up and point accumulation when you get the flag in Super Mario Bros., including fireworks if you touch the flagpole at the right time (in this case, at the wrong time).
The Level 1-2 title card.
Entering the pipe to actually get back to gameplay in level 1-2.
Playing the “Mario Victory Theme” when you reach 50 coins.
A screen saying “GOOD JOB!” with your score.
A screen that says “PLAY RAD RACER! COMPLETE THE COURSE!”
Rad Racer’s title screen.
Rad Racer’s course map.
The red light/green light countdown before you can actually start racing in Rad Racer.
The car slowly brakes and runs off all its momentum when you finish the course in Rad Racer.
A screen saying “GREAT RACING” with your score for Rad Racer.
A screen that says “PLAY TETRIS! (Type A) GET HIGH SCORE!”
Tetris’ title screen.
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That’s a hell of a lot of downtime. SIXTEEN separate stoppages that a player will encounter, and that’s not even factoring in how screwed you are if you lose a life playing Mario or crash the car in Rad Racer. I crashed so badly once in Rad Racer where it took about ten seconds for the car to finish tumbling, roll back over, then slowly move to the middle of the road. So agonizing. But, the biggest problem by far is how unoptimized NWC is. The first two segments are essentially a race, and then with all the time you have left, you have to score as much as you can on Tetris. Why not be more optimized? Have the game logos in the transition screens instead of showing them separately?
This was my best game. Not bad for five minutes instead of the standard 6:21.
I have two big issues. The first is that I found the version of Tetris on this specific build to not be as smooth as the normal Nintendo NES build. I thought something had gone wrong with my controller and swapped it a few times. I changed emulators. The problem was there every time: it was like there were invisible brakes being applied to the blocks. I have no clue what that’s about. A much bigger issue is that you’d think they’d rig it so everyone gets the same blocks, but it seems to change from game to game. I experimented with this, and I noticed the blocks came out the same every time as long as I rewound up to the Rad Racer-to-Tetris transition screens, but if I went to Rad Racer, the blocks would change. There’s no 7-bag, and during a few sessions, I simply didn’t get a favorable arrangement of blocks. There’s only once where I got hosed on Tetris Makers, but still, imagine paying money to compete in a world championship only to get hosed by the algorithm. Out of thousands upon thousands of participants, at least a few of them must have had bad luck. God, I can’t believe people pay six figures for this thing. Verdict: NO!
Pyramid aka Pyramid II* Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Both versions released in 1990 Designed by Ma Li-Cheang Developed by Sachen Pyramid Published by American Video Entertainment Inc. Pyramid II released only Asia NO MODERN RELEASE
*I’m not playing the adult-oriented “hacked” version. I still have SOME dignity.
Oh how I hated these C-shaped blocks. BUT, once I figured out how to build for them, it wasn’t THAT bad. Some dude on GameFAQs did an extensive mathematical theory based on this game, and it’s worth a read even if you’re not a math geek.
Pop quiz: which developer was the single most prolific maker of NES games during the natural lifetime of the Family Computer/Nintendo Entertainment System? Nintendo? Capcom? Konami? Well, obviously you can guess the answer based on why I’m asking it here. It’s Sachen, a company located in Taiwan that produced games at a high rate and sent them out into the market, often unfinished. While some games made it to the US, they were mostly either sold in flea markets or through non-traditional means, but others were published by companies who refused to cooperate with Nintendo. American Video Entertainment Inc. was one such company, and while Pyramid is not among their most famous games, it’s certainly the most interesting to me. This is a very original take on the Tetris concept, where all the blocks are, in some way, triangular. You’re still trying to make lines, but it’s significantly more complicated thanks to the wide variety of sizes and potential angles you can rotate each block.
This is Pyramid II, which I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the multiplayer for. The game doesn’t end when the other player tops out. It’s just a game two people can play, independent of each-other, on the same TV at the same time. It’s the same gameplay, but with more options and a couple more power-ups. Most importantly, it also seems to spit-out a lot less of the C-shaped blocks that annoyed the hell out of me.
I can’t give Pyramid a YES! because it’s such a sloppy mess. One of the most inelegant falling block games I’ve seen when it comes to how compatible the blocks are with one another. And yet, there’s something oddly satisfying when you do manage to fit the pieces together. You know how it feels when you carve out the perfect gap for an L-block in the stack on Tetris, and then you actually get the L-block? It’s SO SATISFYING! Well, Pyramid is full of moments like that. Seriously! Maybe it’s because, with all the different sizes and angles, actually finding the perfect spot for any given brick feels like a big moment. But, it takes quite a while to build up the lines (which are just normal Tetris-like lines even with the triangles). You do get a few missiles that can be used to break the stack if you leave a gap, which get refilled if you score the max amount of line clears possible with a single brick: two. In an hour of gameplay, I only pulled it off once, but thankfully the game starts you with five missiles. Once I figured out when to use them and when not to, I wasn’t bored with Pyramid. Don’t mistake that for liking it. It completely lacks excitement. Still, I think this game gets a bad rap, as most people talk about it like it’s one of the worst “Tetris Clones” (I hate that term) but I’ve played a lot worse. Clearly there’s SOMETHING here. Had this been a modern indie game, I would have begged the developers to keep working on it, because I think there’s not just a good game buried in this tomb, but maybe even a GREAT game. Shame that we’ll never know. Verdict: NO!
Tetris Platform: Nintendo Game Watch Released in 1990 Developed by Nelsonic Industries Published in Partnership with Nintendo Available to play at RetroFab
One of two Tetrises I got over the course of thirty minutes.
I’ve already reviewed one LCD Tetris, and a recreation of a never-released Game & Watch Tetris at that. Had that been released, a Tetris game with a clown theme would have been the final Game & Watch release, but Nintendo cancelled it. My hunch tells me it was because it was no good, with too short of a well. See Game & Watch: The Definitive Review for that review. This is the Nintendo-branded LCD Tetris that actually made it to shelves, and instead of having a wide but short well, this time it’s a tall well that’s narrow. In fact, you have to press a button in this wearable game of Tetris to see the top of the well. But, it’s a little more complicated than that. Even though the well is two screens tall, if you top-out on the bottom screen, you still game over, but it’s easy enough to swap screens.
Sigh.
Not that it matters. A six-segment-wide well is a very unplayable game of Tetris. The seven pieces work great, assuming you have 10 or 11 spaces to arrange them. Six spaces just isn’t enough. No 7-bag either, so runs of three or four Z blocks or square blocks are particularly destructive in such a narrow well. When I first booted this up, I thought “okay, well, I guess it’s kind of cool that kids could play Tetris on their wrists” but it became clear really quick this is one of the worst games of Tetris ever. It makes me appreciate the value of well width. Verdict: NO!
Pipe Dream Platform: Arcade Released in 1990 Directed by Jun-ichi Niwa Developed by Video System Distributed by LucasFilm Games NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
I wish I could lay pipe faster, because the game climaxes too quickly for my tastes.
I liked the coin-op Pipe Dream more than I thought I would. Whether it’s called Pipe Dream or Pipe Mania, I’ve not enjoyed my previous (albeit limited) experience with the series. I’m wondering now if I even realized you could throw a block on top of another block, destroying it. It eats up time to do it, but you don’t have to perfectly place every block you get. For the unwashed masses, Pipe Dream’s object is to connect a starting pipe to a finishing pipe. The catch is that there’s a minimum number of pipes, but in this arcade version, it’s called NORM here instead of MINIMUM. At first, I was confused about that and was really proud of myself when I finished the level more efficiently than normal. Nope, I died. You must use the minimum number of blocks, and that usually means using the cross-shaped sections that allow you to double back and zig-zag around the playfield. You get bonus points for every cross-shaped piece that is fully used vertically and horizontally, and then get penalized for any blocks you place on the playfield that aren’t part of the network of pipes the sludge passes through.
I literally cheered when I finally beat this one. Sadly, the game kept going.
Pipe Dream isn’t a falling block game, but it has the same problem those have: you’re completely at the mercy of the random assortment of blocks you get. Nearly every time I died, I had constructed an elaborate arrangement of pipes, but it never fed me a piece that I could connect to the finishing piece, or anything that could have eventually led to that piece even in a roundabout type of way. There’s nothing to rig the drawing to assure an equal mixture of pipes that go up, down, or sideways. I was stunned at how far back I could rewind and see how many elbows I would get that pointed down or sideways pipes, but nothing that pointed upward.
I’ve been playing video games daily since I was 7 to 9 years old, and Pipe Dreams exposes my weaknesses as a gamer just about worse than any other game.
That type of thing sucks in Tetris, but it’s ruinous in Pipe Dream. The late game is especially broken once it introduces one-way pipes, which is where the upward block drought I was given happened. This adds more blocks to an already bloated block roster. Before the one-way pipes, I think Pipe Dream wasn’t half-bad. I also fully concede that Pipe Dream is a game that doesn’t play to my strengths. I have a poor visual imagination, and Pipe Dream is a game where your ability to imagine something before it’s there is an absolute requirement. My father is a big fan and he told me that this plays better with a mouse. Noted. This was a tough call for me to make. I think a similar algorithm to 7-bag would make Pipe Dream not just a good game, but a great one. Verdict: NO!
Bloxeed Platform: Arcade – Sega System 18, Sega System E Released January, 1990 Designed by Esco Boueki (?) Distributed by Sega NO MODERN RE-RELEASE*
*Included in Sega Ages 2500 Vol. 28 for the PlayStation 2 exclusively in Japan
Unlike Flash Point, the final game in the Segatris Trilogy features competitive head-to-head play. Sadly, as a coin-op, there’s no handicap to even the odds between two players of varying skill. Also worth noting is, unlike Sega’s Tetris, the different arcade models don’t make any game play difference. Or at least that I noticed.
Man, did Sega stretch their Tetris license to the absolute breaking point. Realistically, both Flash Point and Bloxeed would be separate modes in a normal game. This is Tetris meets Arkanoid, with a very heavy emphasis on power-ups to complement the standard seven block roster, and I’m there for it. This is also one of the better head-to-head Tetris games. Not only do you send garbage blocks to the other side, but scoring a Tetris costs the other player whatever their current dropping block is. Unlike Tetris Battle Gaiden, this doesn’t slow the pace to a crawl, but enhances it. Instead of a staring contest, it creates multiple moments that feel like a race. That’s in addition to the power-ups, which can wildly swing momentum in games, but never in a way that feels overpowered, like Battle Gaiden. The power-ups are assigned frequently within the blocks themselves, and come out in regular intervals regardless of what you do.
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The sheer variety of power-ups surprised me, and they add so much excitement to Tetris’ mid-late game. The weakest is the bomb, which is still effective for digging to a gap that’s nearly the top of the stack. There’s a satellite that slowly falls towards the stack, but you can move it back and forth and shoot away any individual segments you want until it crashes. The opposite is a Flicky, star of the 1984 Sega coin-op, that behaves like the satellite, only it drops individual segments of blocks instead of shooting them. A sixteen ton anvil clears a three-column wide section of the playfield, while the final power-up just clears four lines in the stack at random. Again, it’s a Arknoid-meets-Tetris, and that’s a team-up I’m down for. Even with the power-ups, this is still Sega Tetris, which speeds up quickly, then weirdly slows down. The blocks are still a little too heavy, too. I’m giving the slight edge to Flash Point as the best of the Sega Tetris games, but Bloxeed is right behind it, and it’s EASILY the best competitive Tetris in this entire feature so far. Verdict: YES!
Klax Platform: Arcade Released February, 1990 Designed by Dave Akers & Mark Stephen Pierce Developed by Atari Games NO MODERN RELEASE
My God!!
Klax doesn’t get a lot of love, historically speaking, and part of me gets that and part of me doesn’t. It’s one of the best looking games of this breed in this era. It’s gorgeous. It’s also certainly the most intense of the games that followed in Tetris’ wake. It’s a coin-op and it’s the first of the arcade games on this list that feels like it doesn’t pretend like it’s just a kind-hearted little puzzle game. The arcade Tetris’ and Sega’s Trilogy do become intense. Like I noticed that I could last about ten minutes or so regularly on Sega’s games before the drop becomes super fast. But Klax? It goes for the throat sooner than I expected. You know the “next block” window in Tetris? Klax feels like the first game built around the concept of the next block. You watch the blocks flip down a conveyor belt, and you can hold five pieces at a time. In theory you can match three to five pieces vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. In practice, each level has specific conditions that must be met in order to move on. Some levels might be creating five diagonal matches. Others might be “deal with 50 blocks, by whatever means necessary.” That was probably wise, because that was the only thing that kept me going after the gameplay steps on the gas.
The scoring is incredibly imbalanced. You only get 50 points for a vertical match, 1,000 (20x the value) for a horizontal match, and 5,000 for a diagonal match (100x the value). Ridiculous, especially considering that you’re lucky to even get a vertical match in later rounds. If anything, vertical is the hardest to do. I was ACCIDENTALLY getting diagonal matches all the time, but you basically cannot accidentally get a vertical match. Klax, in my opinion, has the worst scoring of any “major” game in this genre.
I’m much more interested in the home versions of Klax, because the coin-up becomes out of control far too quickly. The paddle you move back and forth can store five blocks, and you drop them in reverse order from when you caught them, IE the latest block you caught is the first that you will drop off the stack. You really have to plan out moves ahead of time, and your only defensive option is the ability to throw the top most block halfway up the chute, but that’s just delaying a problem. I found that if I leaned too heavily on tossing blocks back, I almost certainly died from it. The blocks come out in a way where you can pretty much always catch them, but that ain’t the case with throwing one back. In fact, on later levels where the whole chute is covered in pieces, it all but assures two blocks will reach the end of the chute at the same time, forcing you to drop one. However, throwing blocks back was a highly effective way of making your final move. Plus, there’s only five channels that can be stacked five high. It’s just not a big enough playfield, especially since the game scales-up the amount of blocks to unimaginable levels. Klax coin-op has unlimited continues, and part of me thinks that the draw is rigged if you die and reload a quarter, because I noticed that I almost never needed more than one second chance to beat any level, no matter how badly I screwed the pooch in the first attempt. I think maybe only twice I died a second time. But, by the end, I was beating levels one at a time. But, the question isn’t “how hard is Klax” but “how much fun did I have?”
You’re kinda at the mercy of the random draw, but in the case of Klax, since you have so many options to clear the blocks, it doesn’t feel as luck-based as, say, getting a drought of Tetris Makers does.
And you know what? As crappy as Klax’s scoring system is (and it’s an F – people, as bad as scoring in a video game gets), the objectives were good enough to keep me interested. Klax is one of the most unsung games of the early 90s. Yea, the words “Klax” almost always appear alongside Tetris, but this bears little resemblance to Tetris. I talk a lot about “shared DNA” of games, and taking the analogy further, Klax shares DNA with Tetris in the same way humans do with shrews. It’s there, but pretty far down the line. Klax’s closest gaming relatives are actually the type of spinning plate games more commonly found in LCDs. It’s not enough to stack the blocks correctly. That’s actually the easy part. The challenge is that you’re managing the stack on your paddle while also keeping your options open in the playfield’s stack WHILE you also watch the blocks making their way down the chute. Again, no game in this field is more intense, but breaking Klax into bite-sized chunks makes it work. The funny thing is, Klax wasn’t even part of Midway Arcade Origins. In fact, it’s only gotten one official release since 2003, which was as part of Lego Dimensions of all things. Assuming that Digital Eclipse gets the Midway license, I would love for their Gold Master of Midway (which includes Williams and Atari Games) to focus on wide-screen remakes of classic games. I want to play Klax with a bigger playfield. I think it would be transformative. Verdict: YES!
Klax Platform: Atari Lynx Released in 1990 Designed by Greg Omi Developed by the Atari Corporation NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
This is played exclusively in the Lynx’s vertical configuration. I think, at least.
Atari Lynx fans, I haven’t forgotten about you, even if I really have no reason to include Lynx Klax in this feature. It doesn’t give me anything to complain about! It’s one of the best games on the Atari Lynx, and if it isn’t the platform’s single best coin-op port, I’d be floored. Klax is one of the most popular Lynx games, and for a good reason. The Lynx version of Klax is a remarkably arcade-accurate port, right down to the voice samples. It seems to have the same levels, the same scaling issues, and even the same phenomena of me only needing a single replay to beat most stages. Also, like the coin-op, you get unlimited continues. For the time and the platform, this is really well done. It’s colorful, controls well, and it shows off the vertical angle of the screen perfectly. What I really want to ask is “what if they could have packed the Lynx with this instead of California Games?” Not that I think Klax is as strong as Tetris. It’s just not, but it would make a hell of a pack-in. Of course, Klax came out about a year after Lynx, but the safe bet for Atari would have still been to swap out California Games for this, or even do what Sega did with Sonic The Hedgehog to great success: offer a free mail-in copy to Lynx owners who bought the Lynx before Klax. This was their best bet, and they didn’t take the bet. Now, the Lynx had a LOT of problems besides a weak pack-in, but still, it makes you wonder “what if?” Verdict: YES!
Columns Platform: Arcade – Sega System C Released March, 1990 Based on a Concept by Jay Geertsen Designed by Takosuke Developed by Sega Included as bonus game with Sega Ages: Columns II ($7.99)
The cascades often felt like dumb luck.
Columns is Sega’s answer to Tetris, and it has its fans. When I was younger, I thought this formula was hella boring. Now that I’m decrepit, hey, it’s okay. Three-segment-tall blocks fall into the well and you can only change the order of the colors. There’s no rotation at all, which makes planning for moves tough. While matches can happen in any direction, including diagonally, there’s not a whole lot of flexibility to plan for complicated chain reactions. I’m not amazing at well puzzlers, but I can hold my own. With Columns, every big combo I got was unplanned. I basically tried to keep colors somewhat close to each-other and hope for the best. Whenever I attempted to make any kind of plan, it fell apart. Six colors is quite a lot, and since you’re completely at the mercy of the random drop, all the best moments in Columns happen incidentally. With that said, Columns is fine. When the big chains happen, planned or otherwise, it’s always a thrill. This is right on the border of being decent or bland, and sometimes that goes against a game. This time, I’m giving it the faintest hint of an edge. I’m curious to see where the franchise goes from here. There’s a LOT of Columns games. How much can they squeeze out of this formula? I guess I’m about to find out. Verdict: YES!
Hatris Platform: Arcade Released June, 1990 Developed by Video System Distributed by LucasArts NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Blue fire makes all the difference.
I have no clue why the arcade and PC Engine builds of Hatris were left out of Tetris Forever. Weirdly, this is yet another version of the game with a tiny but profound change. Well, actually it just combines two power-ups from existing versions: the Game Boy’s fireball along with the Famicom’s “shop” that clears an entire type of hat every X amount of matches. Unlike with Game Boy Hatris, you don’t need to do something amazing to earn a fireball. They just appear randomly in the mix. Sometimes it’s stingy with them, and other times you get a run of having a heavy mix of them. The fireballs burn every matching hat in a stack until it reaches a new type of hat. But, there’s also now a blue fireball which is very rare. In my best game, I only got three of them. Again, I think it appears randomly, and it will burn the entire stack. Or, at least the stack until it reaches a crown, which is fireproof. Every problem inherent to the Hatris formula is still lingering, though you do get points for doubles. On the other hand, even after messing around with the dip switch settings, I struggled greatly with separating the dropping hats. I never got a feel for moving an individual hat after stacking the first. Honestly, Hatris is never going to be a fantastic game by any stretch, but this version was okay. Verdict: YES!
Klax Platform: Atari 2600 Released June 4, 1990 Designed by Steve DeFrisco Published by Atari Never Released Outside of Europe NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Thank you, Atari 2600 for laying the foundation for one of the greatest passions in my life. Cheers!
Behold: history! Klax was the final game ever released for the Atari 2600 during the console’s “natural lifecycle.” Technically the 2600 wouldn’t be discontinued for another two years, but Klax was the last game developed and released, and hell, it never even made it out in America. That’s a damn shame, too. Some of the later arcade adaptations for the VCS are pretty painful. Double Dragon, Rampage, etc. That’s why I’m nothing short of astonished that Klax is a damn good effort. I’m flabbergasted, really. So very little concessions had to be made. This plays just like the arcade game, with the same waves in the same order as the arcade game. You can toss blocks back onto the chute. You have unlimited continues when you die, and hell, “easier after death” seems to be present too, assuming that’s even meant to be a thing and I’m not imagining it.
What a hell of a game to turn the lights out on one of the most important consoles of all time.
The only change is as positive a change as any game can get: the scoring is improved. 50 for a vertical match, 100 for a horizontal, and 500 for a diagonal. SO much more balanced, creating proper risk/reward metrics instead of the outlandishly unbalanced arcade scoring. Thus, if you’re anything like me and you put a lot of stock in scoring systems, then you’re looking at the best version of Klax, even with simplified graphics and sound (no voice samples). The graphics look exactly like I imagined they would in my head, BUT, I imagined that blocks would just poof out of existence instantly from a match. No, they blink out with different sound effects, depending on the type of match it is, just like in the arcade. What Steve DeFrisco achieved here belongs in game design school. I was literally wiping away tears thinking about how fitting an ending this was for the Atari 2600. A console that blew up based on quality, albeit stripped-down ports of coin-ops, and destroyed by poorly made ports of coin-ops, ended with one the most accurate and incredible ports on the entire console. It’s unfathomable that a game like Klax would be this good on this platform, but it is. The fact that it didn’t get a global release sours it somewhat, but Klax is the perfect series finale for THE Atari. Verdict: YES!
Knight Move Platform: Famicom Disk System Released June 5, 1990 Designed by Alexey Pajitnov Developed by JV Dialog Published by Nintendo Never Released Outside of Japan NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
“BOO!” indeed. I’m so frustrated right now I could spit nails.
If you’re curious which game I played the least in this feature, this is it. For all the wrong reasons. I’d never heard of Knight Move, a Famicom Disk exclusive by Alexey Pajitnov himself. When I was coming up with a pool of games for the bonus reviews, I thought “I have to include his non-Tetris games, and this one was published by Nintendo themselves!” But, it turns out this game is completely unplayable for me and probably anyone who is even a little photosensitive. That’s because this simple, otherwise charming high-concept puzzler is also possibly the single most strobe-heavy video game I’ve seen on the Famicom/NES, and that includes the Jetsons. I’m not exaggerating. If you play the game well, the flashing seen in this video (HUGE epilepsy warning) happens every.. single.. goddamned round.
That’s five uninterrupted seconds of an intense, violent strobe happening as often as every thirty or so seconds. This goes beyond epilepsy, because even people who don’t have seizures are at risk to get a headache or any number of side effects from this. The idea is, you’re a constantly hopping chess knight and you have to use the L-shaped movement of a knight to hop around a board until you land on a heart. If you land on a single tile on the floor three times, it breaks the tile and scores you points, but you die if you land on that space again in the same round. The knight has serious hang time, but its speed increases as you go along, and you have to aim the cursor to the right square. It seems like it’s going to be a really fun, quirky game. At first, I thought “oh my God! Now THIS is a hidden gem!” And then the strobes started, and they kept happening in increasingly faster intervals thanks to the game’s natural speed-up. I played this three or four minutes before my family yanked the controller away. My father played it for about ten and he complained about his eyes hurting. What were they thinking? Were they even thinking at all?
Whether you play the A-Mode or B-Mode, the insane strobing happens. It might happen a little less in the B mode, but it’s basically guaranteed that the strobes will happen every minute. Unreal.
Since breaking as many tiles as you can without dying is the object of the game and the only way to rack-up serious points (including combos for breaking two or more floor pieces in a row), you cannot avoid the strobe effects. It only takes breaking a single tile to trigger the end-of-round strobe effect. Rounds are short too, even in the B-Mode, so the strobing will repeat every few SECONDS, not minutes, and last a few seconds when it happens. The gameplay speeds up, but not the agonizingly slow and ultra-flashy round wrap-ups. Just, f*cking wow. I can’t believe Nintendo allowed this, even in 1990. I’ve never said this about any game, but in the case of Knight Move, I’m thrilled that it seems to have flopped in sales. It deserved it. Knight Move seems like the type of game I’d have a ton of fun with, and in case you can’t tell, I’m pretty angry that nobody put a stop to that insane strobe effect. Awesome job, developers. Just what everyone wants when they play simple, quirky little action puzzle games: a headache. And that’s at the very least. The best thing I can say about Knight Move is it reminded me how far we’ve come, because this sh*t wouldn’t fly today. Knight Move is beyond the f*cking pale and everyone involved in the production of it should be ashamed of themselves. Verdict: NO! and had this been in Tetris Forever unaltered, I would have been furious. Seriously, I’d love a remake of this that isn’t trying to kill me.
Klax Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released July, 1990 Designed by David O’Riva Developed by Tengen NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Wild how the Lynx version looks so much better than the NES one.
The NES version of Klax includes a game called “Blob Ball” for absolutely no reason. It’s a broken single player version of Pong, more or less. Not hidden or anything. It’s in the options menu. I’m not even sure why. Meanwhile, the version of Klax included is certainly one of the uglier versions of Klax I’ve played. I also found the timing of when to catch the blocks coming off the conveyor to be, for lack of a better term, off. I have no clue why I struggled in this specific version and not the coin-op or Lynx. Those had a learning curve, but I adjusted. I never got a feel for the NES drop. But, that one little niggling annoyance notwithstanding, this is still Klax. Klax is a good game. It was never a great game, but it’s enjoyable in spurts. What I find equal parts annoying and fascinating is that none of the home versions rebalanced the difficulty for the home game (except the 2600 build, go figure). It makes sense for the coin-op to become diamond-hard quickly. It’s trying to earn quarters. Why be so vicious with the home versions? A slower build-up would be preferable. Weirdly, you can disable difficulty ramping on the NES, but I think this takes it too far and nerfs the difficulty. Apparently, Klax is a hard game to balance. Verdict: YES!
Dr. Mario Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released July 27, 1990 Designed by Takahiro Harada Developed by Nintendo Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)
They make me jack up my handicap. They wouldn’t play against me otherwise. So unfair.
Dr. Mario is one of the greatest concepts of all time. Match four segments of the same color, be it a pill or a virus, to score a clearing. There’s three color pills that match three viruses. It’s so simple, but genuinely one of the most elegant game designs in this entire genre. Dr. Mario started as a game called “Virus.” While Mario was still the pitcher and dressed like a doctor, the game had a lot less personality. But, the three-color scheme was apparently there from the start. Blind luck on Nintendo’s part? Because it can’t be self-evident. My problem with Columns was there’s too many colors. Six is too much. Hell, five would have been pushing it. It’s amazing Nintendo settled on three right from the start. Three colors gives you the flexibility to form strategies, but is still barely enough to assure that the luck of the draw and having to think on your feet still factors into the gameplay. Apparently, three was just the magic number. “I don’t think it’s serendipity,” my father said, “I think it’s because they knew Game Boy was coming and they could only create three shades for it.” Crap, I didn’t think of that. Anyway, Dr. Mario is one of the all-time greats. I have three more games to explain why. Verdict: YES!
Dr. Mario Platform: Game Boy Released July 27, 1990 Designed by Takahiro Harada Developed by Nintendo Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)
Pretty good use of shading to create distinctive pills and viruses.
Pretty good use of shading to create distinctive pills and viruses.
I found Dr. Mario on the Game Boy to be a very impressive effort, at least in audio/visual terms. Oh, this is absolutely the worst game of Dr. Mario ever, period, end of story. Do not mistake this as being 100% identical to the NES game, because it’s certainly not. In addition to the timing feeling entirely different, there’s one tiny change that yields profound results: the playfield is shrunken. Barely, but that barely matters a great deal. Dr. Mario on the NES uses a 16×8 playfield. The Game Boy’s Dr. Mario is 15×8. I would never have even thought to count it out except I kept losing immediately on the high levels. Sometimes there’s not even enough room to fight the viruses at all. You absolutely feel the crunch, and for a good reason: despite having a smaller playfield, the game deals you the same amount of viruses as the NES on the max level, only you have one less row to fight them. Thank god, too. That justified my time put into this. Hooray, Dr. Mario on the Game Boy sucks, at least if you want the maximum possible challenge. Verdict: NO!
Klax Platform: TurboGrafx-16 Released August 10, 1990 Programmed by Jun Amanai Developed by Tengen NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
I could swear this is the most rigged version of Klax.
In true-to-the-arcade fashion, the TG-16 build of Klax is really stingy with giving you the colors you need. Every time I attempted to build a five-across anything, diagonal or horizontal, the game would stop giving me that color. It was uncanny. After finishing Columns and now Dr. Mario too, it got me thinking about Klax. Would the game be better with fewer colors? Klax becomes so overwhelming, so quickly. The TG-16 version seems fine, but I still think the Lynx version looks better. This one’s graphics just don’t POP like the coin-op or Lynx builds. The colors almost look muffled. But, it’s fine. The timing issues that plagued me on the NES aren’t present, and the “throw back” was easier and more intuitive to clock than any console version except the Atari 2600 build. Another solid Klax release. Verdict: YES!
Columns II: The Voyage Through Time Platform: Arcade – Sega System C Released September, 1990 Designed by Hisaki Nimiya Developed by Sega Sold Separately on Nintendo Switch ($7.99)
The three missing gems in the stack are actually there. They’re the target blocks.
Sigh. I probably shouldn’t have included so many sequels in this feature. It would have been less work for me, but it’s also fascinating to witness and, more importantly, feel the progression, even if it really is only incremental. Columns II didn’t even get its first release outside of Japan until 2019 on the Nintendo Switch. It offers two games: a super boring competitive game of Columns, and “Flash Columns” which is just Columns where you only have to eliminate the blinking jewels already on the stack. I literally told my friends that using target blocks is “as bullet-proof a sub-genre as there is in gaming.” Impossible to screw up, or so I thought. Columns II proved me wrong. It’s just not fun, dammit. Like with this:
I wish I could claim some kind of meticulous master plan that set that up, but it’s Columns! As always, I got lucky. All the limitations of the original formula are in full force, and having a goal in the form of the flash gems doesn’t improve that. If anything, it sort of makes the situation worse, since that means creating levels, which means having starting stacks of increasing size, and of course, increasing numbers of target gems. You can smoothly, logically escalate a game like Dr. Mario, with its three colors in a 16×8 well. Columns is a 12×6 playfield. Significantly smaller, but with twice as many colors, and as if that’s not bad enough, the game added randomly generated skull blocks. When matched, accidentally or intentionally, the skull blocks shrink the height of the playfield by raising the stack one story. An already too cramped, too luck-based game has its cruelty amplified, not its difficulty. I barely tolerated the first Columns. This one? Too hard and too reliant on stupid, blind luck for its own good. Verdict: NO!
Pipe Dream Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released September, 1990 Developed by Distinctive Software, Inc. Published by Bullet-Proof Software NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
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Pipe Dream on the NES really has no end point. It removes the goal entirely and instead challenges you to simply make as long a pipe as possible. As a (mostly) blank canvas game, I enjoyed it well enough. Even after the one-way pipes were introduced, which is where the arcade version started to lose me, I stuck it out with the NES. At the same time, it feels like a rudderless game concept that runs out of steam. Once you get the hang of the different pieces, all that’s left is being entirely at the mercy of the random draw. That’s because Pipe Dream really doesn’t give you a lot of time before the sludge starts flowing through the pipes. Even though you can see five pieces ahead of time, there’s really not enough time to move the pieces around the board, even if you have the type of visual imagination that Pipe Dream requires (and, as stated before, I do not). The NES version of Pipe Dream also includes this God awful drop-puzzle type of bonus round where you stack the pieces, but can’t destroy them. A dumb concept that fails in every imaginable way that’s thankfully just a bonus points thing. NES Pipe Dream is so stripped-down that I *want* to give a NO! to because it just doesn’t do anything. The same thing over and over again. But I also wanted to put an hour at most into Pipe Dream and I ended up playing a few hours. That blank slate-style of gameplay clearly works, dull as it sounds on paper. Verdict: YES!
Klax (Namco) Klax (Tengen) Platform: Sega Genesis Released Sept. 6 (Tengen) Sept. 7 (Namco) 1990 Developed by Namco and Tengen Namco Port Released Outside of Japan NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Tengen Klax
Namco Klax
Goddammit, Klax!! You just had to go out of this feature being weird. This is one of the strangest cases I’ve come across since I started doing retro reviews. Two completely different versions of Klax, made completely independently from each-other, by two completely different companies, released on Sega Genesis in back-to-back days in 1990. What the f*ck?! It’s so weird! These are the final installments for Klax in this feature. While the fear that I’d run out of things to say pretty much came true, one other fear didn’t: I never got bored with Klax. Sure, the unbalanced scoring frustrated me. Something that Dave insisted I was just plain wrong about. “Klax’s scoring imbalance is entirely deliberate and there to prove a point. Go for the ‘safe’ option of nothing but verticals and you should get peanuts because you can’t achieve anything else with them, and can’t plan ahead to any real extent with a well only five tiles deep. This is especially true for the points stages; you should be dissuaded from trying or having to rely on verticals. It’s the default ‘ohcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap’ option when you’re in a panic, or refusing to play Street Fighter with anyone other than Ryu, you BORING BASTARD.”
Tengen’s version.
I absolutely don’t agree with him, because the game already incentivizes other match-options via the levels. Some levels force the diagonals. Some levels force you to simply deal with X amount of blocks. That’s all you need! Overloading the scoring system towards diagonals is overkill. My father offered a second theory: overvaluing the high-risk, harder-to-set-up diagonals provides insurance against skilled players. Klax is a coin-op, and coin-ops make no money if a professional parks on one too long. Forgoing balance and loading the points by several factors onto the diagonals goes a step beyond incentivizing high-risk gameplay. It makes it a virtual requirement. Fine, and I’ll accept that excuse for the coin-op. But for the home version? It’ll always irk me how unbalanced a scoresheet Klax has.
(Namco)
The strange case of Genesis Klax doesn’t have any weird twist of one version being lightyears ahead of the other. The Tengen version has more options. The Namco version has a versus mode that’s just a race, that nobody in my family could hope to touch me on even if we jacked-up the handicap. Personally, I thought the Tengen version’s timing was a little harder to clock than the Namco build’s, though it occurs to me that whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing is in the eye of the beholder. Some people might want it to be harder to juggle the tiles as they come off the conveyor. Others might want the challenge to be focused on the stack and not the coming blocks. It’s kind of neat that the Genesis is the only console that offers both. So, while *I* give the edge to the Namco version, I totally understand why classic gaming fans often consider the Tengen build to be superior. Really, the winner is Klax fans, because it just ran the table. Seven total versions of it. Seven YES! verdicts. That’s damn impressive. Verdicts: YES! and YES!
Welltris Platform: Arcade Released in 1991 Directed (?) by Alexey Pajitnov & Andrei Snegov Developed Video System Distributed by Bullet-Proof Software NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
See, I knew Welltris had potential.
Unlike the MS-DOS original, the coin-operated Welltris is instantly, classically intuitive, just like Tetris should be. That’s why I totally recommend game design schools use Welltris in their courses. Show students the MS-DOS version, then show the coin-op. There is so much educational potential that can be learned from studying the two games. The coin-op retains nearly identical gameplay and objectives from the original build, yet it couldn’t feel more different. So, how did the coin-op pull off making Welltris an instantly understandable experience? The answer is so easy that I overthought it at first and needed my friend Andrew to set me straight. In the PC version, you cannot control the direction of the block once it leaves the wall and enters the playfield. However, you continue to steer the block in the coin-op even after the transition. It’s really that simple, and the reason it’s intuitive is because the player isn’t disconnected from the stack in the coin-op. They directly interact with it.
Hey hey! I scored a Tetris! I never came close on the MS-DOS build!
I could see this when I tested the MS-DOS and arcade versions on my family. I had them play games of both, with some playing the PC build first and others the arcade. The arcade players learned the game faster, and the PC players didn’t “get it” until they had their turn on the arcade. The only part that still made no sense to the new players was the corner warping/distorting. Which, as I stated in the MS-DOS review, gives me a “it’s not a bug! It’s a feature!” vibe. But, in Dad’s first game of Welltris on MS-DOS, he had seven lines. It was thirty-nine on the coin-op. Everyone enjoyed the arcade game. Nobody enjoyed the MS-DOS version.
As much fun as I had, it’s not hard to figure out why Welltris flopped in arcades. This really should have been on platforms like the SNES instead.
By the way, while the game does step on the gas a little too quickly, it’s one of the most shockingly generous coin-op puzzlers I’ve seen. There’s “bonus blocks” where making even a single line with them clears the entire playfield, essentially giving you a full reset, only with your score intact. The rules of screwing up are changed, as the segments that stay on the wall are deleted, and instead of losing whole walls when you screw up, you lose layers to the walls, giving you less room to maneuver blocks. It makes for an exciting, fast-paced game that’s IMMEDIATELY intuitive. Which is the literal complete opposite of the MS-DOS version. It’s FASCINATING!
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Assuming it was Pajitnov who directed this, then Welltris coin-op is where his bonafides as a game designer and not a one-hit wonder are proven. Welltris for arcades is one of the best arcade drop-puzzlers ever made. After spending an entire day with a bad build of Welltris, it was such a joy to play a good version of it. I have no idea why Atari/Digital Eclipse and the Tetris Company couldn’t include the arcade build in Tetris Forever. My friends, you need to figure this out, because EVERYONE should get to celebrate Welltris. I was absolutely convinced that Tetris as a 3D experience could never be fast or fun. Welltris is both, and one of the best games to wear the “Tris” name I’ve played. I have no problem eating crow if it’s served to me deliciously. Verdict: YES!
Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen Platform: Famicom Released April 12, 1991 Designed by Yukinori Taniguchi & Takashi Shibuya Developed by Compile Published by Tokuma Shoten Never Released Outside of Japan NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Thanks, Dash! I had never heard of this game, and I almost didn’t include it in this feature. I’m really happy I did, because this is one of the strongest of the early high-concept falling block games that tried to ride Tetris’ coattails. Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen (Gorby’s Pipeline Mission) actually got diplomatic permission from the Soviet Union’s embassy to use the likeness of Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The USSR wasn’t long for this world by the time this was released, but if the story of Tetris is one of the power of video games as diplomatic tools, then this game deserves to be part of that story. And it helps that it’s a pretty dang great game, too! This hybrid of Tetris and Pipe Dream has players trying to simply connect a water supply from one side of the screen to the other, which is supposed to represent a pipeline from Japan to Russia. Two linked blocks fall at a time and can be rotated clockwise and counter-clockwise. There are no gaps allowed, so if you drop a block on the top of the stack in a way where the other block is hanging above the stack, it breaks free and you continue to control its descent and still rotate it. The right side only has one source of water which starts at the bottom corner. If at any point the pipe you’re working on is blocked, it becomes plugged and the next available source from the bottom becomes active. If the stack tops off, or if all available sources of water are lost, game over. To win, twice a level you have to do this:
It’s not just enough to make a line. You have to bring that line into one of the green pipes on the wall. There’s going to be a lot of garbage on the screen when you’re done. This is a game where I would be VERY impressed by anyone who can create pristine well conditions, like you can in Tetris. Good news is, you score a lot of points doing this. Any blocks that are underneath the pipe become blue blocks that score points after you finish the stage.
I don’t think Gorby does enough to help players clean up the playfield. I also think the game gives you too many elbows and not enough flat pieces. Based on rewinding, blocks are randomly generated, apparently including the valuable (and occasionally disastrous) items. The straight pieces (or the L/reverse L pipes) are more valuable but come out less frequently because there’s more ways to configure elbows. The items aren’t exactly balanced, either, nor is there any apparent way of triggering getting them. They just end up in the draw, every bit as randomly as the blocks do but with much less frequency. The drill allows you to remove one column from the stack. Mind you, if you choose a column that has your current pipe, that pipe will be cut in half and have to either be reconnected or abandoned for a new pipeline. A water bottle (which can only be used by smashing it directly in front of the front of the current pipe you’re building) fills the playfield under the pipe with water blocks that can’t be used and eats up a ton of the playfield. But, they score a lot of points when you complete the pipe. Finally, there’s what I call the “automatic win” item. It’s a drop of water, and if the pipeline is currently facing a wall with a pipe and you place the drop of water in front of the end of your pipeline, you not only get credit for a pipe but you get a mostly clean playfield. On the negative side, by using it, you don’t score as much as you could. But it will bail you out.. literally, and it saved me more than once. It’s too overpowered, in my opinion.
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Even without balance to the block distribution and one ridiculously overpowered item, I was completely hooked on Gorby. If you want to know why this feature took so f’n long, lost treasures like Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen are a big reason why. I didn’t originally have this as one of the 6, 20, 40, or 70+ games I had intended to cover in this review, but part way through my work, Dash really pushed hard for it to be included. Boy, I’m happy he did. This was fantastic! I intended to play Gorby for an hour or so and it cost me nearly an entire day. It’s almost every bit as potently addictive as Tetris is, and every bit as rewarding. It is such a thrill to see a particularly zig-zaggy pipe finally complete. Is it a bit janky? Sure, but not like Pyramid was. This is the “we’re onto something and we know it, we gotta get this out NOW” jank. They were trying to strike while the Tetris iron was hot, so it lacks the polish it would get today.
If you think this is a weird geopolitical game connection, just wait until you hear about Wordtris!
Also, had this come out today, Gorby would have no-doubt included some form of an algorithm and more balanced items, including more stuff to help clean up the playfield. With that said, wow, what a genuine hidden gem. If anyone from the Tetris Company is reading this feature, I would advise you to track down whoever owns the rights to this (presumably D4) and buy it. I’m sure you’re thinking “DLC” for Tetris Forever, and if you go the Atari 50 route for DLC, one of the bonus chapters has to be about all the wannabes that followed in Tetris’ wake. A lot of them were derivative and uninspired, and I expected that from Gorby. Hell, I LOVED this game, but even I concede the use of Gorbachev’s likeness feels like a desperate ploy to make the game more closely resemble Tetris’ heritage, as if being tied to Russia was the sweet sauce that made Tetris a global hit and not, you know, historically amazing gameplay. That’s cynical and I hate cynicism, but it’s so obviously true, too. Either way, Gorbachev isn’t the star of the game. Charming gameplay is, and I think it would be a great fit for a legitimate release in Tetris Forever’s DLC. I doubt it would be that expensive, and Pipeline could be a big franchise with today’s audiences. It never had a real chance, and that’s a bonafide gaming tragedy. Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen isn’t just a great game, but one of the best games in this entire feature and it deserves a second chance on the perfect stage for it. Verdict: YES!
Hatris Platform: PC Engine Released May 24, 1991 Developed by Micro Cabin Never Released Outside of Japan NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Thank God. I’m finally done with Hatris.
I’ve played enough Hatris to last a lifetime and I’m never playing it again after this. Ever. Hatris is the absolute middle of the road falling block puzzler. Five f’n games and not one of them has been an outright GOODgame. As a series, it’s barely okay at best. The PC Engine version is basically the arcade version I reviewed above, with both the shop element and the red and blue fireballs. But, this version also is much easier to separate the hats after dropping one, so this is probably the best version of Hatris. That’s like being the best slice of Wonder Bread in the loaf. Even though I’ve now played Hatris to death, I was never really good at it. But, I must have practiced enough to become okay at it, because for the first time, I actually saw something resembling an “ending” once the crowns were introduced. Look! Here it is!
As far as accomplishments go, I was about as excited as I normally am when I treat my garbage can like a basketball hoop and make whatever I’m throwing the first time. Not elated. Not even a sense of accomplishment. Content, but only because I don’t have to bend over and pick up whatever I threw now. That’s really the closest analogue.
And I’m not even really sure *I* did it so much as I got lucky with the random drops. Dave told me “keep the big hats on the sides” as if it’s THAT easy. My main strategy was “when the crowns are in the playfield, keep them together, even if you ruin a stack of four doing it.” Like all other versions that use fire, the crowns can’t be burned. Since crowns stack the thickest out of all the hats, whatever damage I do to myself by wrecking any other stack will be nothing compared to the damage the crowns do by becoming garbage. It helps that it takes a while for PCE Hatris to get going. Hell, if you start at level 0, it doesn’t even add the fourth hat (the top hat) to the assortment until two visits to the shop. That can be adjusted, but I’m one of those people who like to start at the bottom and build-up from there. From that sense, Hatris might be the slowest-building game in the entire genre.
The blue fire is probably over-powered, but the PC Engine version is as stingy with it as the arcade game is. It’s 100% totally random. The red fire is generous enough. I don’t know how I feel about having this stuff be random, but at least it helps with the tempo.
I’ve played five versions of Hatris now, and not one of them is in the least bit exciting. Relaxing? Maybe. I suppose I did “zone out” playing Hatris every time I booted it up. But it never stops feeling like Busy Work: The Game. Its only contribution to the genre, the ability to separate blocks by breaking one off at a higher point on the playfield, is nice. But, that sort of feels like an inevitable evolutionary step. Before Tetris Forever, Hatris had sort of slipped through the cracks of history, and it’s easy to see why. It’s not dynamic. It’s not fast-paced. If you crank-up the speed, it feels artificially quick, but not “up-tempo.” The most remarkable thing about Hatris’ entire existence is that it IS just a boring idea that, through sheer force of will, was turned into a passable game. On one hand, I’m bummed that Digital Eclipse didn’t take a pass at remaking it. On the other hand, what could anyone possibly do to make this better? It’s not my job to answer that. All I’m supposed to do is say if a game is good or not. With that, the PC Engine build is, by the tiniest fraction of a unit of enjoyment, the best game of Hatris I’ve played. And it’s not in Tetris Forever, go figure. Verdict: YES!
Puyo Puyo Platform: Famicom Disk System Released October 25, 1991 Directed by Masanobu Tsukamoto Published by Compile Never Released Outside of Japan NEVER (?) BEEN RE-RELEASED
The personality was still being worked on.
Puyo Puyo is one of the most famous games in the entire genre, and that’s why I think its fans are going to have heart attacks when they find out I’m not the biggest fan. But, I wanted to include this original release because it’s such a neat story. In Japan, there was a magazine dedicated to the Famicom called “Famimaga” that periodically included free games. Famimaga published six total games between March of 1990 and December of 1992. I thought of including some of them in this, especially “Clocks.” Which is a drop puzzler with minute/hour hands.
I uh.. have no clue what I’m doing.
Clocks (or “Clox”, as it’s called both sometimes) was the 4th game in that series. Puyo Puyo was the fifth. Yep, one of the most famous puzzle franchises started life as a throw-in for a magazine. I still have a lot of indie developers who read IGC, and I tell them this: you never know. You can very much feel that this game is a prototype/low budget affair. Clearly Puyo Puyo was NEVER meant to be a big franchise, and to hammer that home, they weren’t even certain it was going to use slimes as blocks (taken from an RPG called Madō Monogatari) or humans who stood on shoulders and linked hands. Because, get this, that’s in this game!
Yikes!!
Now, Puyo Puyo is going to evolve A LOT over the coming years, with a heavy emphasis on the versus matches. Which I totally get after playing this Famicom Disk System game solo. I’m just not a fan. I think Puyo Puyo is really boring and I don’t get it at all. I think the well is too small, and I think the cascades aren’t as exciting as some people think. It’s not a total wash, because I really like how many options this comes with. You can change how many colors there are, and you can even change whether you want a giant slime as a bonus item (which crushes two columns) or if you want a Pikachu-looking thing that changes the colors in the stack to create a match. I also deeply admire the effort here. As a proof of concept that was never meant to be anything but an advertisement for your RPGs in a gaming magazine, jeez, this is a pretty amazing story, isn’t it? But it’s safe to say that the early versions of Puyo Puyo aren’t for me. Verdict: NO!
Yoshi Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released December 14, 1991 Directed by Satoshi Tajiri Developed by Game Freak Published by Nintendo Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)
Do you know what strikes me most about Yoshi? This could have been the PERFECT falling block Game & Watch. I mean besides Tetris, which obviously was practically made for LCDs, but Yoshi isn’t too far behind. It requires very little animation (hell, the blocks here fall in a way that looks LCD-like) and not much in the way of graphics. It’d probably be a little hard to get four distinct characters + the eggs into cells, but see, I have faith someone could come up with it, and it’s basically idealized for the format.
I’ve reviewed two games already from Satoshi Tajiri and Game Freak. Mario & Wario, a Super Famicom-exclusive puzzler that used the SNES Mouse, was alright but certainly not some amazing hidden gem. His first game was his real masterpiece: Mendel Palace, a one-of-a-kind action arcade game, which I covered in Namco Museum Archives: Volume 2: The Definitive Review. I named it both “Best in Set” for Volume 2 and ranked it #1 among the twenty-two total games between the two collections. Plus, of course, Tajiri invented Pokémon. In fact, this is the game that bankrolled the development of Pokémon. Nintendo had passed on Mendel Palace, but they wanted to work with Tajiri and Game Freak, and they reached out saying “we need another puzzler, ASAP!” Sadly, the game isn’t as interesting as the story behind it.
It’s not a bad looking game, but I think I would have preferred a plain wall to a checkerboard one.
The concept, simply put, doesn’t work for the marathon mode. In Yoshi, players have to shuffle four different channels while icons featuring four enemies from the Mario franchise fall onto the playfield. Those are Goombas, Piranha Plants, Boos, and Bloopers, and while matches can only be made vertically, it only requires a pair to clear them from the stacks. The placement of where pieces fall is totally random, but there’s no limit to shuffling the stacks. The twist is that two halves of Yoshi eggs randomly fall alongside the blocks. The bottom halves will join the stacks (and can also be cleared with a simple match) while the top halves vanish if there’s no bottom half of an egg on the stack they land on. The object is essentially to make sandwiches with the eggs, and the more enemies you stack between the bottom and top pieces, the more points you score. The problem is, if the game doesn’t spit out the top halves of the eggs, you’re hosed. It’s totally random, and you’re at the mercy of pure random chance.
It makes for a frustrating marathon mode, and I thought this was going to be one of the easier NO! games in this feature. And then I played the B-Mode, and things got complicated. The B-Mode plays the same, only your goal is now to get an all-clear. It took a little while, but eventually it became clear to me that Yoshi works better as a level-based game. The same RNG problems plague B-Mode, but having a clear end-goal adds layers of strategy and, consequently, excitement. Especially on later levels, where it is genuinely thrilling to start with a large pile of debris on the playfield and whittle it down to nothing. I still found myself getting screwed by runs of non-matches or not spitting out the tops to the eggs. What I’d really like to see is this game redone as a widescreen game, with more channels. That could be said about a lot of games, but four just isn’t enough for Yoshi’s format. But either way, Yoshi still won me over. My motto is “find the fun” and I found the fun in the B-mode. Barely, but barely counts. What a turnaround, because I thought for sure after a couple marathons this was heading for a NO! See, it ain’t over till it’s over. Verdict: YES!
Wordtris Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Released November, 1992 Designed by Sergei Utkin, Vyacheslav Tsoy, & Armen Sarkissian Developed by Sphere Published by Spectrum Holobyte NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
I totally meant to do that. Planned it out and everything. I didn’t fall ass-backwards into it. Why would you think that? I use “EIO” in conversation every day. I bring up Old McDonald a LOT. (nods)
Wordtris has a unique distinction: it’s the only video game co-developed by someone who went on to become a head of state. Armen Sarkissian was elected President of Armenia in 2018. Presumably this was done to keep him from making another game. Wordtris is, simply put, a bad idea that should never have been released. First off, the playfield is too small, and even though this is the only game in this entire feature that goes “below the stack” it’s still not enough room. Especially when there’s blocks for every single letter (including Z, X, V, Q, etc), plus items like bombs and dynamite. Also, the game is a bit of a prick about certain things. Like, I spelled “ZEBRA” for 425 points. Awesome, right? But the game insisted on giving me more Zs, and what can you do with a Z? So I spelt ZEBRAS with an S for a measly 240 points. Oh, come on!
Presumably I scored less because I used a ? block, though once you place one of those, it doesn’t remind you which one was originally a ? block. This game B-L-O-W-S.
Another problem is that the game automatically scores words. This might sound like a weird complaint, but there’s so many three-letter words. Thousands of them, actually, and bigger words are typically made of smaller words. Anyone who plays Scrabble knows this. To counter this, the game uses combos that allow words to be created when you make a word and the under-stack raises up. The amount of luck, three-dimensional planning, and the sheer EFFORT required isn’t worth it. And then you have things like words not counting. RUM doesn’t count, because I guess alcohol is offensive? But there’s other forms of rum, you know? Butter rum? That’s one of my favorite flavors of Life Savers. You know, a candy eaten by children? Rum cake? Rum doesn’t have to be devil’s brew, you know?
Look at that board. At this point, I went a LONG time between vowels. It had given me something like four Ps in seven drops. Wordtris isn’t the worst drop puzzler ever made, but it’s close.
Of all the games in this feature, I think Wordtris has the lowest overall potential. I’ve reviewed some pretty bad Tetris-inspired games, but I think most of them could have been tinkered with and made fun, or at least tolerable. I don’t think Wordtris could have ever been fun. I think the concept is dead on arrival. Maybe a widescreen format with a bigger well could have helped. Maybe a more consistent, predictable dictionary. Maybe a 7-bag style algorithm (which I presume there IS a method to the madness since I didn’t get difficult-to-work-with letters very often) that assures the ability to make words, or maybe not scoring a word until you manually hit a “score all words” button. Hell, it’s not my job to figure out how to fix games. I just care whether old games stand up to the test of time, and in the case of Wordtris, I can’t imagine anyone ever had F-U-N with this. I think it’s a terrible game. A-W-F-U-L. In a universe where there’s no Virtual Lab, this is the worst falling block game ever made. Verdict: NO!
Oh My God! Platform: Arcade Released in 1993 Directed by Kazutoshi Ueda Developed by Atlus Never Released Outside of Japan NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Why did they pick that name? It’s a snake-based puzzler! They couldn’t come up with a name? Oh and that sign that’s displayed? If you slither the blocks like that, it activates a special move.
This is yet another Dave Sanders choice, and one of the rarest coin-ops out there. Only four copies are known to exist, all of them as circuit boards instead of dedicated units. There’s a reason for the rarity. Unlike a lot of the games Dave recommended, he knew this one was no good. Certainly not the trash fire I initially had it pegged as, but it’s pretty unintuitive, which is typically the death knell for any game like this, and Oh My God isn’t good enough to overcome that. Think of it as Puyo Puyo if the blocks had to be slithered across the screen, like a snake. Almost like a train of segments that you have to curve around. It’s also the puzzler that has the longest grace period before the blocks lock to the stack. Thank god for it, because there’s a HUGE learning curve to the movement. This is one of those games where managing the physical shape of the stack is every bit as important as matching the colors, since you can create a dead end that prevents you from being able to align the blocks.
My family didn’t want to play long enough to learn the movement. They just straight-up hated this game.
The biggest lesson I’ve taken away from Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review is that the quicker a game is able to be learned, the better it usually is. I had to play several games of Oh My God to get the hang of it, but once I did, I didn’t hate it as much as I initially did. I still didn’t like it, but I respected that they tried something better. I can also understand why some studios rolled the dice on anti-intuition games. How the hell do you stand out in THIS genre? Especially with these match three games! I mean, how many different ways can that be changed up? You have to create some kind of gimmick with the blocks, and you can’t really know if the gimmick works until the game is done. You don’t become one of the rarest games ever made by bombing in sales. You get there when the studio themselves recognizes that the game isn’t good. So, I admire that Atlus was willing to experiment. It didn’t work, but as far as failed experiments go, I’ve played alot worse. Verdict: NO!
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine aka Kirby’s Avalanche aka Super Puyo Puyo Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Genesis ver. Released December, 1993 SNES ver. Released February, 1995 SNES ver. Directed by Kazunori Ikeda Developed by Compile and Banpresto Published by Sega and Nintendo Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)
(Kirby’s Avalanche)
The first American version of Puyo Puyo is one of those games I’ll never understand the appeal of. The playfield is too small for the amount of garbage blocks that combos drop. The playfield is only 12×6, making Puyo Puyo both too short and too narrow. The first moderate-sized combo you make is going to essentially end the other player. The chances for comebacks are slim, since you still (1) need the game to give you the right colors (2) need to create whatever matches you can get around the garbage blocks (3) do all this before the other player, who has a full playfield, makes even a single chain or combo to further plug-up your efforts.
(Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine) I honestly think the SNES version looks better. More colorful. Sharper. It’s an overrated game either way.
Not that I think every single puzzle game needs the same ebb and flow, but whether it’s called Super Puyo Puyo, Kirby’s Avalanche or Mean Bean Machine, I find Puyo Puyo to be too small and too fast paced. The only way I can spin it in a way that makes sense is that the race to hit that knockout punch that’s nearly impossible to recover from holds appeal to some. I don’t get it, but I’m nowhere near a pro. I won my fair share of Tetris 99 games, but I’d get tuned by legit pros. With Kirby’s Avalanche (and later with Puyo Puyo Sun), I played with my family, just like I did with nearly every multiplayer game in this feature. To say the least, Puyo Puyo, in every form it took, was not among their favorite games. “Would you guys believe that, in Japan, this franchise is every bit as big as Tetris is?” Their reaction was universally “this?” I took some comfort from that. If you’re in disagreement, leave a comment and explain it, because I’m trying to figure it out. It can’t just be because it has Sonic characters, right? Verdict: NO!
Poto Poto Platform: Arcade – Sega System C2 Released March, 1994 Designed by Makoto Yamamoto Developed by Sega Never Released Outside of Japan NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Sega could have sold a sponsorship to Spree. You know, the candy?
I’d never heard of this one. Chances are, if a game in this feature is really obscure, it was recommended to me by one of my best friends, pinball designer Dave Sanders. It’s almost a punch in the gut how many unique block puzzlers sit on the edge of oblivion. My instinct tells me to describe Poto Poto as a sort of reverse Bust-a-Move crossed with the Price is Right game Plinko, but that description doesn’t do the game justice. While the object is to match four same-colored hexagons, how you’re dealt the blocks is unlike pretty much any game ever. For better AND for worse. A character with a wheelbarrow walks back and forth and tosses the pieces onto the stack. You can slide a block across the stack, but as soon as it reaches an empty cell, it falls into the cell and locks into the stack, unless it’s part of a match-four, in which case it clears. If any other blocks aren’t attached to the stack or a wall, they collapse, attacking the opponent in a fashion that will feel very familiar to Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble fans.
You’ll want to do standard, no-frills clears in order to spawn bombs that blow-up the cell they’re above plus all the cells around them, potentially dropping a massive part of the stack on your opponent.
The twist.. well, actually this whole game is so weird it practically is a twist, but regardless.. is that the person throwing the pieces doesn’t wait for you to position one before throwing the next. There’s a chance you’ll have multiple pieces sliding on the playfield, and you only control the lowest one. It’s pretty hard to get the hang of Poto Poto. The sliding-based movement is certainly not elegant, and it’s really easy to accidentally have the piece you’re guiding end up in a cell you weren’t aiming for. It’s also one the strangest tempos for a versus-style puzzler. While games can turn on a dime, it’s too dramatic. I went from “in complete command” to “instantly dead before I knew what hit me” more than once. Other times, games were over in under a minute and totally one-sided. The big problem with Poto Poto is that exciting, give-and-take matches were very, very rare. This was one of the few puzzlers where I didn’t have an insurmountable advantage over my family thanks to having the most experience. I lost as many games as I won. The lack of excitement had nothing to do with the ability gap. Playing against the AI was the same thing: one-sided until the victory, or one-sided until the surprise instant loss. Poto Poto’s formula just doesn’t inherently lend itself to exciting competitive gaming. It’s either total domination or a complete blind-siding. And now I know Poto Poto fell into obscurity for a reason. Verdict: NO!
Tetris 2 aka Tetris Flash Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Released July 8, 1994 Directed by Masao Yamamoto & Hitoshi Yamagami Developed by Tose Published by Nintendo NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
You know how I talk about gaming DNA? Well, Tetris 2 only shares DNA with Tetris in the same way a human being is technically a distant relative to the fungus that causes athlete’s foot. I originally put down that this is the bastard love child of Tetris and Dr. Mario, but that isn’t the case either. Tetris 2 is Dr. Mario’s offspring that he and Nurse Peach gave up for adoption to avoid triggering a scandal at the clinic. Lines do nothing for you here. You have to match three same-colored segments. Instead of taking out viruses, you have to take out personality-free target blocks. The catch is that, at the bottom of every stage, three of the target blocks, one of each color, shimmer. Breaking one of the shimmering blocks destroys all the blocks of that color. So in theory, the first to clear those three wins. In practice, it can be tough. Some of the blocks have disconnected segments that can be separated and moved independently. Depending on how congested the stack is, this can make even higher levels end in seconds. It should be hell of satisfying, but Tetris 2 is so subdued that this is the first Nintendo-published game that feels graphically comatose.
In the two player mode, in addition to matching blocks, you have to maintain a water level. In several games, only once did we feel the water level REALLY decided who won or lost. What a waste of a mechanic.
Nintendo really shot themselves in the foot by using the Tetris name and license for this, and why the hell would they invoke that game to begin with? Tetris 2 never feels like Tetris except only in the most vague sense. Like, a couple blocks are similar to Tetris blocks, but really, they should have just made this a Dr. Mario sequel. Dr. Mario was over three years old by the time the NES version of Tetris 2 came out. Just call it Dr. Mario 2! Granted, Dr. Mario is better than Tetris 2, but there’s legit value here. The multiplayer mode is a little misguided, especially with the water level concept. The instruction book promises it makes things “like a tug of war!” That’s code for “so back-and-forth that it’s basically useless.” But, Tetris 2 has quality puzzle mode to make up for the mediocre multiplayer game. It’s one of those BomBliss style puzzlers where you have X amount of blocks to clear the entire screen. I always dig those. Hell, they single-handedly carried BomBliss to a YES! more than once. Tetris 2 is fine. Nothing special, but still a damn shame about the Tetris license being a pair of concrete shoes weighing it down. Oh, and Debbie.. pastels? Verdict: YES!
Tetris & Dr. Mario Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Released December 30, 1994 Developed by Nintendo NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
This is the closest Nintendo has ever come to a commercial release of the Nintendo World Championships from 1990.
Tetris & Dr. Mario is Tetris and Dr. Mario. I mean, duh. In North America, this was the only way to get Dr. Mario for the SNES. It was a solo release in Japan, both as a cart and as the final ever game broadcast on the Satellaview accessory. And, you know, it’s a good version of Dr. Mario with the standard 16×8 well. The version of Tetris included is also decent but unspectacular. It doesn’t have 7-bag, that’s for sure. During a two player mixed-match, the game seemed almost deliberately trollish, giving us somewhere around seven Z-blocks. In a row. The same block. I mean, come on. But, that’s not a rarity. It CONSTANTLY identical blocks in clusters. Maybe more than any other game. Otherwise, eh, it’s fine. But the real main event is mixed matches. They’re structured like the NWC 1990 trio. First, you do the B-Mode in Tetris, setting the amount of lines required to anywhere between 1 and 30. Then, you do Dr. Mario, and with all the time remaining, you just score as much as you can in Tetris. Unlike NWC, there’s no multipliers for the stages, and winning/losing is decided by your raw combined point total. The only penalty for dying on any stage is losing all the points you had and having to start that stage over. I couldn’t really experience a good match. Even when I jacked up my family’s handicap, I still whooped them. But, the concept is fine. I mean, in theory. Verdict: YES!
Bust-a-Move aka Puzzle Bobble Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System Released January 13, 1995 Directed by Shōji Takahashi Developed by Taito Sold Separately on Nintendo Switch
Whether it’s called Bust-a-Move or Puzzle Bobble, there’s so many different versions of it that it would put the overabundance of Klax ports to shame. So, I decided to focus on this first home port which is, you know, fine. Aim a pointer that fires bubbles that ricochet off walls. The bubbles stick to the stack, and a match-3 clears them. There’s a million sequels that are essentially the same game, only the developers slapped a progressively higher number on the title screen. Yea, yea, there’s more to it than that, which is why I have the sequel in coming in Part Two of this feature. But there’s not that much more to it. As a single player experience, there’s no doubt that there’s something serene about Bust-a-Move. It’s low-frills but satisfying enough. The special bubbles are what I found strange. Instead of matching them, you only have to shoot them. Something about that took the satisfaction away. Bust-a-Move is at its best when you have to twist the pointer to a really sharp angle to squeeze a matching shot in. Hitting those shots is gaming nirvana. It’s one of the most simple games on here, but in this genre, simple works. Verdict: YES!
Baku Baku Animal Platform: Arcade – Sega Titan Video Released April, 1995 Directed by Yasushi Watanabe & Yuri Usami (?) Developed by Sega NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Hey! A gimmicky puzzler that actually works! By the way, Sega Titan is basically a cartridge-based Sega Saturn. Why carts instead of discs? My father guessed heating issues, which Dave confirmed. “Cooling is an unnecessary expense. Baku Baku doesn’t require CD-quality music. It doesn’t require streamlined cutscenes. The system wasn’t powerful enough to need fans, and optical drives fail. It’s a puzzle game, not a technology showcase.”
In this feature, I’ve played some pretty high-concept puzzlers that were simply too complicated to be enjoyable. Baku Baku is the rare high-concept game that keeps things so simple and so peppy that you can’t help but like it. Blocks are dropped in random pairs. The twist is that sometimes a block is food and sometimes it’s an animal, and if an animal is linked to its food source, it eats the entire cluster. Baku Baku shares DNA with Pac-Attack, but unlike Pac-Attack, the eating is less restrictive. The food source doesn’t need to be in a straight line to be collected, like Pac-Attack. If the animal is touching a misshapen-but-touching cluster of their food, the whole cluster gets eaten. Smart, especially since it opens the door for ultra-satisfying cascade-style combos. I just wish that kind of thoughtful design was all over Baku Baku, but it’s not.
My father said “it looks like a cardboard juice commercial from 30 years ago.”
As far as YES! games go, few are as problematic as Baku Baku. There’s seemingly no 7-bag-style algorithm. Sometimes it was astonishing how long the game would go spawning food blocks for a specific animal without spawning the animal to eat them. One time I had just about the most elegant stack of blocks I’d done in Baku Baku. A mountain of bananas that would have given Donkey Kong heart palpitations, and I ended up dying because it never gave me the monkey the entire game. It also speeds up faster than any coin-op I can remember. By the fourth stage, the blocks are almost instantaneously on the floor, assuming you haven’t lost a match. If you die, the speed resets. I’m frustrated by Baku Baku Animal, because it’s such a clever idea, but the end result is just okay. The concept is so much more fun than the execution. It is fun enough to get a YES!, but not as enthusiastic a YES! as it should be. Baku Baku desperately needs an algorithm. Fingers crossed for the Game Gear version coming up. Verdict: YES!
blash
V-Tetris Platform: Virtual Boy Released August 25, 1995 Directed by Norifumi Hara Developed by Locomotive Published by Bullet-Proof Software Never Released Outside of Japan NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
With this Tetris, I finally did what I never thought I’d be able to do.
Of all the versions of Tetris for me to check off one of my gaming bucket list moments, it would be the one that gave me bloodshot eyes. Indeed, the Japanese-exclusive V-Tetris became the first ever game of Tetris where I maxed the scoreboard out. All 9’s, including 999 lines. It helps that the game never became impossibly fast, capping-out long before I was finished. Now, my eyes are killing me. Worth it. What’s really strange is that V-Tetris really is just run-of-the-mill Tetris. I guess when you clear lines, they pop out of the screen. Who the f*ck would want a normal Tetris on the Virtual Boy? Well, there is one slight variation that’s basically Tetris wrapped in a cylinder. The gag with it is you can create full lines that don’t get cleared if you rotate them off the screen before the line “settles” to the stack. When you rotate already completed lines onto the screen, they don’t disappear until you make at least one line.
Mode C
Mode C
It’s actually not as interesting as it sounds. In fact, it’s pretty boring. There is a twist to keep players from treading water: the game penalizes you for making singles. If you clear only a single line at any point, it drops a block on the opposite side of the stack, where it will likely create a giant gap in the stack. Of course, thanks to the cylinder, clearing gaps has never been easier. There’s almost always a place for the next block, which completely neutralizes the challenge of Tetris. Technically, V-Tetris is fine. It’s a boilerplate, completely pedestrian form for the game that has absolutely no reason to exist. I should have saved this version for last because my eyes are just on fire right now. This isn’t a comedy bit I’m doing over here. My eyes are legitimately f*cking throbbing. What the everloving hell were they thinking with the Virtual Boy? Thanks for letting me pop my perfect game cherry, V-Tetris, but I didn’t need to pop my eyes while I was at it. Verdict: NO!
Virtual Lab Platform: Virtual Boy Released December 8, 1995 Developed by Nacoty Published by J-Wing NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
This MIGHT have been okay if not for how the drops work. Three blocks at once? THREE? Why?
Virtual Lab is largely considered the worst Virtual Boy game. Now there’s a truly pitiful title. Okay, so I haven’t played every Virtual Boy game, but I’m still guessing the title is accurate, since this is also the worst game in this entire feature. Granted this is one of the only games in this feature that is essentially an underdeveloped prototype made in eight days that was sent to manufacturing without bug testing. I want to say “hey, a playable game in 8 days isn’t bad” but, well, I’m not sure I’d call this “playable.” What I assume are intestines fall from the sky that have between one and three openings. You have to keep building off them until you’re able to cap every end with the single-opening blocks, at which point they clear from the stack. The only kindness the game offers is that the floor and walls count as “caps.”
You can see that I had multiple large structures, but you have to deal with the blocks you’re given. By the way, what the HECK is even remotely 3D about this game? What the heck is this doing as a Virtual Boy game?
It’s actually a neat idea. Really! At least it’s different, but the concept is ruined by the game dropping two or three blocks that are often incompatible at a time. Even though you have the ability to shuffle the order of the blocks and rotate them, you have to move them together until one of them settles, and that almost always means permanently ending the “match” potential for some part of the stack. See, any opening that faces a non-opening of another block becomes essentially impossible to get rid of. This means that even perfect play can see you hosed by having three blocks spawn at once, since it could inevitably lead to a single blocked pathway, which is all it takes to ruin an entire structure you’re working on with no hope of recovery. And again, that’s assuming you make all the right moves, because on top of all this, the controls are the absolute loosest I’ve ever experienced in this genre. Calling Virtual Lab “broken” feels too generous. The worst game in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review? Yep, and it’s not even close, in fact. Could something be made from this idea? Well, yea. In fact, it already kind of happened. Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen for the Famicom or hell, any version of Pipe Dream is basically the same idea done better. This is just those games without any sense of fine tuning. Verdict: NO!
3-D Tetris Platform: Virtual Boy Released March 22, 1996 Developed by T&E Soft Published by Nintendo NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Those Tetris characters are nightmare fuel only made worse by the all-red color.
3D-Tetris is an eyesore, but it’s Virtual Boy so that goes without saying. It’s actually not all that different from BlockOut, to the point that it’s really best to think of 3D-Tetris as an evolution of that game. The only difference is this is a legit 3D game with a camera that automatically spins around the playfield. My big problem with Blockout was it wasn’t easy (if possible at all) to know where you screwed up and where the gaps were. The well itself had no sense of depth to it. That’s not the case here, as there’s five “maps” on the side of the screen that show the current stack’s layers. There’s also a wider variety of modes, including one where you have to build around the dead center of the well, because the stack is only cleared once you insert a block on top of that center square.
I’m pretty sure the absolute limit is a triple instead of a full Tetris. Which is fine because I never came close to it anyway.
My problem with 3D-Tetris is that it’s an unintuitive nightmare. Classical versions of Tetris work because it’s a concept that takes all of twenty seconds to “get.” Hell, if that! But, I played 3D-Tetris for several hours and still had no feel for rotation or block movement. And that’s before I get to the whole symmetry rule thing for the “center fill” version of the game, which is one of the most convoluted, confusing and overly complicated game mechanics in the history of video games. This is a prime example of developers who completely lose the plot. “Let’s take one of the most easy to understand video games ever created and give it rules that, when read out loud, makes it sound like the person is speaking in tongues.” Enjoy making sense of this sh*t:
I stuck to trying to simply craft lines. You know, that thing that people play Tetris for? On those terms, honestly it really is just a more complicated version of BlockOut. But, even with three different buttons to control the rotation (one of which would normally be a second D-pad, so you’ll want to tinker with your emulator mapping to find a comfy configuration), I never reached the point where manipulating the blocks felt natural. I don’t know if it’s because the camera is always slowly rotating around or because the blocks are wireframes, but it just felt like I was disconnected from the game. It doesn’t help that the blocks can take on some difficult-to-process shapes. This Tetris even has blocks that come out in pairs or even four small blocks at a time, but it’s really difficult to “separate them” like in games such as Hatris or Tetris 2. I wanted to break apart the single-blocks and slide them into the gaps, and I don’t think I pulled that off even once.
The closest 3D-Tetris comes to being “fun.”
Now, 3D-Tetris isn’t a total flop thanks to the “puzzle mode” which is the closest any Tetris game has come to mimicking the Tetromino Box-style puzzle that was Alexey Pajitnov’s direct inspiration for Tetris. The game presents you with a 3D shape and X amount of blocks to create that shape. There’s no easing players into it, either. It was a true brain-bender right from the start. Ironically for a game that was basically limited to one player shoving their face into an eyeball air-fryer, this was a game that I enjoyed playing with my family. We worked together to solve a few of the puzzles before everyone started complaining that the game was hurting their eyes. Jeez, if Virtual Boy games on a television cause eye strain, just imagine what it did to people who stuck the monitor next to their face. What were they thinking? I don’t think 3-D Tetris is worth playing in the 2020s, but there’s probably legs for the puzzle mode to be expanded upon. With colors besides red, hopefully. Verdict: NO!
I’M NOT DONE YET!
PART TWO WILL INCLUDE THESE GAMES!
Puzzle & Action: Tant-R (Arcade, 1993)
Yoshi’s Cookie (SNES, 1992)
Pac-Attack (SNES, 1993)
BreakThru! (SNES, 1994)
Puzzle & Action: Ichidant-R (Arcade, 1994)
Taisen Puzzle-dama (Arcade, 1994)
Wario’s Woods (SNES, 1994)
Super Bomberman: Panic Bomber W (Super Famicom, 1995)
Panic Bomber (Virtual Boy, 1995)
Magical Drop (Super Famicom, 1995)
Tetris Attack (SNES, 1995)
Puzzle & Action: Treasure Hunt (Arcade, 1995)
Tecmo Stackers (PlayStation, 1995)
Baku Baku (Game Gear, 1996)
Tetris Plus (PlayStation, 1996)
Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition (PlayStation, 1996)
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (PlayStation, 1996)
Tetris Plus 2 (Arcade, 1997)
Columns ’97 (Arcade, 1997)
Money Puzzle Exchanger (Arcade, 1997)
Tetrisphere (Nintendo 64, 1997)
Puyo Puyo Sun (Nintendo 64, 1997)
Star Sweep (PlayStation, 1997)
Tetris: The Grand Master (Arcade, 1998)
Wrecking Crew ’98 (Super Famicom, 1998)
Kirby’s Super Star Stacker (Super Famicom, 1998)
Wetrix (Nintendo 64, 1998)
Tetris DX (Game Boy Color, 1998)
Magical Tetris Challenge (Nintendo 64, 1998)
Gunpey (Wonderswan, 1999)
The New Tetris (Nintendo 64, 1999)
The Next Tetris (PlayStation, 1999)
Tetris: The Grand Master 2 – The Absolute PLUS (Arcade, 2000)
Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation Original Platform: TurboGrafx-16 Released February 15, 1991 Designed by Kataru Uchimura Developed by Taito
Re-Release Port byRatalaika Games
$9.99 opened an umbrella indoors in the making of this review.
Unlike Bubble Bobble, this isn’t a split decision based on co-op. But seriously, if you get a chance, play this co-op.
One part I missed in the Rainbow Islands review (as featured in Taito Milestones 3: The Definitive Review) is how it really doesn’t feel all that much like a sequel. The Bubble Bobble connection feels forced. Something added after the fact, even if that’s not the case. It doesn’t have enemy-based end-goals and it doesn’t even have co-op. Weirdly, the shoe item, AKA the thing that I hated, is the one and only aspect that feels tied to the first game. But, in the case of Parasol Stars, it’s unambiguously a Bubble Bobble sequel/spin-off. We’re back to room-based, enemy-eliminating gameplay and it’s actually really good. Before I get to the gameplay, the package by ININ and Ratalaika is pretty dang solid, with five out of the six gems in the Infinity Gauntlet of Emulation. The only thing missing is a full tool-assisted gameplay video with optional jump-in. Every other feature is there. Button mapping? Check. Save states? Six slots available (though no quick save/quick load). Rewind? Yep. Hell, Parasol Stars includes some of the more impressive screen filter options I’ve seen. I don’t award “bonus value” for single reviews, but I would be VERY happy with these options if I saw them in a compilation. There’s also an Arcade Archives-like online scoring mode that prevents cheating. I’m 22nd in the world as of this writing. Go me.
There’s also a few quality of life features (which I consider “hardware enhancements, the 5th gem), including cheat toggles and a “fix” for the umbrella. If you play with the toggle off and hold the umbrella out, you walk backwards instead of turning around. It’s much more difficult than it sounds because it’s not really intuitive. An outstretched umbrella basically acts as a shield, and if you’re playing a game and something is shooting you from behind, it’s not instinctive to let go of the button, turn around, then push the button again. I tried Parasol Stars the original way back when the TurboGrafx-16 Mini came out (has it really already been almost five years? Jeez!) and it really is unintuitive. Good call, everyone involved in this release.
I only have one question: where’s the instruction book? This is a pretty abstract game, especially getting the secret doors if you want to play without the cheat codes on, but as far as I could tell, there’s no instruction manual. Again, I don’t do bonus value for single releases, but this is the type of oversight that would earn a game a fine that negates probably around half the bonus value. I can’t stress this enough to developers of commercial emulation releases: DO NOT assume we can find the stuff online! EVER! Neither of my two go-to sites for this type of thing, GameFAQs and StrategyWiki, had anything substantive on the TurboGrafx-16 build of Parasol Stars featured in this release.
And there’s extensive cheat codes. When I played with Angela, I used infinite lives and automatically getting the doors. We weren’t looking for a challenge. We already knew we’d mostly be throwing each-other with the umbrellas. That’s challenge enough. And I didn’t use multi-jump out of respect for Rainbow Islands, which I murdered with it.
So, in Parasol Stars, the object is to use your umbrella to defeat enemies, and as silly as it sounds, it’s one of the most versatile gaming weapons ever created. Like Bubble Bobble, defeating enemies is a two-step process. First, you must stun them, then you can either pick them up and throw them to ultimately defeat them, or throw other enemies into them for more points. Smaller enemies can be stunned directly with the umbrella, but there’s a wide variety of larger enemies (including an entire world based around them) that need to be defeated either by throwing multiple enemies at them or by using special bubbles. Oh, and in co-op, if there’s no downed enemy to use as your projectile, you can always use the other player.
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And, I’m still not done with the umbrella’s abilities. As I said earlier, it acts as a shield, but it also slows your fall in the classic gaming tradition. But, the main thing you need to learn to do is catch little droplets that appear on most of the stages. You need five droplets to create a giant bubble that provides an extra weapon. There’s four, three of which are the old school Bubble Bobble elemental bubbles of fire (that sticks to the floor), water (that cascades down the playfield and sweeps up everything in its path) and lightning (which travels in a straight line across the full length of the playfield). A new element, the star, sends a spiral of death out that’s hard to aim but it takes care of enemies all over the screen and is a little too overpowered in my opinion. In addition to all that, the droplets themselves can be used as weapons. And I haven’t even mentioned all the level-clearing items. Parasol Stars is one of the most flexible combative games ever made. None of that would matter if the combat was no fun, but actually, I liked it so much more than Bubble Bobble, and by a big margin.
The new addition to the formula is enemies that generate other enemies. By the way, this was the level that took Angela and me the longest to defeat, and our accidental ruining of each-other’s attacks was only half the reason.
Parasol Stars just plays better in every way, and I think that’s largely because it’s not an arcade game. It didn’t have to ever be cruel just for the sake of making money. Which isn’t to say that it’s sunshine and hugs. Like Bubble Bobble, some stages are based around figuring out how to reach certain enemies at all, let alone kill them. But, I think the formula works a little better here as the environments of Parasol Stars usually offer many more options, or if not options, clues to the solutions. The most I ever got frustrated was when sometimes the drips of the power bubbles just stopped, seemingly for no reason. I think it was because too many drips were lingering that hadn’t been picked-up. Other times, Parasol Stars becomes absurdly busy, with so much stuff on the screen that it’s hard to keep track of. As more and more enemies start firing projectiles, it can become almost like a mosh pit of a game. Absolute chaos, but it never stops being fun.
Bosses all play out similar to the Super Drunk battle at the end of Bubble Bobble. Hell, Super Drunk is a boss in this game. Grab a bottle to grant you the ability to generate the elemental bubbles. Since you’re not blowing bubbles, you have to hold the umbrella up, which magically conjures the droplets. You can either charge-up for the full elemental attack or you can just throw the droplets themselves. Really, either way works. I don’t think the difficulty of the bosses scales right, and some of them are really tough (and seem like they take more hits than others) but they’re all fun to do battle with, and that’s all I ever cared about.
In the original Bubble Bobble, co-op was transformative, turning a mediocre and over-aggressive experience into a much more enjoyable one. What makes Parasol Stars unique is the game was already a good one, but the co-op is still transformative in a different way. This time around, most of the levels are bigger than the screen itself. But, Parasol Stars is not a split-screen game. Moreover, no one player is “the main player” that controls how or when the screen scrolls. Whoever moves to the edges first scrolls the screen. But, the level design presents roughly the same kind of challenges (only significantly toned-back) as Bubble Bobble, with the same “hold the button to hop on the droplets” gameplay as the first. Oh, and this time you can use each-other as platforms. This turns Parasol Stars into a game where communication and teamwork is absolutely required, especially late in levels. You can be cutthroat with each-other if you wish, but it won’t get you anywhere. On the other hand, having two players flinging enemies often results in levels being beaten without even realizing it. Several times we had to work together to scroll the screen only to see that the enemies were already knocked-out and waiting to be finished-off.
I didn’t remember to get a picture of a level that was bigger than the screen that we got the bottle on. Maybe because we lost and who needs the reminder?
Unlike Bubble Bobble, Parasol Stars’ chaotic nature makes the whole experience inelegant. Even when you really try to work well together, there’s no way of assuring that you can’t interfere with each-other’s work. You can accidentally shoot a player with an item, which will knock the droplets off their umbrella. You can accidentally prevent them from climbing by hitting them with your umbrella. In the heat of battle, you can accidentally stop someone who’s trying to collect an item that will clear the screen. Like my sister did to me. Many, many times, in fact. This wasn’t a situation like Vs. Balloon Fight where we were deliberately betraying each-other. It’s just a very intense action game. It doesn’t look like it, but it doesn’t take long for the screen to become totally full of items, enemies, and droplets. “Move towards me” must have been shouted dozens of times in the hour or so it took us to beat it.
Which isn’t to say we didn’t work well together. For a non-regular gamer, Angela’s score isn’t too far below mine, and we were able to quickly do things like have her help me bounce up to get this bomb here with minimal attempts needed.
That picture there tells you everything you need to know about Parasol Stars. Much like Bubble Bobble, the fact that the non-hardcore gamers in my family could pick-up and play this game, even with its plethora of offensive options, says it all! Maybe we wouldn’t have had as much fun if eating game overs was on the table, but that’s why they put those cheat options as toggles to begin with. They also included options to forgo needing the secret items to get the doors at the end of stages, and I’m all for that. Angela and I played a full session of Parasol Stars and finished it in roughly the same time or maybe even a little sooner than we did Bubble Bobble, and we had a great time. Again.
I’ve decided not to do the European exclusive NES port of Parasol Stars. Oof.
And we both agreed that Parasol Stars stood head and shoulders above Bubble Bobble. Seriously, it’s going to be difficult for the other games in this franchise to defeat it. As much fun as I had playing with my family and especially Angela, Bubble Bobble has some bullsh*t level design that occasionally leads to moments where the fun is gone and frustration and/or annoyance is all there is. But that’s almost never the case with Parasol Stars. Even the tricky stages are typically exciting until you clear them. This is a game that makes very few mistakes, and a game that shines whether you play solo or with friends and family. Parasol Stars is the first Bubble Bobble game I outright love. Verdict: YES!
From what I’ve seen, this is one of the most hyped releases of 2024 for my readers, and there are two main reasons: Bubble Bobble and Rastan. Over half the games in Taito Milestones 3 belong to those franchises (assuming you count Cadash as a Rastan spin-off, and I do). So, let’s get to this review. Taito Milestones 3 retails for $39.99 (digital pre-order price of $35.99) and contains ten games, and so it has to create $40 in value to get my seal of approval. Since all ten games are all sold separately for $7.99 via Arcade Archives, each YES! verdict has a fixed value of $8, meaning Taito Milestones 3 must score five YES! votes out of ten games to break-even and earn my seal. Following the ten games, I’ll tally-up the numbers and render my final verdict. Originally, I had plans for bonus reviews following the ten included games. I’m going to post those separately over the course of this week, including my review of ININ and Ratalaika Games’ re-release of Parasol Stars.
Update: At the time of Taito Milestone 3’s release, Dead Connection, Thunder Fox, and Warrior Blade were exclusive to this collection, but each game has since been released separately for $7.99 with all the bells & whistles of a solo Arcade Archives release. This development does NOT affect my ultimate verdict or the YES!/NO! status of any game in this feature.
You can remap the buttons if you wish. For all my bitching about Arcade Archives, they do handle controls pretty well.
EMULATION & FEATURES
Taito Milestones 3 is the latest collection of somewhat stripped-down versions of Arcade Archives releases from ININ and developer Hamster. The games themselves aren’t the stripped-down part, only the Arcade Archives side of things. If you buy these piece-by-piece, you get two extra modes with each game, at least with most of their releases. This is kind of a big deal, since Hi-Score Mode and Caravan Mode are cheating-proof. In those modes, if you so much as pause the game, the entire run is scrubbed. Taito Milestones 1 – 3 only includes the basic, normal mode for each game. While the games have the full assortment of dip-switches and difficulty settings, and also allow for gaming’s most roundabout save states, Taito 3’s online leaderboards don’t factor any of that stuff in. In my opinion, since the leaderboards never take into account how those scores came about, that makes them completely worthless.
I did create a ton of save states using the interrupt feature, and I did use them to refight a couple bosses I’d already beaten. But otherwise, my 20th is a pretty legit score. I did game over multiple times leading to it, so I was really spared from NEEDING save states, even though I kept generating new save points, I never needed them. I just didn’t die. Actually, come to think of it, all my scores except Bubble Bobble are legit.
I have already reviewed both Taito Milestones 1 and Taito Milestones 2, but this one feels different in terms of star power. Without exaggeration, I heard from some readers they were more excited for Taito 3 than they were Tetris Forever. Whoa. That speaks to how fondly these games are remembered. But, it’s 2024 and we’re still using the same outdated Arcade Archives emulator. There is NO rewind. There is NO quick save or quick load. The effort just isn’t here. I’m a big fan of the Taito Milestones franchise because of the convenience of having ten games in one package, most of which are under-the-radar stuff that you wouldn’t expect to be part of relatively small retro collections. For all my whining for the lack of features, I want to make it clear: I admire ININ’s lineups a hell of a lot more than I do Namco Museum with its endless recycling of Pac-Man and Galaxian. Seemingly no consideration is given for a game’s level of fame, and I admire that. It paid off, too. Volume 2’s most famous game was either Darius II or NewZealand Story, neither of which are exactly globally famous releases. The best game in that set, Liquid Kids, I’d never even heard of before, but it succeeded in being an anchor game good enough to be the star of a ten game coin-op collection. That’s how these things should work, right? Hidden gems become hidden no more if given the chance to shine in a collection. Taito Milestones excels at that idea, and Taito 3 is no different. The best game in THIS collection has never been in a globally-released retro set before. Neato.
Dead Connection allows players to toggle a secondary display for their ammo. I didn’t find it useful.
But, given the fact that these are mostly under-the-radar games, you really want the publisher to put forth their best potential package. Games are NOT made to be timeless. They’re meant to commercially appeal to gamers at the time of release, and if they end up holding up to the test of time, that’s a bonus. But, things can be done to enhance their chances. Coin-ops are often brutally difficult, so giving options like save states or rewind take the edge off. Bubble Bobble doesn’t offer unlimited continues.. or ANY continues, in single player. There’s nothing inherently sacred about the decisions made regarding Bubble Bobble. It’s the way it is because it’s trying to earn $0.25 per play and it needs players to lose in five to ten minutes or less, in order to be profitable by the standards of 1986. But save states would fix that. Rewind would fix it better. But that’s not here. Hamster’s save state methodology is the worst I’ve ever seen, requiring you to exit the game entirely and return to the main Taito Milestones menu. It takes forever.
There are some screen filters, such as scan lines, but there’s no artwork from the original cabinets for wallpaper, with one exception that I’ll get to. For 9 out of the 10 games, the only wallpaper is functionally useless. It’s on right now, in this screenshot. A bland ass gray ribbon. Did you even notice it? I mean come on, Hamster. Once more with feeling, please.
And the weird thing is, they’re NOT lazy! Some of the games have tons of features. I don’t always like using the dip-switch options in MAME, but the menus for what each option does are clear in Hamster’s emulators, so checking the options and applying them is super easy. But, because of the individual release nature of Arcade Archives, not every build in Taito Milestones 3 is given equal consideration. Even something like autofire isn’t consistently an option in every game. Most have it, but Bubble Bobble doesn’t, and I would have liked to have had it. Thankfully, most games do have all the options you absolutely need. Every game supports full button mapping and plenty of display options. This is especially important for a game many consider to be the true crown jewel of Taito Milestones 3, including myself. I’m talking about Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga III, a double-screened release.
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While not as impressive as the triple-screened Darius II from Volume 2, they included a ton of options unique to this title. Do you want arcade-like jankiness to the two-screen effect, which was done using mirrors? Or maybe you want one screen to have more color than the other? If that’s something you’re nostalgic for, you’re weird, but you can do that. It’s also the only game in Taito Milestones 3 that includes the original bezel. For $40, you’d really hope for more bezels than 1 out of 10 games. The wallpaper the other 9 games use is pathetic. Why is it barely better than no wallpaper at all? These games had art assets, flyers, and logos. Couldn’t you cobble something, ANYTHING together? In general, the quality of the options depends on how far back the original Arcade Archives title was released. Bubble Bobble was released way back in 2016, so it doesn’t get a very inspired set of options. However, Rainbow Islands just came out this year, and it’s loaded, and so are the three exclusives to Taito Milestones 3. This is why I’ve decided to note the original Arcade Archives release date of each game. It does matter.
There’s also instruction screens, and like with the options for each game, the more recent the release, the more clear and thorough the instructions are. Bubble Bobble gets six pages that glosses over lots of stuff. Like, it literally doesn’t tell you a single thing about any item. Hamster has gotten MUCH better at their instruction manuals over the years. Rainbow Islands has more pages devoted to the items than Bubble Bobble has pages altogether. Seven pages just for the items, including the conditions you need to meet to spawn them. I give Hamster a lot of crap for what I feel is an outdated emulator, but in recent years, I honestly think they’re better at instruction screens than Digital Eclipse. I don’t take statements like that lightly. They’re currently the cream of the crop for detailed instructions, and that makes the inconsistent quality from game to game that much more frustrating. Well, except for the three exclusive games, all three of which get really tiny and not so helpful instruction books. I had a LOT of Warrior Blade questions and the instruction book answered almost none of them.
For the price you’re paying and the fact that you’re getting significantly less content (a full two modes missing per release), would it have really killed Hamster to update the options for every game included for ININ’s compilations? Treat every game included like it’s a 2024 release! Either way, Taito Milestones continues to leave a LOT to be desired, but there are some quality of life options, so I’m awarding at least $5 in bonus value for all the options included, the most important of which is button mapping and the nearly full range of dip switches. That’s $0.50 per game, times ten games. That seems fair to me for what this offers. If any of these games offered quick save/quick load, I’d probably go $7.50 to the max $10. Taito Milestones 3 has a chance to earn a couple more bucks in bonus value via Rainbow Islands, which has a pretty impressive quality of life menu, including buffing up the game’s responsiveness over the arcade build. If the game gets a YES!, I will add more bonus value.
Having tried Rainbow Islands with the “Improve Game Operation” toggle off (which is the default), honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference. The second line is very cool. Both Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Island are the rare coin-ops that have console-like cheat codes that you can input in the title screen. In Taito Milestones 3, you have to manually put in Bubble Bobble’s cheat codes, but they do work. In Rainbow Islands, the “Preference Settings” menu allows you to auto-input the cheat codes. Very, very cool. I opted to play with the unlimited continues and turning food into money bags.
GAME REVIEWS
For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!
YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.
NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.
IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
Bubble Bobble Platform: Arcade Released June 16, 1986
Arcade Archives Debut: January 29, 2016 Designed by Fukio Mitsuji Developed by Taito
Also Included in Bubble Bobble 4 Friends: The Baron is Back!
This is one of my most requested reviews EVER, and I’m so happy to finally do it.
What is the second most famous Taito game? Obviously Space Invaders is first, but what’s #2? It’s probably either Arkanoid or Bubble Bobble, with Jungle Hunt, Darius, Rastan, or Elevator Action FAR behind them. Between Arkanoid and Bubble Bobble, I think the edge goes to Bubble Bobble, a game I’m declaring to be “King of the B-Listers.” It’s a game everyone knows in the same way everyone knows who Billy Zane or Kato Kaelin are. Were it a person, it’d be the biggest name on any given season of Dancing with the Stars, but it’s still only that famous. Center square on Hollywood Squares level of famous. The very definition of a gaming B-Lister. Games like that thrive on retro collections like Taito Milestone 3, because the unstated part of the classic gaming B-list is that their best days are behind them. Every Bubble Bobble game released in my gaming lifetime, IE 1998 onward? “Eh, it’s okay. I guess.” Yet, when Taito Milestones 3 was announced with Bubble Bobble being the anchor game? People got excited. Maybe Bubble Bobble is washed-up, but there’s still love for it out there. And yet, it didn’t take long for me to realize why Bubble Bobble never lasted as an elite gaming franchise.
I want to say that Bubble Bobble would have made a better home game than an arcade game. Removed from the pressure of having to earn $0.25 every five minutes or so, this might have been one of the all time greats. When Bubble Bobble cooks, it REALLY cooks. But when it’s trying too hard to kick players off the cabinet or make them drop another quarter? It becomes one of the most unlikable games out there.
I thought Bubble Bobble was held in high esteem in the same way Battletoads is: an impossibly difficult game built specifically for two players that’s legitimately fun when it’s still warming-up. But, once it gets warmed up, it actually becomes an actively bad game. At least when you’re playing by yourself. It turns out that, unlike Battletoads, co-op will save the day here, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The core gameplay is positively inspired. Spitting bubbles at enemies, then bursting them for the kill (presumably via decompression) is one of the most satisfying combat methods of the era. Moreover, Bubble Bobble does a fantastic job of incentivizing bursting enemies in clusters with the E-X-T-DIFFERENT E-N-D letters. When you actually spell EXTEND, the over-the-top animation that follows is nothing short of breathtaking.
And it’s an automatic warp to the next level, a fact that bailed me out at least twice in my full solo 100 level run.
Then you take into account how far ahead of its time Bubble Bobble is. Each room has its own “physics” for lack of a better term. There’s an invisible air current in every level that affects the drift of the bubbles. Being invisible, it’s something you have to discover and ultimately use. Your bubbles can act as platforms if you hold down the jump button, and about one-third of the way through Bubble Bobble, the game completely shifts in its tone and turns into a jumping puzzle/escape room game where the challenge isn’t generally the enemies, but rather how you reach them at all. The first stage indicative of tonal shift being level 35. It looks like this:
The stage only has a few of the most basic enemies, but they’re not the problem. Getting to them without accidentally jumping into them is. From this point onward, Bubble Bobble will regularly drop you off in stages that are genuine puzzles when it comes to how to make progress at all. And in those rare stages that are still entirely combat focused, the combat isn’t anything like how things were when the game started. In early stages, when you trapped enemies in bubbles, you had time to burst them before the enemies “hatched” and reemerged in ultra-fast “pissed-off mode.” But, that doesn’t last long.
I get why the coin-op is stingy with fun items like the “spit fire” cross, but once or twice in 100 levels just isn’t enough.
For the midway point of the game to 99th and final “normal” level, most stages see the enemies almost immediately hatch from trapped bubbles. Most of my deaths were from attempting to burst an enemy I just caught, only the physics don’t cooperate. Instead of the bubbles reliably popping, they might recoil ever so slightly, which gives the baddie trapped within enough time to hatch, meaning I’m dead since I’m still mid-jump and right next to the bubble. That would be annoying enough, but combined with level design that feels optimized to kill you by either timing-out or funneling you directly into the bad guys, it sure seems like Bubble Bobble is done with the fun and is now doing everything in its power to get you off the machine so the next person drops a quarter in it. There are NO continues if you’re playing solo, meaning if you lose all your lives, it’s game over no matter how far you’ve made it.
It was Thanksgiving Day when I played this level, and after an hour trying to beat it and god knows how many times quitting to the title screen and reloading the “Interrupt Save” that I’d generated, I slapped a $20 bill on the table and said if anyone could get this, the money was theirs. But, nobody did because nobody had played Bubble Bobble yet. I did eventually climb up.. and overshot the landing, ending up in the letters where I couldn’t get down. Twice. After about four or five rage quits, I finally wiggled up and out of the starting box. The secret is to just spam the bubbles while changing directions as fast as you can. It’s also easier to do it without the shoes. I’m pretty sure they just doubled the movement values for your character instead of making elegant, logical speed-up. Oh, and the shoes make jumping weirdly heavy. I hated them.
Again, this would make for a great home game, but this Bubble Bobble isn’t a home game. In fact, the home games tried to copy the arcade design, so even most home versions aren’t much better. Eventually, Bubble Bobble’s level design and cheap tactics had almost completely drained the fun out of the experience. I think when people say they adore Bubble Bobble, they’re either talking about the first thirty stages or they played co-op. Famously, you can only get the “happy ending” in co-op, but I got it playing 100% solo just by hitting Player 2 start when I knew the death of the final boss was imminent. It worked, but the ending I got wasn’t even the legitimate real good ending. It turns out that Bubble Bobble shares a lot of DNA with Tower of Druaga and features tons of hidden secrets. Like, if you don’t die once for the first 20, 30, and finally 40 levels, the special items in those stages are replaced by doors that take you to hidden rooms. I didn’t get any in my first play-through, but I did during a second run.
But, I didn’t actually beat the game twice, at least by myself. Actually, I was pretty miserable by the time I finished the game for the first time. If Bubble Bobble had kept the same core gameplay from the first couple dozen levels but just upped the movement speed of the enemies, I probably would have liked the game a whole lot more. I probably rage quit a dozen times when I played with the attitude that Bubble Bobble ought to be a cutesy game about dinosaurs blowing spit bubbles at enemies. But, when I looked at the levels like 8-bit miniature escape rooms, well.. I won’t say I had more fun, because I wasn’t having any fun at all. Instead, I was less annoyed, mostly because I was too preoccupied with the escape room mentality to be annoyed. Even then, when I see levels like this one:
I think the line is crossed from “genuinely trying to be fun” to “trying to trigger a game over by any and all means necessary, including outright underhanded tactics.” By the time you reach the last ten levels, Bubble Bobble is one the most shamelessly money grubbing in terms of its level design and punishing anyone not playing with a second player. It’s actually not a surprise that the franchise didn’t have staying power given the shift from quirky, novel fun to wanton cruelty. The concept of Bubble Bobble works, but the game is so mean-spirited by the end. When the difficulty started ramping-up, I was cheering every time I beat a tough stage, but after a while, cheers were replaced with sighs of relief. 100 levels is too much, too, especially since the back half of them are so brutal that they feel like a sadistic ROM hack of the game you had been playing. Imagine Super Mario Bros. if the Lost Levels were just the back half of the game. Yea, you’re doubling the level content, but it’s not fun, so who cares? The most annoying thing of all is it didn’t have to be this way. EVERYTHING I’ve written about would have been fixed by modern emulation options. Quick save/quick load and/or rewind would have been transformative of Bubble Bobble while not in any way hurting it. Some games don’t need crutches, but Bubble Bobble does. Or, at least it does if you’re flying solo.
SPLIT DECISION – SINGLE PLAYER BUBBLE BOBBLE
Since I beat this ten days before Taito Milestones 3 released, I assume this leaderboard must be the standard Arcade Archives leaderboard. That or they sent out TONS of review copies. Either way, I wasn’t exactly collecting every item and I still finished 59th all-time, on a leaderboard that you can absolutely cheat on and still make it.
Sadly, Taito 3’s inconvenient save state method means Bubble Bobble has to stand on its own, with no help. As a single player game, it doesn’t do it. And honestly, I think I’m the easiest game critic out there, because I have the lowest threshold to earn a positive review. The rule to getting a YES! is “I have to have more fun than not.” 50.01% fun to 49.99% awful? That’s a YES! Bubble Bobble wasn’t even close to the line. In my single-player run, it was about 30% lots of fun and 70% pain and suffering. Really, the only good thing I can say about Bubble Bobble’s endgame is the final boss is pretty dang good. It makes me wonder why they didn’t have more bosses? But, that was the lone shining highlight for the back half of the game. So, at this point, I’m going to do something unusual. I’m going to render two separate verdicts for one game. If you have NOBODY to play with.. Verdict: NO! But this review is not over.
SPLIT DECISION: CO-OP BUBBLE BOBBLE
The “MTJ” here is the initials of Bubble Bobble designer Fukio Mitsuji, who tragically died at only 48 years of age in 2008. For all my whining about the solo-mode, there’s no question that Mitsuji made a sublime multiplayer game. So, I’d like everyone to lift a glass. 🍺 To Fukio Mitsuji, a real one, taken too soon, who left an indelible mark in gaming. Thank you for the creation of Bubble Bobble & Rainbow Islands. Cheers to you! 🍻
Let’s talk about co-op. Bubble Bobble’s two player game is clearly its strongest aspect. How strong? I played three multiplayer sessions. In the first session, my playing partner was Sasha, my 9 year old niece who is not versed in classic gaming beyond what she’s seen me play. She’d never even heard of Bubble Bobble when I told her a few months ago I’d need someone to play this with. After giving me the runaround for a couple days, probably due to my annoyance at the single player experience, she finally sat down to play this with me and.. she loved it. Not only did she enjoy the game, but she became really excited when she found out there’s a bunch of Bubble Bobble games out there. “Are you doing those too? Can I play too?” And, even though I was “grouchy” while playing in single player, yeah, I had a great time too. My unofficial motto at IGC is “find the fun” and Bubble Bobble is one of those games where I absolutely NEEDED a second person to help me with that.
Even with 100 levels, it’s not a long game with a second player. Angela and I did a complete 100% playthrough, and even with a couple breaks, we didn’t make it through two episodes of Angela’s new favorite show, Boardwalk Empire. Good show, by the way. No clue why I kept starting it and stopping it. Finally watched it all the way through. For sure worth a look. (Happy, Sis?)
Even funnier is that once the rest of my family saw how much fun we were having, we started over and played a second time, where players who ate a game over passed the controller to the next in line in a way where everyone got paired with everyone else at least once. The last time we did that with a game in our house, it was Three Stooges on December 6 of last year, and it was one of the most memorable and joyous days of my gaming life. Almost exactly a year later, Bubble Bobble did that for us. Tis the season, I guess?! But, to be clear, everything I wrote above in the single player section is still true, with two exceptions. The first, and most important, is that you get unlimited continues in co-op, provided both players are on-the-ball and immediately come back to life upon dying. If you both game over at the same time, I’m pretty sure there’s no grace period and the game truly is over, so don’t mess around. If you want to be extra certain, just lay down save states once in a while between stages.
I actively wondered if we broke the game here. The HURRY UP!! warning never came, and neither did the lightning bolts that I figured you needed. We never made it this far when the whole family was playing because the difficulty spike led to levels designed for pain and not pleasure. We made it into level 72 as a family, aka HI-TECH with the jails in the corner pictured above. I made it roughly the same distance with Sasha, and the fun stopped when we got stuck on some of the more, ahem, ridiculous designs. But, when it was just me and Angela, without the chaos of family yelping and hollering, we could better coordinate. I recommend that, when possible, you designate one player the bubble blower and one the jumper. I was the jumper since my sister couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of holding down on the jump button to ride the bubbles. It didn’t help for HI-TECH, but wouldn’t you know it? I got out in like five seconds that time. Weird. It’s also worth noting that level 99 is so ridiculous that I had to use my controller and hers and beat the stage all by myself since it’s not tailored to novice gamers.
Like the single player game, the fun still has a chance of eventually trickling away, but there’s also a lot more moments that shine very bright thanks completely to co-op. Levels that I was breathing out a sigh of relief in single player saw us cheering and slapping high-fives in co-op. More often than not, it’s based on climbing. It’s hard to both spit a bubble, then turn around and climb it. It’s so much easier when one player is designated the jumper and the other is the bubble maker. There’s so much more flexibility you have, depending on the stage and the current. There’s also a LOT more stage-clearing items. It’s very noticeable and it absolutely made a difference for the first, oh, 90 levels in my run with Angela. But, the home stretch started giving us shoes or candy instead of the valuable bombs. We still got very frustrated on a few of the levels. The stage pictured above? #97? That took us about ten minutes by itself to get those last two enemies. We really thought we broke the game.
The “race to get the most items” bottles REALLY appeared more frequently. Which was fine with us since you automatically win the stage whether you collect all the items or not.
Bubble Bobble’s endgame isn’t cheerful or friendly at all, and that doesn’t change in co-op. BUT, without exaggeration, this feels completely different with a second player. Remember the family session I talked about above? That speaks to the greatest strength of the game: anyone can learn it really quick. Some players weren’t getting turns until we were dozens of levels into the game, but when it was their turn, they were up to speed and contributing REALLY fast. And that says it all. Usually, the only co-op games where someone can jump in with no experience and not be a drag are brawlers. Bubble Bobble is in a unique class. For all the sloppiness, and all the jank, its reputation as one of the greatest co-op games of all time is completely legit. So yea, if you’re playing by yourself and there’s little to no chance of finding a playing partner, I don’t recommend Bubble Bobble. It’s pure gaming agony solo. But in co-op? It’s easy now for me to understand why it’s considered one of the greats that came at the end of the Golden Age of Arcades. I don’t think it’s “great” and hell, I’d still call Bubble Bobble “overrated.” But, it’s still a solid co-op game nearly forty years later, and yes, still worth a look in 2024 and beyond. Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
Cadash Platform: Arcade Released September 4, 1989
Arcade Archives Debut: August 31, 2023 Directed by Hiroshi Tsujino Developed by Taito
There’s a lot to like about Cadash, including some damn good combat. It’s a good looking game, too.
I was very skeptical of Cadash. Of all the coin-ops I’ve reviewed, or even console ports of coin-ops, it’s easily the one that goes the deepest into full-fledged RPG mechanics. Forget Tower of Druaga, which really isn’t an RPG anyway. THIS is the most RPG-like so far. Experience points? Check. Currency and shops? Check. Lots of NPCs to talk to, most of which have nothing of substance to say? Check. Having to purchase weapon upgrades? Check. Magic? Check. This isn’t something vaguely resembling an RPG. This is the real deal. Cadash’s closest kin is probably Zelda II or the Wonder Boy in Monster Land games that I’ve never played (except the third one, a home exclusive). So, how much fun did I have with Cadash? I had such a good time that I bought the Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection with the intention that it’ll get the full IGC Definitive Review treatment in 2025. I’d skipped it because I had no interest in arcade RPGs. I think the greatest possible compliment someone like me can give any game is that it stokes more than a passing interest in its genre. So yea, Cadash is pretty good. Sometimes. Other times, Cadash seems to be trying really hard to be unlikable.
Hell, even the bosses aren’t too spongy. That’s a place anyone would expect a game to be a butthole, but Cadash isn’t at all. Depending on if you do just a little bit of grinding, most can be defeated in just a few seconds.
Cadash is one of the more up and down games I’ve played. When it works the way you want it too, it’s undeniably fun. I’m playing this directly after finishing Rastan Saga II, aka the worst game in this set. THIS should have been Rastan Saga II. There’s four characters you can choose from, and if you play as the fighter, Cadash’s gameplay will feel VERY familiar if you play Rastan first. From the ropes to the stiff movement to the jumping physics and platforming, Cadash is basically Rastan, only with better combat and a better variety of enemies. Oh, it can be frustrating for sure. A lot of the enemies seem like some damage is unavoidable when dealing with them. This applies to indestructible background stuff, like giant hands that smash out of the floor. The safety zone for them is very small, but you simply don’t move fast enough to avoid them without a lot of luck. Later on in the graveyard, lightning strikes with almost no warning. When I fell into fire pits, I found the only way I could climb out was to turn the opposite direction and allow myself to keep getting knocked back from damage in the direction I wanted to go. I had to remind myself constantly that Cadash is trying to suck quarters, and more than a few times, it’s pretty shameless about it.
If you only play as one character, I easily had the most fun with the Priestess, who has a whip-like chain mace that has reach and can attack diagonally. Oh and don’t ask what that little version of me running around is. One of the most silly power-ups I’ve ever seen.
Thankfully, there’s unlimited continues. Plus, the downtime when you need to start a new life is as minimal as I’ve ever seen in a game like this. Almost instantaneous, though that comes at a big cost: no swapping characters between credits. A bigger problem is there’s no map, and I think you need one. There’s some backtracking, especially at the end of the game. I almost feel like I lucked into picking the correct directions more than once. I’m guessing NPCs were supposed to be more clear than they are about where to go. While I never came THAT close to timing-out (a timer is running the whole time, but it resets when you die and come back to life), the backtracking was the closest I came to being bored. Hell, I’m not embarrassed to admit that, even after beating the game with the “Fighter” (I kept calling it the Warrior), I still found myself going around in circles in some areas. Of course, that wasn’t entirely my fault. See, Cadash has a bit of a problem handling talking-based events, and it nearly ruins the entire game.
Fighting the kraken took me FOREVER with the fighter, since I’m pretty sure the down thrust attack won’t reach its body. You have to instead target the tentacles. I beat it in about ten seconds with the Priestess.
The timer never stops when you talk to NPCs, and near the end of my first playthrough, a couple different talking moments were supposed to trigger an event, but it didn’t happen the first time. At one point, I was stuck in a house for several minutes because I didn’t talk to the NPC the “correct way” I guess. I genuinely thought there was a chance I’d soft-locked the game, because I talked to the woman a few times, but it wouldn’t let me leave the house. After listening to her full dialog repeat multiple times, I finally was lined up with her in a way where I got an item that let me out of the house, but over two minutes had been eaten up. Later, it was a headstone that I had to talk to a couple times to activate. In my fourth and final playthrough, it was the gate after beating the first boss that wouldn’t activate, then later the gravestone glitch happened even worse than before. It played the “you got the item” music indicating I’d gotten the item that turns you into Dr. Doolittle. But, when I went to talk to the dog, it didn’t work. I thought I missed something and spent quite a long time going around in circles, talking and re-talking to every single person until I determined that the gravestone “moment” which had already f*cked up once on me had f*cked up again. And I was right. Had I not found a guide that told me I had to strike the grave a few times to force getting the pendant, I’d have never finished my final run.
What’s really infuriating about this is I believe these specific issues were deliberately left in the game in order to squeeze more quarters out of players. This feels like the type of thing that any amount of play testing would eliminate. They’re just too easy to trigger and happen constantly! There’s no way this was a simple oversight. But, it’s always the house that benefits from these “incidents” and I genuinely feel like someone in charge said “leave ’em in! Operators will love us for them!” They eat up time, cause people to run around trying to figure out what they missed, and ultimately shake the player down for more quarters. “You have to listen to ALL the dialog” isn’t good enough. I did listen to all the dialog! But maybe I wasn’t standing in the right spot or maybe I pressed the wrong button. I’ve been playing video games since I was 7 and I’ve never seen a game that f*cks up such a simple mechanic as handing you the key items when you talk to the right people like Cadash does.
Ignore the timer. You’ll die from combat damage long before it runs out.
Given the circumstances and Taito’s track record, yea, I think it’s deliberate. Just having unlimited quarters is the ultimate quality of life improvement. Had I been reviewing a game that cost $0.25 per life, I’d give Cadash the biggest NO! I’ve ever given. This is an arcade game that actively grifts players. But, removed from the arcade environment and given unlimited time and continues, these problems just become massive annoyances. It’s certainly not “charming” or homespun or anything like that. These aspects straight-up suck and there’s nothing redeeming about them. Cadash as a game in Taito Milestones 3 is a good game despite those things, and not because of it. Of all the games in this collection, this is the one I’d love to see a modern remake of the most. Everything that’s fun about Cadash would be more fun with modern gaming conveniences. Take casting spells, for example. In order to activate them with the wizard or priestess, you have to hold down the same button that’s a melee attack. A little word bubble pops up and begins cycling through the spells you’ve learned, and when you see one you want, you let go of the button. I’m sure in 1989 this was a pretty good solution, and I especially like that, the next time you cast a spell, it’s already on the same spell you last used. But, these days you’d have shoulder buttons to scroll with and more face buttons to activate.
I didn’t mind that it scrolled a little too fast when casting a spell. At least that felt like a proper timing-based challenge. I should also note that I died so often that I never ran out of magic points until the end of the game either time I played.
And while I’m on the subject of magic, if you’re going to have a spell-casting character, making too many enemies immune to magic is just a prickish thing to do. I really enjoyed the combat of Cadash, but that’s entirely situational. I didn’t enjoy using the ninja or his throwing stars at all, and the wizard just isn’t fun to play as. If you’re going to try Cadash, and I’m giving it a YES! so obviously I think you should, I recommend you play as the fighter or priestess. With either of those characters, Cadash is a haphazard, deliberately sloppy action-RPG carried by some damn satisfying combat. It’s short. A full run through will take about an hour, even if you stop to grind-up a few levels. Since the combat is enjoyable enough, grinding never feels like a grind. The RPG notes it HAD to do right, IE the weapon upgrades and sense of progress, are well done. It doesn’t always play fair, but since you’re not ponying up a quarter a play, technically you aren’t either. So, Cadash is the rare game that’s better today than it was upon release. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it’s nice to see. Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3 And no, you can’t do the linked-cabinet thing. Two players only. Sorry.
Champion Wrestler Platform: Arcade Released August, 1989
Arcade Archives Debut: September 8, 2022 Designed by Atsushi Iwaoka Directed by Takeshi Murata Developed by Taito
I think most wrestling fans my age or older will agree that games that used the AKI Engine, which started in America with WCW vs. nWo: World Tour in 1997 and ended with WWF No Mercy in 2000, was the height of video wrestling. I’ve met the occasional outlier who says Fire Pro Wrestling, but I never really liked those all that much, or really, any wrestling games except AKI developed ones. They felt like they best replicated the give-and-take nature of pro wrestling that makes you build up to the big, strong moves with striking and weaker grapple attacks, leading to matches that looked more like what you saw on TV than any other wrestling game. I bring this up because I suspect the team behind Champion Wrestler was trying really hard to get the little details right without consideration for the big picture. I was immediately amused by seeing wrestlers stomp the mat as they threw punches. I mean, come on! I’ve never seen a wrestling game do that before, and it has the right sound effect and everything! I think it’s safe to say that Taito deliberately leaned into the simulated violence aspect of pro wrestling, as you don’t have to make contact on punches and kicks at all, but in a good “yea, that’s wrestling!” type of way. Not only does it not feel like “bad collision” in the traditional sense, but it also never feels like it’s mocking the source material. To Champion Wrestler’s credit, it’s completely sincere. And it should be, because that’s what makes wrestling fun, right?
Occasionally, managers will throw weapons into the ring, and the referee starts counting against you (or the CPU) when a weapon is used. I tried to deliberately get disqualified, but you automatically drop the weapon on the count of four. There’s also illegal choke holds and even biting that, again, the referee gives you a four count before the move is automatically broken. So, there’s no disqualifications, but there is a 20 count rule outside the ring. Champion Wrestler is really fickle about other rules, like rope breaks. They do happen, but I won a lot of matches when my opponent was practically under the bottom rope. Weirdly, rope breaks happened more during cage matches, where logically there should be no rules.
The in-ring action of Champion Wrestler probably does a better job of feeling like wrestling than any game had up to this point, but there’s still a big limit to that. You can run the ropes by tapping a direction twice, but you can only hit the ropes moving left and right. You can’t hit the ropes up and down, even though you can run up and down. Weird. You can climb the ropes, but in the entire time I was playing, I never hit a move off the top rope on a down opponent, and when I hit one on a standing opponent, it didn’t do enough damage to make it worth the risk. Actually, consistency was a big issue in general. Even with one of the best instruction manuals in Taito Milestones 3, I couldn’t really pull off any specific move with any consistency, including pinning. Sometimes I would just stutter-step around an opponent. Sometimes I instead attacked. Other times, I would perform a diving pinning attack only when the opponent got up. The same goes for grappling, or even just initiating the act of grappling. I ran through the game with each character, plus all the multiplayer we did, and I still never could do anything with any consistency except basic striking moves. The CPU was constantly able to switch from a front grapple to a rear grapple, but I don’t recall me or the kids ever doing that once. I was startled when I saw it was even possible.
When *I* was a kid, unless it was a Hell in a Cell match or a War Games match, cage matches were won by whoever escaped the cage first. If a gigantic wrestler cut a hole in the ring, crawled through it, and threw you into the cage so hard the cage broke and you landed lifelessly outside the ring, you still won the match. Here, it’s functionally a normal match where you just can’t run the ropes. Try to do that, and you’ll brain yourself on the cage. But otherwise, it’s still pins and submission to win. There are a couple little touches to make cage matches stand out, especially if you do a move in a way that the wrestler hits the cage. A few of the wrestlers do the “giant swing” where you grab someone by the feet and spin around, which is apparently a submission hold in this game since you can tap out to it. But, if they’re next to the cage, the same move just bangs you into the cage once. It looks kind of silly when it happens, but again, I mean silly in an authentic pro wrestling way.
So, what I’m saying is that my success or failure in Champion Wrestler came down to good ole’ fashioned button mashing. To my credit, Taito makes it clear this is the object. In addition to a normal health meter, you have a power meter that charges via movement of the stick (or d-pad) and button mashing that increases the damage done by all moves AND increases the likelihood of a pin or submission being successful. The submissions are the game’s weakness. You would think that if someone grabs a submission hold and it doesn’t work, the other person would at least get to stand up. That’s how the AKI games I was raised on work, and it makes sense because that’s proper risk/reward gameplay, right? It discourages spamming those moves, because if you don’t get a submission, your opponent gets a virtual reset and a chance to come back. Unfortunately, Champion Wrestler has no such buffer in place. You can put someone in the same hold three, four, or even more times in a row without giving them a chance to defend themselves. And it has nothing to do with how much life they have, either. It makes sense you can’t scrape yourself off the canvas if you’re completely drained of energy, but what if you still have most of it when this sequence of consecutive submission holds begins? In fact, this is how the CPU often beat me, not just when I had the game on the default difficulty setting, but even on the easy setting in later matches.
There’s also not enough penalty for missing running strikes or diving strikes on downed opponents.
If all that sounds discouraging, don’t let it be, because honestly I had more fun with Champion Wrestler than I have in my limited experience with other 80s/90s arcade wrestling games. I did something a little different with Champion Wrestler than my normal review process. My nieces and nephew, ages 9 to 13, are all big wrestling fans and, the day I played this for review, their friends were coming over for a viewing party for the latest WWE event on Peacock. I thought “getting them to play Bubble Bobble might be like pulling teeth, but I bet they’re all primed for an old school wrestling game!” The kids agreed to give it a shot, and I just watched, curious to see how quickly they all wanted to quit, but that never happened. Instead, Champion Wrestler’s pick-up-and-play action meant that everyone could immediately have fun and not have to ease into the game. The learning curve is nearly non-existent, and at first, they only complained about the time limit after the first couple matches ended with time running out. Thankfully, not only can match time be increased via the dip switches, but the actual speed the clock counts down can be adjusted too. I highly recommend that players do not use the default settings with Champion Wrestler.
I asked the kids if they could guess who each wrestler was supposed to be based on. I was surprised that the kids correctly guessed two of the eight wrestlers, though they had heard of Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat as well. I’m giving them credit for Road Warrior Animal, even though the kids got into an argument over whether it was Hawk or Animal. It’s Animal. Hawk had a reverse mohawk. The one they unambiguously got right? Andre the Giant, of course!
How did it go after I made the adjustments? Well, I asked the kids for “just a few minutes” and they kept playing it right up until the show started. Hell, their parents wanted to play too. And everyone had so much fun that they asked me to pencil-in doing reviews for other retro arcade wrestling games for Wrestlemania week this next year, even though I couldn’t promise they’d like them as much. “You know, if they’re bad, we still have to play them! That’s how reviews work!” They were down! So, yea, apparently they liked Champion Wrestler a lot, with my nephew saying he thought it was almost as fun as WWE 2K24. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing for Champion Wrestler or a bad thing for WWE 2K24, and he told me that’s his favorite PS5 game. Mind you, none of these kids had EVER played a 2D wrestling game, but they really liked this one, and when I asked what was their favorite thing, they said they thought it was “like wrestling.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought stomping while punching was a nice touch. “It’s funny” was another common complement, and indeed when any two players got into an extended sequence of missing pin attempts, everyone laughed. It looked exactly like a comedy wrestling match. We also were ALL freaked out by the twisted static screens between rounds, one of which has the words KILL YOU written in blood behind the wrestler, whose manager is handing him a gun. What the hell? Seriously, IS IT IMPLYING WHAT I THINK IT IS?
This feels like the start of an episode of Dark Side of the Ring. Or the ending of one.
The complaints were also pretty universal, and besides the lack of tag team matches, the most common one was there was no finishing move meter. Each wrestler has unique moves, but they’re not necessarily devastating finishers. One of the wrestlers’ big moves is just a small package, which for the unwashed is a fancy type of pin that isn’t supposed to hurt at all. Another complaint was nobody could figure out how to throw a wrestler into the ropes. Not that it mattered, because the wrestler being whipped can still do their flying attack on the rebound. It also became clear really quick that Champion Wrestler doesn’t have the type of balance you want from a fighting game. The running attacks are the easiest to perform, and for one character in particular, the Samurai, the flying attack is a Liu Kang-like flying dropkick. It not only covers the full length of the ring if your power meter is fully charged but it’s also probably the fastest move in the game. It was so annoying that we agreed to ban the character because there’s really no way to block, and it was too easy for someone to spam that move. In general, the kids would have preferred a bigger roster and more ease of grappling, and I agree with all of that. But, we had so much fun that my nieces and nephew wanted to play it again the next day.
Good move. Too bad I couldn’t pull it off with regularity. To Champion Wrestler’s credit, all the wrestlers feel different from each-other. They have varying levels of speed and strength, and different moves. Even their strikes and diving attacks are different. This is impressive for the time period, even with the short roster.
We didn’t have as much fun on the second day. To be clear, we still had fun, but we also were unable to get any better than we were the day before. After we all got sick of button mashing, we tried to actually be able to pull off moves with consistency, and none of us were able to. The two-button gameplay is just too limited and too inconsistent. Even when we played by ourselves against a standing-still second player, it still felt like pure luck when we pulled off a good move twice in a row. As fun as Champion Wrestler can be, you never forget that this was made to be just good enough to keep kids pumping quarters into it for fifteen minutes at an arcade in 1989/1990. It plays the way it does because it needs players to be able to walk up to the machine and play well enough to see moves right away, in your first match. It’s nothing short of remarkable that it holds up as much as it does in 2024. It aged well enough that kids who watch the modern wrestling product and play modern wrestling games couldn’t put it down. But, the lack of refined controls, inconsistent grappling system, and exploitable submission holds will eventually cause the fun to wear off. Champion Wrestler is the rare game where we didn’t have as much fun when we tried to play it “right.” But, in small doses with the right audience? You don’t need to know how to play it right to have a good time. If that’s not the mark of a solid arcade fighter, I don’t know what is. Verdict: YES! – $8 in Value added to Taito Milestones 3
Dead Connection Platform: Arcade Released July/August, 1992 Arcade Archives Debut: February 27, 2025 Directed by Masaki Ogata, Ichiro Fujisue, and Hidehiro Fujiwara Developed by Taito
I can’t remember playing a game that I had an easier time losing my place on the screen, and that was in single player! When I tried playing this in co-op, I suddenly felt comfortable declaring Dead Connection to be the worst “lose your place” game I’ve ever played.
I’ll give this to Dead Connection: at least it’s totally different from any other Taito coin-op I’ve reviewed so far, and I think that’s probably a good thing. It’s a single-screen at a time action game where you’re dropped off in the middle of the action and have to take out wave after wave of baddies. You really want this to be Taito’s answer to Robotron: 2084, Berzerk, or similar arena blasters. But, even if the core gameplay is like those games, it never feels like it belongs to the same genre. Hell, Dead Connection feels more like a light gun game without the light guns. Five years earlier, Taito had seen great success with Operation Wolf, and it’s a safe bet they always had their eye on further arcade shooters along those lines. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dead Connection started development with that intention, possibly as a hybrid game where you provided cover to the on-screen hero instead of having enemies attack you directly, only Taito abandoned the light guns to turn this into a 360° wave shooter. I hope so, at least. It would explain why this is so bland.
Even with only eight levels, there are some set pieces. Like in this stage, you can set off a bomb by shooting the switch up against the wall. At least, I think it was me doing it. It’s hard to tell. There’s a chance it was just something that happened in regular intervals. Also, it was this game and not Growl/Runark that was the most intense for my epilepsy.
Dead Connection’s biggest problem is the action just isn’t very fun. It is incredibly busy, and while it’s satisfying to pick up a shotgun and blast a huge cluster of enemies, the fun doesn’t last. The presence of bosses who don’t look like gaming “big bosses” takes a tommy gun to immersion. Most enemies are dead in one shot. You know, like how guns are supposed to work, but then guys who look almost indistinguishable from normal baddies will take a shotgun blast to the body. Then they get up and take another, and another, and another, and MAKE IT STOP! It’s ridiculous looking when it happens, too. It looks like the boss is doing the worm, but eventually they’ll get shots off too. In over half of the eight levels during my first playthrough, I died at the same time as the boss did and pressed start just in time to see the LEVEL CLEAR graphic. There wasn’t a single decent boss fight in this whole game. They’re all lame as hell, and all of them feel like spongy normal enemies.
Honestly, besides the immersion-busting bosses, Dead Connection doesn’t exactly do anything wrong. It even has some aspects I enjoy. The environments are interactive, so if there’s doors somewhere on the screen, you can walk into a building and open fire on any enemies hiding within. It doesn’t change the screen or anything like that when it happens. Actually, you can’t really see what you’re doing, but it’s still a neat idea. My father thinks that I’m wrong about the light gun thing and that the real inspiration was “that game show game.” He’s talking about Smash TV, and perhaps he’s right. But, that’s the thing, you see. That game is a twin stick shooter, and Dead Connection isn’t. If you want to aim, you have to move the way you’re aiming. It’s such an outdated way of handling this type of wave shooter.
This.. totally normal looking person is the final boss. And I’m almost certain he got stuck on the scenery. This was probably the easiest battle in the entire game. The dude couldn’t move! It was fish in a barrel!
I loves me some good twin stick shooting action. Who doesn’t? I think that if Dead Connection had gone that route but changed nothing else, it would have been just good enough to squeak by with a tiny YES! Without twin stick gameplay, Dead Connection is actually a stunningly bland game that relies too heavily on set pieces to make up for some of the most boring enemies I’ve ever seen. Pretty ho-hum weapons too, actually. The best part of its offensive game is a satisfying dodge maneuver, but even that was only really effective against bosses. Weirdly, Dead Connection is the simplest game in Taito Milestones 3, and that’s stunning because it’s the newest game on here, releasing a few months after Warrior Blade. I suspect that it’s a game Taito gave up on, but one that made it too far along in development to outright cancel. Whatever the reasons why this didn’t work, Dead Connection is just not that fun. Verdict: NO!
Growl aka Runark (its name in Taito Milestones 3) Platform: Arcade Released in 1990
Arcade Archives Debut: July 27, 2023 Directed by Hidehiro Fujiwara Developed by Taito
Indiana Jones and the Quest for Intellectual Property Protection.
Oh, thank God. Finally, a relatively uncomplicated review. Growl is a mostly boilerplate beat ’em up with the amount of moves and OOMPH you would expect from this era. The big twist is this one has an environmental theme about the evils of poaching attached to it. It’s also a game that I got a ton of potential epilepsy warnings about. Thankfully, the flashes are brief and usually predictable. In fact, the heroes of this game will literally duck and cover when an explosive is thrown. In terms of presentation, Growl/Runark has more personality than almost any brawler had up to this point. It’s genuinely laugh-out-loud funny at times, to the point that it feels like a deadpan satire. You know the trope of scrolling along while playing a brawler and someone breaks through a door to join the fray? When that happens in Growl, the baddie falls through the broken door. How can you not laugh? And then, right before I fought the final boss, get this, the game began to glitch out before freezing entirely. As far as comedic timing goes, it was perfect. For a second, I really thought I broke the.. game.. hey wait, that’s not a joke, is it?
What you’re not seeing after that clip is the game really was frozen solid, and my run was over literally right before the last boss. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything except insert quarters. Actually, it caps you at nine credits, but when I froze the game, I could put in more. So yea, that part wasn’t so funny. Okay, it was a little funny. And, it only happened that one time (I beat it three times total), though that was my only session that would have cracked the leaderboard so I’m slightly annoyed. Otherwise, Runark is fine as a two button brawler that goes just a little beyond the extra mile. As you go along, you get a chance to directly save animals from poachers. If you do so, the animals will help you later on, and it’s genuinely thrilling when it happens. Runark has more enemies on screen than almost any brawler I’ve ever seen, but typically when the game goes nuts with enemies, it pays it off by sending in your animal friends to help. And it’s always exciting when it happens!
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Now, with all that said, the combat is really limited and basic, with all attacks mapped to one button, though this game does the “hit both buttons at the same time for a special move” thing. Is there a name for that? It doesn’t even cost you life to do it, either (apparently the Genesis version added that), but the catch is you have to be close. As long as there’s an ample supply of weapons, Growl’s combat doesn’t get boring, but it’s not amazing, either. The violence isn’t lightweight, but it’s also not always as impactful as it should be. There’s four characters to choose from, but really it feels like two characters who each have their own variant. However, each character has different jumping, strength, and health. You can swap between them each life, but in the case of one of the characters, I ate a game over in about ten seconds or less after using them. Health should not be something that has variables in a brawler. No matter who I was using, I found the jumping attacks to be ineffective and dull to use. The best thing I can say about the jumping is there’s a brief platforming level that comes out of nowhere near the end of Growl, and it’s better than the platforming bits in Double Dragon. Faint praise, perhaps, but it makes for a welcome break even if it just sort of ends unceremoniously.
Let me get this straight: in a game based around fighting poachers, the last boss is an alien worm? So, is it REALLY still poaching if it’s an alien species? If their normal behavior is to journey from planet to planet eating whatever life is on it, that’s not poaching. That’s just, you know, their nature. It’s like accusing a lion of poaching a gazelle. Not only is it a pointless twist just for the sake of a twist, but the last boss isn’t any fun to fight at all. Then again, neither is the evil clown that it’s disguised as.
Whether you call it Runark or Growl, full sessions take maybe thirty minutes, if that. So it doesn’t exactly have enough time to be boring. But, the game also doesn’t stick the landing. The difficulty suddenly spikes during the final level. Growls offers no buffer in the time between getting knocked down to getting back up. In multiple play sessions, this never factored-in until the final stretch, where every game except the one I crashed saw enemies counter every move I made and catch me in a cycle of knocking me down before I could even move. The second-to-last boss, the evil clown form of the alien worm you’re fighting, is one of the cheapest (and most boring) final bosses I’ve seen in a brawler. It’s a slow, tedious grind to get any damage at all on it. The entire final level cost Runark in my rankings, though I think what’s here is still barely good enough to get a YES! It’s not a spectacular game, but there’s just enough here to make it worth playing a couple times and enjoy the gags and some perfectly fine bland brawling. Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 Platform: Arcade Released in 1987
Arcade Archives Debut: January 25, 2024 Designed by Fukio Mitsuji Developed by Taito
It’s all fun and games until someone turns on autofire. By the way, I was so disappointed when I found out Rainbow Islands isn’t a co-op game. How the hell do you make a sequel to Bubble Bobble and not have it be co-op?
In my first run on Rainbow Islands, I made it to the first boss and got a game over quickly. I lasted just a few seconds each life. In my second run I, um, beat the entire game without losing a single life, or using save states. I mean, I was laying down save states because I thought I could turn into a pumpkin any second, but it never happened. I couldn’t believe it. If you’re thinking there has to be a catch, well, define “catch.” I turned the setting down to EASY, but hell, I did that for games like Bubble Bobble and I couldn’t play the games perfectly. Maybe because Rainbow Islands offers to let you input cheat codes automatically. You just pick what you want from a menu, and there are some item-based ones. But, I used a code that allowed me to continue after the 5th level (or 8th, I’m hearing conflicting stuff on where is the normal point of no return) instead of permanently giving me a double or triple rainbow. I also toggled on “IMPROVE GAME OPERATION” which is basically “remove input lag” or at least I think it’s supposed to be. At first, I thought it worked, but when I replayed Rainbow Islands with it turned off, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference.
Here’s a neat optional feature that you can toggle on and off in real time. The REAL object of Rainbow Islands is to get the full assortment of seven different colored diamonds in every world. There’s another hidden layer to this, as the real REAL object of Rainbow Islands is getting the diamonds in sequential order. I didn’t even catch-on until nearly the end of the game that what diamonds are dropped isn’t random. It depends on where the dead enemies land when they’re defeated, and it’s a little trickier than it seems. Many levels go extended stretches without platforms in certain positions on the screen, and if there’s nothing for the enemy’s corpse to land on, it means you don’t have opportunities for diamonds.
I don’t know if any of those things factored-in, but there was something in Taito Milestones 3 the original arcade version didn’t offer that was unquestionably responsible for my ability to cheese the game like I did: autofire. Well, autofire combined with a couple in-game items. For the Taito Milestones/Arcade Archives build, you can map jumping and rainbows to one button, then crank up the autofire to the max and basically fly straight up the center to the goal. Well, provided you pick up the wings, which are a permanent upgrade (as long as you don’t game over) that allow you to jump in mid-air. I also got a fairy that spins around you that was so effective. The collision isn’t pixel-perfect, but in a way that benefits you, and as I scrolled the screen up, my first sighting of enemies was often their now dead bodies flying from being hit by the fairy. Enemies were literally dying as soon as the stage turned-on. Who needs save states? This was a cinch!
See the top-center of the screen? That enemy was instakilled the very microsecond the level loaded. By the way, that’s the 8th world, which is based on Fairyland Story, making Rainbow Islands the best thing to come out of that game.
I was curious if it was autofire or all the other options that Hamster/ININ included, so I took a scientific approach and started turning them off and restoring default settings. I *FINALLY* died on easy mode for the first time in the fourth world, and to my astonishment, I basically suffered no penalty at all. When I came back to life, I still had the wings and the fairy. The only penalty was my triple rainbow was downgraded to a double rainbow. After that slap on the wrist, I decided to abandon that run and restore all the default settings except the 10 figure cheat code (hell, if I’m going to keep playing this, I want to try for the leaderboard). Now on the default NORMAL setting with only three starting lives, surely the game will penalize me for dying. Nope. I only had one death going into world 6-4, when I dropped three consecutive lives. And there was no penalty beyond losing my triple rainbow the first time. I still had my shoes, double rainbow, fairy, and wings. Of course, I’d built up a stockpile of lives by this point (you get one every time you get a full set of diamonds, plus a couple scoring-based ones).
There might have been more enemies on NORMAL, or enemies moved faster, or they were more aggressive with their attack patterns, or all of the above. My strategy of “let the fairy take care of what was above me” was clearly less effective this time. It was usually a projectile that got me instead of the enemies directly. Either way, as long as I came back to life with the wings and the fairy, the odds were always in my favor.
In my very first game, the one where Rainbow Islands annihilated me, what killed me more often than not was accidentally walking up a rainbow I just made that took me directly into an enemy. In my unexpected no-death run on EASY, my strategy was initially to keep my distance. Once I had the triple rainbow, I had enough reach to take out almost everything without getting close. Once I got a feel for how the fairy works, my strategy changed to stay low and let the fairy take care of the stuff above me, which changed to “stay high” on the bosses. I figured they would put up a fight, but I beat ALL of them in a few seconds, a feat I repeated once I switched over to the default settings, though in my NORMAL run I did die once. It was the 8th boss, fittingly a devil that spawned basically on top of me. I suppose they were fun while they lasted.
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Actually, that could be said about Rainbow Islands in general. For as breathtakingly overrated as Rainbow Islands difficulty is, I was never bored. There’s a lot of really fun set pieces, including four worlds themed after other Taito games. You know what’s weird? The only stage that didn’t “do it” for me was the one themed around Bubble Bobble that acts as the finale (provided you get the big diamonds in each of the first seven game worlds). The level design was a little too repetitive and boring in that one. Everything else flew by so fast I didn’t really have time to be bored by it. The combat is satisfying. The graphics are really nice and colorful. Collecting the diamonds added just the right amount of nuance, especially once I realized the screen was divided into seven columns. There’s obviously a lot of flexibility for different ways to tackle each stage. Rainbow Islands might be a little too easy with autofire, but it’s never really dull. My biggest complaint is that it feels like it gives you the bum’s rush. Too many stages give you the “hurry up” warning too quickly, which further compounds how difficult getting the diamonds in the correct order can be. Part of that is waiting for the right moment. Or maybe you have to wait for the wrong diamond to vanish, since if you come near it with a rainbow, even a broken and falling one, you collect it. Rainbow Islands might have taken the hidden content a little too far, but eh, I had fun. That’s all I’ve ever cared about. Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
And I’m awarding $2.50 in bonus value for all the extra options that go beyond common emulator options. More of this type of thing, please.
Rastan Saga aka Rastan Platform: Arcade Released March, 1988
Arcade Archives Debut: May 2, 2024 Directed by Yoshinori Kobayashi Developed by Taito
Do you know what Rastan’s biggest problem is? It’s not the endless cheap shots, because in fact, there IS an end to them. This is a coin-op. It’d be weird if it didn’t have those. I’ll get into what I mean by that, but for me, far and away the #1 problem Rastan has is that the bosses don’t scale right. I died plenty on bosses 1 – 3, but then I started wasting bosses in a few seconds. The last boss took me all of six seconds to defeat. I beat a couple other bosses that quickly.
My friends and I determined that Conan the Barbarian was the property that has had its serial numbers filed off for purposes of gaming the most in the 80s and 90s. The shirtless, beefy barbarian was such a recognizable gaming staple that Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II, a game based entirely around a fully-armored knight, put a shirtless barbarian beef boy on the cover. Someone at Acclaim’s marketing had to see the gameplay of Ironsword and say “yea, armor is great and all, but do you know what boys really want to see in their gaming heroes? Pecs and glam rock hair!” When I showed my family Ironsword’s cover, they were baffled, but while I played Rastan Saga today, they weren’t anymore. “Was this popular?” they asked. “It’s not NOT popular! Also, Rastan was never on the NES. It was exclusive to Sega’s platforms” was my reply. “That explains (Ironsword).” Hell though, Rastan isn’t even the first of its kind. Namco’s Dragon Buster came out over three years before it, and Rastan feels like it’s an attempt to improve upon that game specifically. Taito made the most of that three years, because Rastan is superior to Dragon Buster in every imaginable way.
After Volume 3, the biggest Taito game that’s part of Arcade Archives that isn’t in one of the Milestone collections yet is probably Jungle Hunt (the Atari 2600 and 5200 versions of which I reviewed in Atari 50: The Games They Couldn’t Include Part Two). It would have fit in perfectly here, because Rastan genuinely feels like someone said “Jungle Hunt was a big hit for us. What if we did that, only as a combative game?”
I think that a lot of people expected Rastan to receive an easy NO! I think the reason so many people were eager for me to play it is because they expected it to be a prime example of games that were fine at the time but aged badly, probably due to cheap shots. After all the things I heard about it, I expected something much harder than this. But really, Bubble Bobble is far worse in terms of dirty pool from a coin-op. I went as far as to call Bubble Bobble “underhanded” and I stand by that, but Rastan is just good old fashioned cheap. Like with Bubble Bobble, after an initial run where I played on the default settings, I upped the lives to six per quarter and set the difficulty to the lowest setting. With that, Rastan was still cheap, BUT, it was cheap within the acceptable parameters.
I’m almost certain enemies are chosen at random and it’s only the amount that’s consistent.
It helps that Rastan only has a handful of tricks up its sleeve that it repeats constantly. For example, when there’s a slope, you’re almost certain to have either rocks falling down on you or instakill gaps with fireballs on the slope. Once I got the timing down (and once my muscle memory got used to holding UP when I jumped for added lift) I never died on another slope. The challenges based around the slopes were really predictable after a certain point, and it was just a matter of where the enemies would be when I got to the bottom. That’s the Rastan experience in a nutshell.
Rastan suffers the same problem SO MANY action games do: it has these terrifying, imaginative enemies that you would drop dead of a massive heart attack if you encountered in real life. So, what is far and away the most dangerous enemy in the game? Why, it’s the smallest, most insignificant creature that’s an actual real life animal, because OF COURSE IT IS! In Rastan’s case, it’s bats. I never clenched my butthole while fighting manticores or skeletons or medusas, but when I saw bats, I was terrified. It’s because they swarm you and end up binding to your sprite, quickly draining your health. They’re hard to shake off, too. The swarms seem to only happen when you wait around too long, but that wasn’t consistent. Either way, with all the fantastical creatures in the game, it wasn’t exactly good for the immersion that a non-imaginary fruit-eating mammal poses the biggest threat. For the love of God, can’t anyone at least make them look like they’re made of fire or something?
Needless to say, Rastan’s difficulty didn’t live up to expectations, but that’s a good thing. The ropes all behave with the same speed, so it’s just a matter of waiting and not rushing through them. The same goes for the fireballs that bounce up and down the fire pits. It’s the same pattern every time, and once you know it, you know when you can move or not. Hell, even the instakill spikes that pop out of the ground have consistent speeds and become predictable. You never feel like the rug is pulled out from underneath you in Rastan. If you pace yourself and don’t just stomp through the levels with reckless abandon, there’s really no GOTCHA! type of stuff. There’s no last-pixel jumps, not even with the ropes. There’s a couple nearly blind jumps, but none that I remember that were legitimately blind luck.
The closest thing to a “GOTCHA” is water seen here. Between where the rocks are? Yea, that’s an instakill. While the collision detection is fine, it’s not perfect, so you do need to make sure you give yourself as much room as possible when jumping. Believe me, it will become second nature before the credits roll.
And the combat isn’t so tough either. Most enemies die in only a hit or two, and your jumping strike does three times the damage. There’s a decent variety of enemies that come out in seemingly random pairings, but they’re not too tough. A few have projectiles, while others are able to initially block you, but jumping attacks work on most the first time. Hell, one time there were so many enemies when I climbed a rope that I climbed down the way I came, then back up and they were gone. Scrolling is practically your secondary weapon in Rastan. Everyone warned me how hard the final level was, especially since the unlimited continues vanish on it. Die on level six, and it’s game over. But, Rastan had run out of ideas before the finale and, since it keeps going back to the same handful of predictable enemy patterns and obstacles, I ran through the final stage making save states I never needed. This isn’t THAT hard. Even better is that, while it does run out of ideas, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The whole thing should only take you, even if you die a lot, under an hour.
Here’s one quality of life enhancement that Taito Milestones 3 does have: all the games but Bubble Bobble have autofire. At first, I figured “why’d they even bother with Rastan?” Nothing in the game seemed to require it, and I want to actually press the buttons for the repeated sword strikes anyway. But then I came across this puddle of quicksand. I think this might be the only one in the entire game, too, unless there were others I jumped over. Without autofire, I’d certainly have been stuck in it. Even cranking the autofire up to the max, it took me a while to work my way out of it. I think it’s safe to say I would have lost a life without it here, so hey, good inclusion.
Ultimately, Rastan was always going to live and die based on how well the combat was. I’d heard words like “rigid” or “stiff” and even “awkward” used to describe it. I’ll use a different word: ActRaiser. You know, the SNES game. That’s what Rastan reminded me of. If I asked you “what’s the first game you think of with a beefy dude using two-handed broadsword combat while making his way through basic set pieces that were cutting-edge for their time using stiff movement and heavy jumping while fighting a hodge-podge of assorted beasts taken from various mythologies from all around the globe?” what game would YOU think of? You know how I talk about some games sharing DNA? Well, this doesn’t just share. In the case of Rastan, it feels like ActRasier’s long lost gaming sibling. Not even a prototype, but rather a legit prequel. It’s that close, and if you’re a fan of ActRaiser’s 2D segments, I think there’s a chance you’ll really dig Rastan. I really thought I’d get annoyed that enemies chime when defeated (I think it’s supposed to sound like the clink of a sword), but the combat does have a weight to it. I wish it did more than it does. The best thing I can say about Rastan’s combat is they tailored the game to assure plenty of usage out of the vertical attacks, be it above or below you.
I was lucky enough to carry the axe, which does triple damage, into the final boss fight. For a coin-op where you lose weapons after a certain amount of time, Rastan was surprisingly generous with the weapon drops. The three weapons are placed in the levels in strategic locations and often come with some form of risk/reward to get them, like hovering over a pit. Everything else is dropped by enemies. The ring I have in this shot increases my attack speed, while the armor allegedly prevents damage, though I could swear I saw it decrease anyway a couple times. Also, remember not to drink the red potions. I finished 20th on the Rastan leaderboard I think because I was too stupid to realize the red potions were taking away my health. But you get a big scoring bonus for them. Presumably Rastan was the kid in the school yard who would eat bugs if you paid him enough.
Okay, so Rastan is repetitive, lacks dazzling set pieces that I figured a game like this would absolutely need, and the gameplay is basic. But, it doesn’t matter, because I still have fun. Yea, it feels more antiquated than some games. Side scrolling sword & sorcery games have come a long way in the last thirty-five years. But, what makes Rastan work is it has the perfect tempo for a game like this. There’s no down time at all, but never in an overwhelming “this is TOO intense” type of way. Rastan’s greatest triumph isn’t anything it built, but rather the fine tuned balance. It’s equal parts platforming and combat, and the transition from one to the other is seamless. To steal a pinball term, it has good flow. And here’s why that matters: graphics can age badly and advancements in game design theory can turn a once elite game into something too basic to be enjoyable compared to modern games. But, flow is immune to any aging factors. Good flow in 1988 is good flow in 2024 and beyond. I thought Rastan would be lucky to squeak by with a YES! And I was wrong, because this verdict wasn’t even close. Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
Rastan Saga II aka Nastar or Nastar Warrior Platform: Arcade
Arcade Archives Debut: June 20, 2024 Released March, 1989 Designed by Hisaya Yabusaki Developed by Taito
A walking steroid advertisement foiled yet again by a tiny little turtle monster with a spiked shell on its back. That sword should be able to cleave Everest in half, but it can’t kill these things? Then logically shouldn’t the forces of evil have duct-taped these to themselves?
Holy moly, wow. Rastan Saga II is one of the worst sequels in gaming history. Despite having a similar control scheme, limited weapon upgrades, and nearly equal parts combat and platforming segments, it never feels like it’s tied to the first game. So bad is this that, if I didn’t know the story behind it, or its name, I’d think this was a rip-off of Rastan that mandated bigger character models. Instead of sharing DNA with the original, Rastan Saga II’s closest gaming cousin is Haunted Castle. You know, the Konami arcade version of Castlevania that overdid the character sprites, opting for big, detailed models at the cost of everything enjoyable about playing Castlevania. Rastan II is that for Rastan I.
The shame is, these ARE great character models, and the sound design is pretty good too. You hear the elephant’s trumpet, and then a goddamned skeleton riding a war elephant rides in. This should be awesome, and it’s annoying that it’s not.
The first game wasn’t exactly high art, even for its genre. But the combat and platforming bits were just good enough to let the sublime pacing carry it over the finish line with plenty of room to spare. Rastan II is “what if you did that again, only it’s shorter now. And the combat is flimsy and lightweight while being even more stiff than the original. And what if we made the platforming bits unworkable?” People think the first Rastan is stiff? Try this one. THIS is stiff! I think King Rastan lifted one too many weights, because the guy moves like he’s barefoot on a frozen kitchen floor. That doesn’t matter so much for the action bits, but the platforming wants to do things like ducking while jumping. The designers included plenty of tight squeezes to justify adding that mechanic, but they didn’t polish it at all and it’s awful.
The ropes only work if you grab the base this time. I died five times before I beat this by just walking off the ledge at the right time. Oh, and the only ropes are swinging ones. There’s no climbing ropes. The levels are only as big as the screen, and you just scroll right until you reach a boss.
But, it’s the combat that’s the deal breaker for me. While the character sprites are massive, they have limited movement and there’s no sense of weight or impact to anything done by heroes or enemies. Well, with one possible exception. Inexplicably, Rastan II replaced the axe and the mace weapons with Wolverine-like claws. As silly as that is, it’s the only attack that feels like it has OOMPH to it, but not much more. Since there’s limited animation, it doesn’t matter how imaginative things like war elephant-riding skeletons are. They all feel like cardboard cutouts. Even Haunted Castle didn’t have that problem. It’s so bad that all the sprites feel like they exist in their own dimension. I’ve never seen anything like that in a video game before. It’s so weird! Unlike Rastan Saga, the sequel feels stingy with the power-ups. In the entire play session, I got a flaming sword one time and lost it seconds later, while the worthless gigantic sword I got multiple times.
I beat this guy and then went to the bathroom. I returned to the game, satisfied that I staved off peeing on the couch and ready to continue, only for the end credits to roll. I’d been playing maybe twenty minutes and change of total game time. It doesn’t feel climatic. It just feels spongy.
The only improvement over the first game is that Rastan Saga II has unlimited continues. There’s also a quality-of-life toggle that allows you to turn on the ability for enemies to continue to drop items in the fifth world, so hey, the effort was there. Not that it matters. There’s NOTHING fun about Rastan Saga II. Okay, so the first game didn’t exactly have amazing bosses, but I’d prefer flaying them in four seconds and cheering to myself over slashing mindlessly at one for a minute with no end in sight. Suddenly, I realize why Rastan died a miserable death as a franchise. The only value I see in Rastan II is to game design students. I’m not even joking when I say I think there’s value in having them play both games. Because the sequel really does hit most of the same beats as the original, and I’d even argue the pacing is spot-on. The problem is that, this go around, the individual components are terribly done. We need a destroyer for this barbarian. Verdict: NO!
Thunder Fox Platform: Arcade Released June, 1990 Designed by Hiroyuki Maekawa Arcade Archives Debut: January 30, 2025 Developed by Taito
Oof. This was so close to getting a YES! that it was right there, and the bosses threw it away. Thunder Fox is so generic that it feels like a joke. I kind of admire that they wanted to cram as many action tropes as possible into a relatively short game. There’s side-scrolling levels where you can hijack cars. There’s a brief side-shmup segment, and once it’s over, you can continue to ride your hovercraft into the normal part of the level until it’s too damaged to go on. There’s a Metroid-like “escape the base” segment in the middle of the game, and that’s followed by a jet skiing section that ends on a submarine and, Christ, this is starting to sound like a Fast & Furious movie. Thunder Fox is Generic Action Man’s Action Game, and it’s trying so damn hard, but it’s just not good. Like, come on, Taito! You went to all this effort and you couldn’t even include an upward attack?
This lasts maybe a minute and only has one type of enemy. This kind of genre mash-up used to impress me, but the more that I think about it, the more I hate it when games do this. If you’re going to shoehorn a shmup into your non-shmup game, at least have some variety to it! Because here’s the thing, developers: WE ALL PLAY THIS GENRE TOO! If someone has put money up to play Thunder Fox, you can bet that money that we play every other action game. You’re not blowing our minds because one second, we were slashing guys with knives and now we’re flying in the sky. This sh*t is old hat for everyone, so you might as well go all-out for the minute your game is a shmup. Why bother doing this if you’re going to be conservative about it? You’re not impressing us with a single enemy type and one background. Not that I think Thunder Fox needs more bosses, because they were the bad parts of the game, but hell, do a shmup boss! Otherwise, we’re going to walk away from the segment thinking “well, that was boring. I hope it doesn’t do that again.”
If Thunder Fox had controlled more like Contra, it probably could have overcome the ruinous bosses and still squeaked by with a tepid YES! But, the combat is downright bizarre. This is the rare Taito Milestones release with three buttons. One is jump, naturally, while one is the knife/melee attack and the other is firing the guns you pick up. If you pick up a gun but want to save your ammo, you can beat people with the butt of the gun. However, this isn’t as fast as the default weapon: a Rambo-like knife that’s easily more effective than any gun except the flamethrower. I didn’t like using any of the bullet-based guns. Why? Because in Thunder Fox, firing a gun is a slower way of mowing down enemies than swiping with the knife, which allows you to cut through swarms of enemies. Whose bright idea was that?
I got a bit of a chuckle out of the jet ski section, where a helicopter rains enemies down on you who don’t seem to care whether or not they miss. I wonder how that meeting went? “Phil, you’re flying the helicopter. Carl, you’re on a jet ski. Brad, we’re giving you a knife and pushing you out of the chopper. Try to hit the guy before the impact shatters your body. If you do manage to connect, our experts estimate it’ll decrease his life by three full bars!” “And I’ll die?” “Yes, you’ll die.” “On impact?” “I mean, hopefully!” “Well, if it was only two bars of health, I’d probably have more questions, but if it’s three bars, what the hell, I’m in!”
And guns are spectacularly worthless against bosses, assuming you even have one when you enter the battles. A few of the bosses are armed themselves, and they literally hold their weapons as shields to block EVERY shot you fire. Not just some shots. ALL OF THEM. I never hit a single one with a bullet. Not even once. I had to use the knife and accept a ton of damage. That’s where the game falls apart. I’m pretty sure I spent more time fighting bosses than I did playing the game. One in particular was where I drew the line. It’s a wrecking ball where you have to hit a tiny gun that pokes out once in a while for about a second. While this is happening, two lasers shoot you from the ceiling. In previous stages, the same lasers could be destroyed with a few knife whacks, but these two are indestructible and move around, with the left one parking right under the thing you have to hit. And while this is happening, the wrecking ball drops, causing bits of the ceiling to cave in. You can’t get on the structure, then duck and hit it. Your knife goes right over the target, which is where immersion dies. I mean come on, the guy can’t aim a little lower? This is the worst boss I’ve ever seen in a game like this. Even with the game set to give me five lives per credit, I still had to reload five or six times playing this thing. The window to actually cause damage is so small and so covered by crap from all angles. This is a legit quarter shakedown at this point, and it’s beyond shameful.
Not that Generic Action Man was a great game up to this point, but it was okay. The enemies are a little too repetitive, and the guns weren’t worth using with the exception of the flamethrower, mostly because it had coverage and didn’t wear out too fast. I also liked that one boss and one mini-boss required you to use grenades dropped by enemies in order to damage them. There’s some legit good stuff here, but everything that comes after the jet ski section is a slog, especially the bosses. A few of them barely move. They just wait for you to attack so they can counter attack. And hell, if you don’t beat the last boss fast enough, you have to start the fight over from the beginning. When I finally beat him, I did it by dropping any effort at elegance and finesse and just spamming the attack button, hoping to do more damage than he did, and it worked. A lot of times, I get frustrated with bosses but I can look the other way if getting to them is good, but in the case of Thunder Fox, they just took the shameless money grubbing too far. If Taito hadn’t been so f*cking greedy, maybe they would have had their own version of Contra and Thunder Fox would be remembered as one of the more decent games in this oversaturated genre. But, they just had to make the bosses so cheap and boring that it ruins the whole game. Verdict: NO!
Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III Platform: Arcade Released May, 1992 Arcade Archives Debut: December 19, 2024 Directed by Kenji Kaido Developed by Taito NEVER RELEASED OUTSIDE OF JAPAN
Whoever did this sequence is obviously a big fan of Jason and the Argonauts. I was so impressed. This is a 1992 game, yet these skeletons are animated with a sort of stop-motion-like movement to make it look just like the famous skeleton fight from the movie. It’s wonderful!
Note: I wrote this review before the Arcade Archives release, which happened ten days after the publication of this review.
If I were ININ, I’d fight tooth and nail to keep Warrior Blade from getting an Arcade Archives release. Not only is it the killer app of Taito Milestones 3, but it’s the best game in the entire Taito Milestones franchise. I assume at some point they’re going to do a Taito box set, and this right here is your anchor game. As much fun as I had with Liquid Kids in Volume 2, that had several moments of brutal difficulty spikes. I’m not quite sure that Warrior Blade ever reaches the peaks of Liquid Kids, but I give it the trophy for “best game ever in Taito Milestones” by a pretty big margin because there’s no down time at all. Warrior Blade is always fun, from start to finish. It’s seriously one of the best arcade brawlers I’ve played, and I’ve done quite a few. For a while, Indie Gamer Chick was practically a brawler review-centric website. What can I say? I love a good ole fashioned brawler that puts the focus on wacky fun. Warrior Blade does exactly that. Best of all, the difficulty settings in the dip switches are, you know, accurate! Often, “EASY” in coin-ops means “still so brutal that it’s practically hateful” but not Warrior Blade. In fact, I recommend that beat ’em up veterans leave it on NORMAL, only adjusting to EASY when you play with newcomers to the genre. Even on NORMAL, this is never unfair. No cheap shots. No GOTCHAs. No sponge. I literally can’t believe this is a Taito arcade game.
If Warrior Blade had twelve characters to choose from, I’d have beaten it twelve times and never got bored. Sadly, it only has three. Also, this is two player only, which I made a mistake during my co-op sessions and conscripted Sasha and Angela, only to find out that I only needed one. So awkward.
On the plus side, each character feels COMPLETELY different from the others. It’s not simply a few sliders being adjusted, like with Growl/Runark. I’d go so far as to say they all three characters radically change the feel of the game. Sophia, who uses a whip, was my least favorite of the three. Whips are a brawler stalwart, but they’re usually temporary weapons that you pick up and eventually lose. That’s fine, by the way, because it becomes a big deal when you get one. Sophia’s whip is permanent, and it’s oddly not very satisfying. Either Rastan or the ridiculously named Dewey are much more fun to use. But, even the worst character in Warrior Blade has value. I played with Sasha, who is still getting used to brawlers. Sasha tried playing as both Rastan and Dewey, but she was much more effective with Sophia. That character is excellent for beginners because she has range, making it much easier for a novice to contribute without having to directly enter the mob. And by the way, my biggest knock is that this is a two player game. There’s three characters and a HUGE playfield, but only two players? Lame.
“What’s up with the screen?” Yea, this is one of those wacky Taito widescreen games. Not nearly as big as Darius II’s triple screen. This is only double. ININ and Hamster included a ton of options, including allowing users to add all the true-to-arcades misalignment of the screens or having the colors not match jank that they want. I got asked a few times if there’s a two monitor option. There is not, though hopefully the next Nintendo device uses this.
Rastan himself is the typical side-scrolling beat ’em up character. Cut and paste from any game, really, but obviously the closest comparison is Golden Axe’s main character. Dewey, meanwhile, is like a cross between a Ninja Turtle and a tweaker. He moves super fast and does flippy moves and feels so completely out of place in this sword & sorcery setting, and I love it. I thought I’d hate playing as a ninja in this game and instead I ran through Warrior Blade twice with him, once solo and once in co-op. You can also swap characters between lives. There’s one unique setting I should note: Warrior Blade is normally a branching-paths game. When a game is this good, I hate that. I want to experience EVERYTHING in a single playthrough. When I reviewed Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, I used a ROM hack that had every level. I suspect I would get along just fine with the original developers of Warrior Blade, because they actually have a toggle that lets players go through all 14 stages in every session. Turn it on! As soon as you boot it up, go to the options and set “Total Stage No.” to “14.” You’re only adding a couple minutes to the overall runtime, but every single minute of Warrior Blade is sublime, and you don’t want to miss it.
You want set pieces? Here’s your set pieces! I officially want the team who made this to reunite for a Game of Thrones brawler.
I was stunned by how much action they squeezed out of two buttons. The attacks feel nice and OOMPHful, though not quite Capcom-levels of impact. But, there’s lots of little details to make up the difference and some of the best animation I’ve seen for a game from this era. The character models are especially impressive, and even normally generic baddies have attention to detail. During the horseback set piece, I was pretty impressed that they even took the care to have the horses collapse the right way. It’s a violent game, but that’s what I want from this genre anyway. If I’m disappointed about anything, it’s that almost every basic enemy has the same tiny, subtle blood-swipe effect when they blink out of existence. I’d prefer if they collapsed first, then vanished. It’s nit-picky, but it stood out to me. Hey, don’t look at me like that! The game calls attention to it! When most enemies die and vanish, they let out a scream that sounds exactly like Cobra Commander if he stepped on a tack. You think I’m joking, but listen to it!
I seriously looked up to see if it really was Chris Latta‘s voice! I don’t care what anyone says: that is definitely Starscream, and it gets a little distracting that one specific “YAAAHHHH” is heard pretty much continuously throughout the entire game. Well, provided you actually fight the enemies. Yea, that’s Warrior Blade’s big twist: combat is optional. I mean, you have to fight the bosses of course, but before them? If you want to lay waste to their minions, have at it! If not, run! Unlike most brawlers, there’s no invisible crosswalk light that activates as soon as you beat the latest wave of enemies. If you want to just ignore the baddies, you can. And you won’t even have to run that far to get to the boss. Levels are very short. The first stage is maybe thirty seconds long. Forty seconds. Somewhere in that ballpark. In my first couple sessions, I was always caught off guard by how soon bosses appeared in levels. This is one of the fastest-paced brawlers I’ve ever played, easily.
One of my biggest pet-peeves is characters in brawlers lingering to the edge of the screen. Warrior Blade’s ahead-of-its-time widescreen mostly prevents that. Instead, the playfield is a little squashed, and so sometimes you miss seeing stuff because of the status bar. This is especially true of a couple bosses. Kinda annoying but I prefer this to most brawlers, especially since the action flocks to the center of the screen instead of the fringes.
So, why even engage at all? Well, because enemies drop items and currency that you automatically cash in after every stage for a health boost. I’ve never seen a brawler structured like Warrior Blade, but it speaks volumes to how solid the combat is that I never wanted to skip it. It’s fun, plain and simple. Nothing too spongy. Nothing overwhelmingly dangerous. But, if you’re going for a high score (and points don’t carry over between credits), the fight or flight option adds strategic flexibility, which means this is the rare brawler where you can develop your own game plan. Hell, after the quick intro stage, you can even take the four main three-part levels in any order, and each offers a pair of unique permanent buffs for completing. My longtime readers know that, when it comes to coin-ops, I put a LOT of stock in being able to come up with your own strategies. This is the rare brawler that leans heavily into that. It’s refreshing!
Whereas the first two games were equal parts platforming and combat, Warrior Blade is very clearly a brawler. The platforming stuff is kept to a minimum, but when it shows up, I was pretty impressed at how well-timed it was implemented. The segments that are “traditionally Rastan” for lack of a better term, IE hopping over gaps or climbing on ropes, are spaced out when you need something, anything, to break-up gameplay that could devolve into mindless button mashing. It might only be two or three jumps, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t always happen at the right moment. And, you can incorporate the environment into the combat. Throwing is easy, and I had a lot of fun throwing guys into gaps or timing-based traps. This game slaps.
The weakest link in the game is easily the magic. It’s also the strangest way of handling it I’ve ever experienced. You don’t cast spells yourself. An NPC wizard waddles behind you, sometimes. Actually, it’s even weirder because this is a dip switch setting, where you can make the wizard an item that’s found via a crystal or just have him automatically show up at the beginning of stages. I played most games with him as a crystal because the thought of having him around full-time was nuts to me. When you want to cast a spell you, ahem, hit the wizard. I’m not joking.
“Hey old timer, what are you standing around for? Kill these guys for me!”
It’s so weird, and it gets weirder. For the most part, Warrior Blade isn’t one of those brawlers where the main challenge is getting yourself on the same plane as the enemies. One boss is like that, but otherwise, lining-up with your foes isn’t an issue. But, it is for the wizard. Half the time, when I really needed a spell to bail me out, I swung and missed for my first several attempts at smacking the guy. Even though the same strikes would have hit an enemy with the same alignment, I totally whiffed the wizard. Maybe it’s for the best. His spells are so far beyond over-indulgent. There’s a couple that don’t pause the game, and I only saw him actually hit one of those once. Usually when he shot those, he was facing the wrong direction. But, if you have plenty of magic, he casts spells that come complete with a lingering title card and a dramatic special effect. It’s going to be several seconds before you get to resume playing the game. It’s awful.
Six times. I played this game six times, and this was the only time I cast this spell. If there’s a way to control what he casts, I haven’t figured it out. I know there’s an item that causes the “valuable” meteor show, but I don’t see what’s so valuable about it. The bombs that freeze enemies or put them to sleep are still functionally “clear all” spells, only you have to manually resolve them.
I’d be fine with these spells if they ate up the entire magic bar. That’s how it should be, because they’re basically bombs, right? That’s another brawling staple that’s time-tested, and the reason they work is they’re used sparingly. But, these big spells might only take a quarter of your magic bar, and refills are all over the place. So, when the wizard is around, the game is constantly pausing for the same two or three spells cast over and over. That’s fine, though, right? Just don’t cast spe….. oh wait, that’s right. It’s not a button. It’s a dude in the middle of a battlefield that does this. While I was constantly struggling to hit the guy on purpose in two or fewer swings, the wizard was constantly getting hit by accident, especially in co-op. It’s the worst, and I wish they’d done anything else because it absolutely murders the pace of the game. What were they thinking? Tone back the casting phase, which takes quite a while, to a second or so and this wouldn’t be so bad. Hell, if it was nearly instantaneous, I’d probably have done a paragraph on how much I loved the wizard and what a great idea it was. Instead, it’s the one blemish on an otherwise genuine beat ’em up masterpiece.
This boss wasn’t exactly epilepsy friendly. Looks cool, though.
Again, I think Liquid Kids’ highest highs were greater than Warrior Blade’s. But, few games are as consistently good as it. Remove the wizard and I think we’d be talking “greatest arcade brawler of its time” here. It’s a damn shame this never came out in America. Do you know what’s really funny? The Taito collections of MY childhood were Taito Legends. There were two of them plus another for the PSP, over seventy total Taito games, and Warrior Blade wasn’t one of them. Wild! People are going to be buying Taito Milestones 3 for Bubble Bobble and Rastan, but I really think this is the one that they’ll keep coming back to. I think this is the one they’ll show friends. It’s fantastic. Yea, it’s probably just a more souped-up version of Golden Axe and now I have to review all those in 2025 now to keep the cosmic scales balanced. But, this was the last game I played in Taito Milestones 3, and I couldn’t put it down for a full day. Great controls. Awesome combat. Varied combat, which really surprised me. Tons of personality. It’s a damn good looking game too. Warrior Blade should not be a lost treasure. It should not be a hidden gem. Maybe now, it’ll finally get its due, because folks, this was a truly great video game. Verdict: YES! – $8 in value added to Taito Milestones 3
Winner: Best game in Taito Milestones 3 And I’ll throw in a $1 bonus for all the video options.
FINAL TALLY
YES! – 7 games totaling $56 in value. NO! – 3 games Bonus Value: $8.50 Goal: $40 in value Actual value of Taito Milestones 3 – $64.50
$39.99 smacked a wizard in the making of this review.
A review copy was supplied by ININ for this feature so it could be up before the release date. I’ve purchased a full physical copy which I’m giving to my niece.
COMPLETE TAITO MILESTONES RANKINGS
Warrior Blade (Taito Milestones 3)
Liquid Kids (Taito Milestones 2)
Metal Black (Taito Milestones 2)
Darius II (Taito Milestones 2)
Elevator Action (Taito Milestones 1)
Rastan (Taito Milestones 3)
Bubble Bobble* (Taito Milestones 3)
Qix (Taito Milestones 1)
Rainbow Island (Taito Milestones 3)
Cadash (Taito Milestones 3)
Kiki KaiKai (Taito Milestones 2)
Champion Wrestler (Taito Milestones 3)
Legend of Kage (Taito Milestones 2)
Runark/Growl (Taito Milestones 3)
Halley’s Comet (Taito Milestones 1)
Alpine Ski (Taito Milestones 1) TERMINATORLINE
Thunder Fox (Taito Milestones 3)
The NewZealand Story (Taito Milestones 2) *Single Player Bubble Bobble goes here.
Dead Connection (Taito Milestones 3)
Gun & Frontier (Taito Milestones 2)
The Fairyland Story (Taito Milestones 1)
Chack’n Pop (Taito Milestones 1)
Space Seeker (Taito Milestones 1)
Front Line (Taito Milestones 1)
Rastan Saga II (Taito Milestones 3)
Ben Bero Beh (Taito Milestones 2)
Wild Western (Taito Milestones 1)
Dino Rex (Taito Milestones 2)
The Ninja Warriors (Taito Milestones 1)
Solitary Fighter (Taito Milestones 2)
What is the best Taito Milestones set?
Here are the average rankings for each set! Taito Milestones 1: 19.0 Taito Milestones 2: 15.5 Taito Milestones 3: 12.0
Our Pinball FX and Pinball M reviews took a lot of playtime and revisions. If you enjoy what you read, or even if you hate it, please consider making a donation to your local food bank. For my American readers, you can find your closest one by using the search tool at Feeding America. A cash donation to your local food bank buys exponentially more food than donating canned goods. I also support Direct Relief, and in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, they could use some help. They have a page up just to explain their hurricane response. They’re worth it. Thank you, and enjoy the review. Or hate it.
PLEASE NOTE THAT NINTENDO SWITCH’S VERSION OF PINBALL M ISN’T SPECIFICALLY INCLUDED IN THIS FEATURE YET. WE WILL UPDATE BEFORE 2024 IS UP WITH ANY IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT PINBALL M ON NINTENDO SWITCH. THIS FEATURE WILL BE UPDATED AS MORE MEMBERS OF MY TEAM SUBMIT THEIR RATINGS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND ENJOY THIS FULL REVIEW GUIDE TO PINBALL M!
LAST UPDATED – November 5, 2024
Camp Bloodbrook’s review is up!
Jordi’s rating for The Thing and Camp Bloodbrook are in.
A NEW GOLDEN AGE
For all the bitching and whining I’m about to do, we’re sort of in a new golden age of pinball. Pinball tables are probably second only to pool tables in terms of the most desirable high-end furniture-like gaming devices for family rec rooms or man caves. The problem is real pinball tables cost a LOT of money. Thousands and thousands of dollars for a noisy, heavy gaming device that plays one game, and one game only, forever. And that’s before you get to the hidden costs of owning a pinball table. They require maintenance. Waxing. Replacement of the rubber rings. And if something breaks down and you don’t know how to fix it yourself, it could cost quite a lot. They wear out too, and if something happens and the playfield is damaged, you either have to live with the damage or replace it entirely. That’s what our very own Dash had to do with his Swords of Fury table. He picked it up for $3,500, then needed to put an additional $1,500 to restore it. Pinball is a very expensive hobby.
Average cost of repairs for an old table, give or take.
With digital pinball, anyone can afford the fun of pinball without the cost or hassle. You can spend $7,000 to $12,000 to score a mint condition real life Addams Family table, or you can buy the digital version in Pinball FX for $9.99 that has the same playfield, same targets, same call-outs, and same ROM, and the physics are 85% to 90% there, and hopefully climbing (no Christopher Lloyd though, much like Pinball Arcade). To put this in perspective, a rubber ring replacement kit for a real life Addams Family will cost you over three times the cost of Addams Family on Pinball FX by itself. So, how much is that final 10% to 15% difference in realism worth to you? And I’ll sweeten the deal for you. In Pinball FX3, you could only play with true-to-life table dimensions on PC or Nintendo Switch. With Pinball FX and Pinball M, no matter what platform you’re on, vertical screen options are available and so easy to set up. So your $9.99 game of Addams Family goes from looking like this:
To looking like this:
Those screenshots both come from the same copy of Pinball FX on an Xbox Series X. Wow! As of this writing, there’s over 135 tables in Pinball FX and Pinball M, and while we rate five of Pinball FX’s tables OUT OF ORDER (none for Pinball M), every table can be played vertically. You can absolutely feel the difference, especially in shooting accuracy and timing. You don’t need an expensive digital table to do this, either. Just turn any TV or Computer monitor on its side and use any game controller. It works with Steam, Epic, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch and every table can feel like you’re viewing a real pinball table. And, if you want the full DIY digital table with arcade flipper buttons, Pinball FX and Pinball M are excellent starting points. There’s a LOT of problems with Pinball FX and Pinball M, but the addition of universal vertical access overrides all of them and makes Zen’s output our favorite digital pinball experience. I’ll talk more about the problems with Zen’s adaptations of real life tables in the Pinball FX review, but all you need to know is by turning your monitor on its side, this:
Becomes this:
And you don’t have to spend a penny more to do it. Very cool.
WHY PINBALL M?
Zen Studios wanted blood, guts, and swearing in pinball. I mean, those things are already part of pinball when I play.. one way or another. But, adding those things to Pinball FX not only bumps that to an M rating, which I’m guessing almost certainly violates contracts they have with Disney regarding the Marvel/Star Wars licenses, but it would outright prevent release in some countries due to censorship laws. You’ll note that many of Pinball FX3/Pinball FX’s Williams pins have had superficial alterations to the artwork to remove anything risque. If I have to choose between them making changes so minuscule that neither Dad nor Angela could spot changes without being told what they were or not having the Star Wars/Marvel pins, I’ll take the Star Wars/Marvel pins and the “censored” artwork every time. But, making new pins that would potentially breach existing contracts they have AND cut off their ability to sell family-safe tables in some markets wasn’t an option until now. Zen’s solution is an entirely different pinball platform. The advertising and table selection suggests that this is really a horror-themed pinball program. As of this writing, 6 of the 8 available tables are themed around horror, with only Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball and System Shock representing traditional M-rated games (and System Shock is pretty much horror too).
Is this necessary? Probably not, and weirdly enough, it’s Zen that proved that. A sanitized version of Pinball M’s best table, System Shock, is also on Pinball FX and plays identically. Wrath of the Elder Gods is also on both platforms, but.. well, one works and one doesn’t. We’ll get to that. But really, it’s just tables with cussing, boozing, and red paint smeared all around. In the case of a table like The Thing, it isn’t even all that gory and wouldn’t have taken that much modifying to earn a T rating or even E rating on Pinball FX. Just change the B-O-O-Z-E name to T-H-I-N-G, remove the red, beep the cussing, and it’s the same table. Even the Duke Nukem table isn’t that risque. We’re comfortable letting my 9 year old niece Sasha, heir apparent to this very blog, play everything on Pinball M so far. There’s nothing that isn’t too intense for a child to play while supervised by a grown-up. It’s pinball, for god’s sake. So, what other differences make Pinball M worth the download?
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SPRUCE-UP YOUR COLLECTION
As you play and make progress, you earn in-game currency that can be used to buy custom upgrades to tables that have no effect on gameplay. You can change some of the sound effects, the look of the ball, the appearance of the motion trail that follows the ball, the room lighting, and the look of the cabinet housing the table (which only matters in the menu). I was slowly making progress on these until I posted a seventeen-trillion point game of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which gave me enough currency to buy everything (and level up my profile to the max level of 120) with 1,015 currency points to spare for Camp Bloodbrook later this month. If you’re into customizing pins, you’ll dig this a lot more than me. The only knock I have is that there’s no option to randomize the balls or sound effects. That would be nice.
There’s also power-ups for the arcade and campaign modes that, in a return to how they worked in Pinball FX3, require leveling-up. That means grinding. My family and I agree that we prefer Pinball FX’s way of doing it, where power-ups have a fixed value that doesn’t slowly upgrade as you accomplish menial tasks in the tables. It means we can compete on a fully level playfield right out of the hypothetical box without having to spend what could take over an hour to build up the boosts we want to use. This is one of those things that feels like it’s done to boost “engagement” without thinking of the ramifications that 99.999% of all owners will never bother and some might feel the work required isn’t worth the time or effort and give up on Pinball M altogether. The customization stuff is a good idea, but leveling-up boosts is forcing players to do busy work in order to be competitive on some leaderboards.
Five new challenges, three of which are fine, one of which is silly, and one of which is dumb.
NEW CHALLENGES/FEATURES
In addition to the usual rigmarole of 200 flip challenges or five minute challenges, Pinball M adds a whopping five new challenges to compete on. In Dread, you have one minute to score a benchmark of points. Reaching the benchmark adds a minute to the time and sets a new benchmark. This goes on until you run out of time. This is one of the good ones. So is Rescue, which is a race to see how fast you can reach a lone benchmark. Times, not scores, are posted to the leaderboard. The same goes for Survival, but that’s the worst of the five challenges, easily. In it, you have so much time to start building up your score before you start “bleeding points.” IE your score begins trickling away at an increasingly faster rate. Eventually, you’re bleeding points by the millions and games end in seconds. It’s just not fun. Madness has more going for it. It’s a unique multiball challenge that utilizes whatever the table’s max is, but it’s NOT a quick pass to the wizard mode. Instead, the more lights you shoot, the faster the values of jackpots increase. This is insane, chaotic, and everyone’s favorite new challenge. Yes, even me. And then there’s Shiver, which is “pinball in the dark. Practically blind!” Here’s what it looks like:
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Pretty lame, Millhouse. Now, your mileage may vary depending on how bright your settings are, but since the table’s lights still work, come on, you’re not going to miss much. But hey, three-for-five ain’t bad. The challenges are also part of the new campaign mode. The campaign missions are mostly easy (some can be finished in literally under one second), and they’re not that hard to complete. In fact, we’ve only missed getting one completed on the high level. It’s a Survival challenge for Texas Chainsaw Massacre that requires you to stay alive for four minutes. By time you reach 3:30 – 3:50, you’re bleeding MILLIONS of points every second. I shot the lights out one game and still came four seconds short. Dad and Sasha both put up similar numbers when THEY shot the lights out. Under 20 people in the world have cleared this, according to the leaderboard. We will. We just have to wait for Angela. Anyway, it’s all about the tables.
TABLE REVIEWS
Our system is simple. MASTERPIECE– Our best score. 5 out of 5. GREAT– Better than GOOD, not quite a MASTERPIECE. GOOD– Even though this is the lowest passing grade, it’s still a passing grade. BAD– A table that particular rater thought wasn’t deserving of an overall positive rating. THE PITS – The reviewer felt the table has little to no redeeming qualities.
I then average the scores, and if the average is 3.6 to 4.5, the table is awarded a Certificate of Excellence. My team has agreed a Certificate of Excellencewinner is worth the price of a $14.99 set by itself. If it’s a stand alone table that costs $14.99, get it, because it’s a very, VERY fun table. A table that scores higher than 4.5 enters the Pantheon of Digital Pinball. These are the cream of the crop. The elite. Very few tables make it in. As of this writing, Zen has only made four non-Williams tables that entered the Pantheon. They are Star Wars: Battle of Mimban, Star Wars: Clone Wars, Epic Quest, and Fear Itself, with Mimban being our near-unanimous choice for Zen’s best table ever. Their versions of Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, Getaway: High Speed II and the Pinball FX3 build of Monster Bash are also Pantheon Inductees. But, one more Zen creation might enter the Pantheon today, hint hint. A table that receives all positive scores but isn’t good enough to be certified excellent is still awarded a Clean Scorecard, which is pretty hard to get. A Clean Scorecard means we think it’s a safe bet the average player will enjoy the table more than dislike it. And finally, a table that scores an average of under 1.5 is declared a Certified Turd, but as of this writing, no Pinball M table is even that close to it.
Camp Bloodbrook Coming October 24, 2024 Designed by Daniel “Dolby” Vigh Stand Alone Release ($4.99)
They should have armed the killer with a nail file because this sucker can file off serial numbers like no other.
I assume that Zen Studios started preliminary work on a Friday the 13th table only to find out they weren’t getting the license. Instead of repurposing it, Police Force style, they just made a generic masked slasher table set at a lake. I’m all for it, and my only question is why didn’t you do that with Jaws? Without the music, hell, it could be ANY shark attack table, right? Anyway, Bloodbrook is Dolby Vigh’s best table yet and one of Pinball M’s best tables. While we currently consider the Pinball FX build to be so busted that we classify it OUT OF ORDER, the Pinball M version works great. The difference is in the mode start locker.
Signature Shot – Mode Start Locker: In Pinball FX, in “realistic physics” mode, this locker will drop the ball straight down the middle, right between the flippers, with alarming consistency. That doesn’t happen in Pinball M. In fact, this is a good shot in Pinball M.
Ignore the name. This IS the Friday the 13th table everyone has expected since Pinball M was announced, and it does a much better job with theme integration than anything in the Death Save Bundle. In fact, as far as horror goes, only Texas Chainsaw Massacre is better at matching a pinball layout to movie theme. The use of two dead end lanes on a single table, one for starting modes and one themed as a lake (it’s so small it looks more like a kiddie pool) adds to a sense of claustrophobia, but in a good way. This layout slaps, as the kids say. A multitude of good to great shots, but the fun stops there. Camp Bloodbrook speaks volumes about how far you can get simply by having a mistake-free layout. Pretty dang far. As if it’s channeling the spirit of 90s Gottlieb, it’s the ROM and the scoring system that nearly takes a machete to Camp Bloodbrook.
Signature Shot – The Lake: I get that the lake shot has to be round for the canoe spinner to work, but how many lakes are perfectly round? Immersion BROKEN. I kid. Actually, it IS satisfying to spin the canoe, though like so many aspects of Camp Bloodbrook, it’s underutilized. It’s just a glorified ball lock that doubles as a lane shot for the various modes. If you’re going to have water on a table, you need a satisfying splash down, or what’s the point? Zen has done it well before, or at least I think so. I personally find Pacific Rim’s splash down satisfying, something my family vehemently disagrees about. We’re all in agreement that Camp Bloodbrook’s water is missing something. Having Not-Jason snatch the ball would be nice for a third ball lock, but I don’t think it works for the first and second. It would be neat if each of the three ball locks did something different. Also, the release for Lake Multiball is lame too, but the actual shot itself is nice. One of the few Zen Studios shots where a backhand is consistently effective.
Bloodbrook’s modes are pretty average and underwhelming overall. This table reminded me a LOT of Chucky’s Killer Pinball. It’s so close that, if it were a cookie, it feels like it was made out of the same batter. It even has the mode where the antagonist walks onto the table and you have to shoot lanes without accidentally shooting him, only it’s a poorer version of it. Unlike Chucky, “the killer” of Camp Bloodbrook takes quite a while to lumber into place before the shot becomes lit. It’s annoying. This happens in the wizard mode too, where the instructions specifically tell you the object is to shoot him, but he’s not, for lack of a better term “lit”, until he waddles to his designated spot. There’s four main modes, one of which is shooting the bad guy, followed by a final mode where you once again shoot the bad guy, followed by a wizard multiball. The modes are NOT balanced, so they probably should have been forced to be played in sequential order. In fact, the fourth mode, Escape Plan, pays off so much and has so many lit shots (where even the false lights are worth a million points) that all four Vices play it first.
Signature Targets – STORM! Targets: Angela said the placement of the live multiplier targets and the ease of use makes these shots “like rewarding bricks.” It’s absolutely true that you can light these mostly via missing the actual lanes themselves. BUT, I like that for a reason. Sometimes I’ll find myself at the end of a mode and I’ll notice that I’m only one or two of the S-T-O-R-M-! targets away from activating the 3x scoring multiplier. It becomes mighty tempting to try and activate the multiplier before completing the mode for a windfall of points. Dolby’s Thing table has a similar set-up, but the table doesn’t blow wind that messes with the ball in Camp Bloodbrook. Also, it’s much easier to activate this multiplier because the lights don’t turn off if you shoot them a second time. We were split on if this was a good choice, or if it’s TOO powerful. Oscar really thinks x3 was too much and a progressive that starts at 1.1 to 1.5 and grows with each new STORM! activated would have been preferable. I agree that x3 throws the balance off too much, especially since the modes themselves aren’t even close to balanced, and would have been fine with it being x2 scoring. But, x3 it is, and I enjoyed the targets more than I disliked them.
The live multiplier is pretty much it for high scoring. There’s no progressive scoring for completing the modes, and doing well in the modes doesn’t enhance scoring in the wizard. In Angela’s Xbox world record-setting game (2,311,291,577), she completed multiple full mode cycles, and was scoring the same throughout, and part of the reason why she started playing recklessly (she had earned four extra balls on her third ball), was she just got bored. The shame is, this is probably the least difficult of any of Dolby’s pins too, but without dynamic scoring mechanics, it gets old. Even x3 scoring gets boring if the modes pay off the same whether you’re on your first cycle or seventh. The only progressive-scoring mode seems to be Lake Multiball. And that mode only consists of two shots: the lake and the ramp directly left of the lake. They probably kept the overall scoring low and non-progressive because the STORM! x3 buff isn’t very hard to trigger. By the way, for all my complaints, we all REALLY liked Camp Bloodbrook. While I didn’t love the rule sheet, there’s no grinding and it doesn’t fundamentally feel like it takes forever to do anything. All the side-modes go super fast. The pace works, if not the scoring itself. I might not consider Bloodbrook to be Dolby’s best, but by scoring average, it easily is. Cathy: GREAT (4 out of 5) Angela: GREAT Oscar: GREAT Sasha: GREAT Jordi: MASTERPIECE (5 out of 5) Scoring Average: 4.2 – CERTIFIED EXCELLENT
Chucky’s Killer Pinball Released November 30, 2023 Designed by Zoltan Vari Set: Death Save Bundle ($19.99)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
Kickback – Jordi: As Chucky says: “If they don’t let us play, they all go away.” This table doesn’t let me play. The skill shot makes no sense since it’s undervalued and overly risky, but it’s only the first of many killer issues on this table, and I don’t mean that in the “killer, dude! Radical!” way. The central Voodoo targets are designed to return the ball straight down the middle, and the right orbit is absolutely lethal if the ball doesn’t make it all the way up there. So many balls go just over the right flipper and down the drain, and with how unreliable nudging is with the new engines (shared by both Pinball FX and Pinball M) defense is nearly impossible. I really wanted to like this table. When a mode works well, it is not a grind unlike in most of Zen’s new tables, the theming is spot on, and there are so many references here that just work. Sadly, Chucky is let down by a table that refuses to let me play even a single session without stealing a ball or two. “Are we having fun now?” No.
Despite the blood, swearing, and innuendos, Chucky’s Killer Pinball feels like it could have been an ideal trainer table. Chucky is a smooth shooter with multiple satisfying shots, the greatest of which SHOULD have been a humped ramp themed like a roller coaster that’s always a thrill to complete. The problem is it doesn’t always complete, and there’s no rhyme or reason why sometimes it doesn’t make it over the second hump or not. Since it’s the finale of the Tiffany mode, and completing the full circuit is the first jackpot in multiball, it’s kind of important that you can’t count on a shot working every time. The weird thing is, we weren’t 100% sure whether or not the point was to create a ramp circuit that could only be completed off a batted shot or not. If it was deliberate, it’s a very bad idea. If the intent was that the ball should finish the circuit every time, it’s just a run of a mill fail. What a shame. That should have been a historically awesome shot. To make up for it, the sequence shot used to lock balls is one of Zen’s finest ideas. You have to shoot the left side’s locker, which triggers a razor blade flipper that then bats the ball up into the lock. SO satisfying to hit, except it goes back to that circuit that doesn’t always complete. PLEASE fix that, Zen. It needs it!
Signature Mode – Marble Prank: I don’t know what to make of this multiball mode. The concept is unique: after so many bangs of the bumpers, a jar full of marbles rises onto the playfield near the Voodoo targets. When you break the jar, it releases five glass marbles onto the playfield that behave like faster mini-balls. If you can hit the marbles hard enough with the pinball, it breaks them for a million points each plus a million for each marble broken so far. The other extermination method is to use the razor flipper to fling them at the multiball lock, which is 10M + 10M instead. It sounds great, but the problem is the jar hangs directly over the drain, and it’s not rare for several of the marbles to immediately drain. While the pinball has ball save the entire time the mode is going, the marbles don’t. A neat mode but not worth the effort, really.
Originally, the Vices all had Chucky’s Killer Pinball rated at GREAT, but the more we played it, the less we liked it. While the roller coaster not working every time is what sealed Chucky’s fate, all it really did was make all the little annoyances stand out that much more. Like the VOO-DOO targets resetting if you accidentally start another mode. I already hated them anyway. Vari-targets are my least favorite type of pinball shot, and this has not one, not two, but THREE that act as the mode start and hang right over the drain. Yes, there’s a ball save that protects you, but only if you push one in all the way. There’s repetitive callouts galore (we adore Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly, but even they become annoying after saying the same stuff over and over) or blood splatter blocks your view during the Marble Prank. Most of all, Chucky’s Killer Pinball features scoring so imbalanced that it assured Oscar cement his rating to GOOD even if they fix the coaster. Jordi was right about the skillshot leaving a lot to be desired. Going off his body of work, I suspect Zoltan Vari isn’t a big fan of skillshots in general. Chucky’s is a difficult to clock, super high-risk skillshot, and when we actually got it, we were stunned by how little value it is for the challenge and risk it involves. It certainly tracks with the rest of the table’s poor factoring-in of risk and reward. Dad ain’t wrong about that.
Signature Mode – Olly Olly Oxen Free: Of the three main modes, this is the worst, easily. In it, Chucky jumps onto the playfield and you have to avoid hitting him. A single hit ends the mode. This is potentially problematic because the game doesn’t just give you the ball to start. It kind of sideswipes it towards players, so that it reaches the flippers as chaotically as possible. Because, say it with me, “Zen Studios’ designers are hostile towards ball control.” Well, sometimes the ball might hit the slingshots and violently fling around the table until the ball pops up and hits Chucky, ending the mode before you even get your first shot. Yea, getting hit by the slingshots counts as “shooting him.” To the game’s credit, this is extremely rare, but it’s a completely unnecessary thing to happen in the first place. Just give players the ball! I’d say half the time the ball ends up in the drain before your first shot, though it doesn’t instantly kill-off the ball save. I have a feeling they realized how badly some aspects of Chucky handle and used ball save as a band aid instead of a feature. System Shock is like that too.
Other than the mode in the caption above, Chucky’s modes are pretty well done. No grinding. They make use of the full table. If there’s a downside, it’s that each of the three main modes is a “tour the table” type of mode, only done slightly differently. “Chucky Says” is just “hit the lit shot” and nothing more. It’s not timed differently. It doesn’t play differently. It’s too simple. I would have preferred the modes play out sequentially like Getaway: High Speed II, but I’m not going to complain too much about a table that does what we want: have fun, non-grindy modes. And the wizard mode is a ton of fun. Spoiler: you hack Chucky up bit by bit, and it’s awesome. Chucky’s table is really well done in many aspects, so we REALLY want to give this table higher scores. But, until the coaster’s fix is in, we really can’t. If it was intentional, GOODis Chucky’s ceiling (unless you’re Angela. She LOVES that it’s hard to complete the circuit. She insists it makes it more exciting). Also, yea, I’m pretty peeved that this is one of the few tables I put a MAJOR marathon into with a world record pace only to have the game glitch out and start taking away points from me instead of adding them. I wouldn’t have reconsidered my score, but my GOOD would be a very enthusiastic one. Even though this wasn’t our highest-rated pin, we want to make it clear: the lack of grinding and quick modes are a very positive thing. More of THAT please, Zen! The best thing I can say about Chucky’s Killer Pinball is it feels like the prototype that gave us System Shock. Worth it! Cathy: GOOD Angela: GREAT Oscar: GOOD Jordi: BAD Dash: GOOD
Sasha: GOOD
Elias: BAD* (Nintendo Switch) Overall Scoring Average: 3.0 – GOOD
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
Dead by Daylight Released November 30, 2023 Designed by Gergely “Gary” Vadocz Set: Death Save Bundle ($19.99)
Is it ironic that this is a pinball table licensed on one of the most license-heavy video games ever made?
Dull by Daylight, according to Angela and Oscar, is the worst Pinball M table so far. Hell, it’s the only table among the original five launch tables that doesn’t have its own Pinball FX Wiki page as of this writing. It’s second-to-last for me. A slog of a pin in desperate need of some spit shine. On literally our first shot ever taken on this table, Angela valleyed the skillshot, and no amount of nudging could free it. Even after patchwork, in the final sweep of tables before we published this feature, we valleyed balls on the tall ramp, and the only difference seemed to be a gentle nudge dislodges the ball now. While it might not break the table, it speaks volumes to how unpolished this one is. Plus it has some of the most frustrating rails and outlanes around. Even when the ball seems like it doesn’t have the energy to carry on, it still manages to crawl across the rails and slither down the outlane. This on a pin where nudging feels especially ineffective. But, none of that matters, because Dead by Daylight has a much, much bigger problem: it’s just a boring table. One of those instances where the shot selection is less than the sum of its parts.
CORRECTION: In the original review, I said the patched table valleyed the skillshot. That was wrong. Originally, we were valleying (coined by Oscar from a term borrowed from roller coaster lingo meaning “gets stuck midway through the circuit” that we’re trying to add to the pinball lexicon) on the skill shot, but that doesn’t happen anymore. Instead, the valleys happen at the top of the tall ramp. Sorry for the mix-up.
Signature Feature – Survivor/Killer Loadouts: Dead by Daylight is one of those tables where you choose a buff before the game starts, just like the video game it’s based on. Survivor mode has four, while Killer has three. Oscar is a big fan of the concept of loadout buffs, provided they’re balanced enough that there’s not one logical choice. The loadouts you can choose for every Pinball M’s arcade mode (IE enhanced multiball, bumpers, ball save, etc.) have this problem. According to Dad’s theory, if you had a 100 different buffs and 98 were weak and only two were beneficial but equally balanced, it’d still be worth it because it means players have a legitimate choice with pros and cons that can be tailored to the player. On the flip side, if you have seven choices, six of which are equally balanced with each-other while one stands out as the no-brainer choice for all players of all skill sets, it wrecks the whole concept. With that in mind, myself, Oscar, and Sasha decided to play a bunch of games with every load out, and all three of us consistently had our best standard games (Classic/Arcade) using KILLER – EASY SACRIFICE as our buff. I should note the one exception to this was I put up the #6 all-time arcade score with SURVIVOR- EASY SKILL CHECKS. This feels like a one-off fluke as my other games were all on the lower side with it. The other exception is the special challenges, where putting up points fast matters, in which case we all scored higher using SURVIVOR – FAST GENERATORS.
Dead by Daylight’s biggest problem is there’s just no good shots on the table and no sense of flow. Maybe that makes sense since the shots mostly represent distance closed in a cat and mouse chase regardless of which side you pick. This is what we call a “pick ‘n flick” because, despite the heavy use of hurry-ups, this is a game where you’ll want to trap the ball and aim carefully, because accuracy and not volume of shots will win the day. But, a pick ‘n flick table absolutely needs thrilling shots to succeed, and that’s not here. The closest it comes is smacking crates to increase your distance if you’re playing as a survivor, while the killer has a giant bear trap that you want to shoot before you start shooting orbits, since it leads to a faster capture. But even the bear trap is a massive let down. It’d be more fun to build a two ball multiball around it where it captures the first ball and then you have to smack it several times to open it back up. Oddly enough, the limited shot selection would make for a better multiball table if not for the aforementioned outlanes and rails. Oh and you have to shoot very bland drop targets that appear in the center of the table to score a capture.
Signature Mode- Survivors: It seems fairly unanimous in my house that playing as the Survivors instead of the Killer turns Dead by Daylight into a more well-rounded pinball game. There’s five generators that require a full table tour. They are (1) the spinner (2) flashing lanes (3) the marked sinkhole (4) the flashing lanes, again (5) the bumpers. What becomes annoying is the video mode “Skill Check” pauses a live ball. The video mode itself is quick. You just have to stop a meter in time, with a zone close to the edge scoring more points. But, the mode can interrupt play, and it’s even happened to us when the ball is on a flipper. When this happens, it can screw with your timing when the mode ends and play resumes. We’re honestly not sure if this was a deliberate choice or something that needs to be patched out, but assuming it’s a bug, it wouldn’t change any of our ratings.
The center loop that acts as the skillshot, the multiplier increase, and sometimes the key shot for modes is just too clunky to be satisfying. We split on whether the tall ramp in the center was too rejection-heavy or not. Actually, the argument was more about whether the rejections were based in reality or if it was just Unreal Engine living up to its name and throwing back shots that had the angle and velocity to complete the ramp. Unlike some faulty ramps in Pinball M or Pinball FX (the teardrop from Texas Chainsaw for example), I didn’t feel it was clear one way or another. I’m open to the possibility that the design is inherently flawed. Either way, this became one of Angela’s least favorite pins and she can’t believe we don’t consider Dead by Daylight to be Han Solo/Safe Cracker levels of bad.
Signature Shot – Bear Trap: Talk about a letdown. When we saw the bear trap for the first time, we were imagining the possibilities of how this could be used as a sick M-rated ball lock. Nope. You just clank it a few times until it opens, then you shoot lanes before it closes. That’s it. It’s not a ball catch. It’s not a decorated cellar. It’s a bland digital target, and nothing more.
The lack of targets and poor flow from shot to shot means that Dead by Daylight was fated to grow old quickly. Our suspicion is the limited shot selection was done to make the differences between Killer and Survivor more pronounced, and to Gary’s credit, the two modes do feel different enough, but Killer offers a lot less flexibility since it makes logical sense to arm the bear trap before shooting any other target. Individual strategy for that side of the equation begins and ends with what loadout you want. We spent the better part of two days playing this and trying to find the fun. Sasha liked it, as she felt the chase aspect worked well regardless of what side you choose, plus she liked the shot selection more than we did. The rest of us were just really bored. Dead by Daylight probably does an admirable job of feeling like the video game, but as a pinball table, it was dead on arrival. Cathy: BAD Angela: THE PITS Oscar: BAD
Jordi: BAD
Sasha: GOOD Elias: GOOD* (Nintendo Switch) Scoring Average: 2.0 – BAD
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
Angela has dubbed this “Duke of Whirl” because of the merry-go-round. She’s a fan of rotating targets in general and thinks it’s one of the most underused concepts by Zen Studios. I pointed out that it wouldn’t be a big deal if it showed up regularly as a featured target. She said “why would the best type of target stop being fun?” We dueled to settle who was right. She won 4 to 0. She always wins.
Duke was a sort of breaking point for me, where I’d had all I could stand and I could stands no more. Zen has a tendency to go overboard with shot requirements, and they finally crossed the line of reason with Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball. It’s as if someone at Zen is saying “why have a mode require five shots when it could instead require ten? Or hell, why not twenty?” And the answer is “because you also want to have hyperactive slingshots that are aimed right at the outlane and it’s not reasonable to expect someone to keep the ball alive during this.” I think Duke Nukem is a terrible table. Serial killer slingshots with hair triggers aimed right at the outlanes combined with modes that need their shot requirement clipped by 80% at least. A typical game consists of the ball hitting the slingshot and going into the outlane about six times, or possibly ricocheting off one of the many cardboard targets, skipping across the rails and going down the outlane. It’s all defense, all the time and it’s SO exhausting and boring. Every mode is that way.
Signature Mode – Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum: In this video mode, you have to alternate between four channels and press the launch button three times when a target pops up. Do this twenty times. It’s not exactly a first person shooter, and the novelty of it looking like Duke Nukem 3D wears off pretty quickly. There’s no tension at all. Even when we’ve played it poorly, we’ve never fallen under 60% health. I imagine if someone had a stroke while they were playing this, or if they were attacked by swarms of murder hornets in the middle of a game, they might lose it. Maybe. Some of Zen’s video modes aren’t so bad. This thing is such an unfathomable slog to get through, and it has nothing at all to do with pinball. You know, that thing we’re here to play. I wouldn’t mind this if it lasted only a few seconds and involved shooting one enemy and maybe avoiding its fire, but it’s nothing like that. It’s just a shooting gallery with a generous amount of wiggle room.
By reputation, Duke Nukem is one of the hardest tables Zen has ever made. I have no problem with a hard table if it’s fun, but Duke Nukem also requires a massive grind to accomplish anything. Want to get an extra ball? Hit the NEST targets 100 times, which can only be shot off a toe shot right next to the drain and in which case the ball is likely to go off a slingshot and die, or get into the secret room ten times. How do you get into the secret room? Well, first you need a pipe bomb. How do you get a pipe bomb? You have to complete one of the three side modes. Oh, side modes? That sounds quick. What do you do? Well, for “I’m The Cure” you have to score 6 sinkholes in the merry go around, which has six slots, half of which don’t feed the sinkhole. You then enter an “alien nest” where you have to get 60 spins of the spinner. Then you get the pipe bomb? No, 60 spins spawns four more targets which raise up and down. THEN do you get the pipe bomb? Well, maybe. It’s a random award. Could be the pipe bomb. Could be something else. Doesn’t that sound like boring ass busy work? Uh, yea? And if you want that extra ball from the secret room, you only have to get lucky with the random award for all that work ten times over. You won’t be able to. See, the designer thought it would be hilarious if he aimed the slingshots at the outlanes and gave them a hair trigger. And also have the ball return sometimes come in from the side at a sharp, sideswiping angle that could go down the outlane or onto the slingshots which can also send the ball into the outlane. Having fun for your $19.99 for the Death Save Bundle yet?
Signature Shots – Cardboard Targets: The soldiers in front of the boss targets take multiple shots to kill, then the boss takes a ton of shots to kill. Hypothetical future bosses past the first one are even spongier AND and they have more minions in front of them AND those minions require more shots. Let’s pretend that Duke Nukem doesn’t have extremely lethal slingshots and kickbacks that require five shots each to light. Let’s pretend that you have a ball save lit the entire fight and instead the only factor during the boss fights is your health. That’s a thing that exists on this table, by the way, but don’t worry because you’ll die long before your health runs out anyway. But, pretend that health was the only factor and not the drain or outlanes. Wouldn’t shooting these static cardboard targets get boring anyway? It’s not like it’s two or three hits on each. The bosses can take as many as 18 shots to kill, and that’s after you get through the spongy minions in front of them. No shot on a boss counts until the minions are clear. Didn’t anyone stop and say “wait.. is this fun?” Because it’s not! It’s such a mindless chore that it’s practically a holistic lobotomy.
I’m sure that someone has gotten in the ear of Zen’s design team lineup and told them “making tables harder is good! Making it take as many shots as possible to get anything going is good! It increases engagement!” It actually doesn’t. At all. It just makes your table boring, so that people who aren’t in the pinball bubble like me, my family, and my friends won’t want to spend their time with it. So, how’s Duke Nukem’s ruthless difficulty working out for it? Well, a few minutes ago, I had a game of Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball where I beat the first boss. So basically I finished a single mode. I completed zero side modes and made only one skill shot. That game, where I barely accomplished anything, is the 17th highest score on the Duke Nukem arcade mode leaderboard right now. Not for the week. It’s #1 for the week. It’s #17 all-time. One boss alone got me a top 20 all-time score. That’s engagement? Because to me, that sounds like Duke Nukem is a barren wasteland of non-engagement. BAD was too generous for a table that I’ve honestly never had even a tiny bit of fun on. I can’t rate a table based on the fun I could have had if its designer hadn’t made it such a slog to make anything happen. I can only rate the table as it exists, and I think Duke Nukem is currently the worst Pinball M table. I stand alone in my group on that opinion, but hey, I’m used to it. Just wait until you see the Knight Rider review. Cathy: THE PITS Angela: GOOD Oscar: GREAT Jordi: GOOD Dash: GREAT Sasha: GOOD Elias: GOOD* (Nintendo Switch) Scoring Average: 3.0 – GOOD *Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
System Shock First Released February 15, 2024 Designed by Zoltan Vari Stand Alone Release ($5.49)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
If the mark of a truly magnificent licensed pinball table is one that makes non-fans of the featured property interested in finding out more about it, System Shock must be one of the very best digital pins ever. My father, now in his mid 70s, purchased the recent remake based on his experience playing Zen’s tribute to it. Fans will appreciate that they nailed the creepy menace of SHODAN and the sense of isolation, but you absolutely don’t need to be a fan of 1994 PC classic to enjoy the thrilling shots of what is easily Zoltan Vari’s greatest triumph (sorry Fear Itself). While the build we played had that expected launch-window Zen clunkiness, we still couldn’t put down our copies of Pinball FX and Pinball M, playing nearly a full week of duels. Eight months after its release, in October of 2024, we again couldn’t put it down. Few tables from Pinball FX or Pinball M are easily classified as a modern pinball triumph. System Shock is. In fact, there’s only one thing that takes it out of the conversation for best Zen Studios pin ever. So, let’s do a caption and get that out of the way.
Signature Brain Fart – Laser Mode & SHODAN Battle: In the annals of “what were they thinking?” this one is the most peculiar, because it’s so silly that I literally laughed. First off, let’s talk about Laser Mode. It’s one of four checkmarks players must knock out before the final battle with SHODAN. Getting to Laser involves completing the harrowing three-shot journey up the spiral tower (maybe add a fourth shot if you haven’t hit the Serv-Bot yet), at which point you play a brick breaker style video mode. That’s fine. It’s a fun mode. Well, it’s also the wizard mode and the final battle with video game icon SHODAN. The only difference is instead of killing two enemies, you have to hit SHODAN twenty times with the puck before you drop the puck twenty times. Yep, really. That’s the wizard mode. Presumably Zoltan Vari won a bet.
Oof. On a table where every angle, orbit, and ramp is fun to shoot, not having a tour-the-table wizard is almost beyond belief. Zen has a history of bad mini-tables, but given how amazing the layout and the shot selection is for System Shock, it’s a safe bet that ZV was on a roll and he could have pulled off a sick boss fight mini-table for this one. And yea, SHODAN’s value is potentially so high if you hit all nine targets (“collecting items”) on the roto target that it negates the rest of the table. BUT, since the Wizard is easy to get, we’re cool with it. Oddly enough, this might be the most generous Zen table ever. Not only are extra balls plentiful, but so are ball saves. The tower is the obvious center piece, but get this: there’s a target behind the entrance to the tower that activates a magnet that assists in teeing-up the ball for the bat flipper that shoots the tower AND gives you a split-second ball save if you drain within the next second and a half. That feature was hotly debated in the Vice Household regarding whether or not it nerfed the table too much. Oscar was THIS CLOSE to dropping his vote to GREAT. The fact that every Vice ultimately rated System Shock a MASTERPIECE should make it clear it wasn’t a deal breaker even for the challenge-frothing Oscar or Angela.
Signature Shots – The Tower: Actually, every Vice had their own “I almost dropped this from MASTERPIECE” feature. This was mine. Specifically, the second level of the tower. This both doubles as the super jackpot in multiball while also functioning as a crank which rotates the base of the tower. The base features stand-up targets that function as the tools you collect to increase the value of multiball and the final battle with SHODAN. There’s 9 total targets and 3 cellars that are the ball lock. The reason I almost dropped the score from MASTERPIECE is the crank has a tendency to go nuts. In theory, it should only do one quarter rotation when you hit it. But, it frequently goes more than one crank, or sometimes it’ll crank forward and then backwards. When you create experimental targets, things go wrong. It wasn’t a deal breaker by any means, and the more I thought about it, the more I questioned whether I was even frustrated by it. So, while it didn’t factor into my rating, I wouldn’t shed a tear if they fixed it so it was always a quarter-turn of the base. Also, and this is very nit-picky but I wish there was better representation of the nine tools you collect. Better use of lights that tells you which targets you haven’t hit, because you do have to hit all nine specific stand-ups on the roto-target, whereas any of the three sinkholes count towards a ball lock.
System Shock is that rare table where nearly every shot is thrilling. This is further enhanced by the fact that the four “modes” you must complete to open the SHODAN fight require minimum grinding. The one that requires the most work is probably “COMBO” where you have to shoot the front-right ramp several times, which places three unique balls as targets just above the flipper zone. Two are fakes that explode on contact while one is a real “rubber ball” with its own unique physics that must be sunk in the sinkhole above the right flipper. This lights the two front ramps, at which point a single crisscross combo gives you the COMBO light. It’s a lot of work and probably the toughest light to get, but it’s also a light you can get through natural progression instead of grinding. Oddly, after you’ve finished the wizard, you can skip all the steps I listed above except the single crisscross combo to relight it. The second wizard takes a LOT less time to reach. There’s a small but very annoying (not to mention potentially game ruining) glitch attached to it if you’re playing one of the modes that allows you to use the Ball Save buff. If you screw up hitting the real ball before time runs out and you have a maxed-out Ball Save buff, it could take five or more minutes before you get another shot. Another annoyance is sometimes, when shooting the final shot that earns you the “REACTOR” light, the ball begins slowing down as it starts to “complete the shot” only for it to fall back down. In theory, you should be home free once it reaches the point where it slows down since it seems to be something that the game does and not the physics of your hit.
Signature Mode – Cyborg Attack: I have a gut feeling that it didn’t used to be four checkmarks before fighting SHODAN. My hunch tells me it started as five, and this was the fifth. In it, you have to just shoot the same front-left ramp you’ve shot multiple times to activate it. This also happens to be the hardest mode in System Shock. Nothing else is even close. Oscar calls this a Fastest Gun in the West type of mode because you don’t really have time to set-up shots. You have to ready and aim yourself in a split second, because when the cyborg locks onto your ball, it fires a laser at the ball which sends it flying. Try trapping and even if you begin the shot by letting go of the flipper, the Cyborg will hit the ball, which is a big outlane risk at that point, and it also halts all other modes while the attack is going. Cyborg Attack only awards a nominal amount of points. but the real reward for it is it lights valuable magna saves. This is a prime example of well thought out risk/reward. It was wise to have this be separate from the main modes thanks to the difficulty spike, as was attaching a genuinely desirable award to it. You can even earn the right to stack additional magna saves if you complete mode. Fantastic. More of this type of thoughtfulness with side modes, please.
The worst thing most of us accuse System Shock of is being a flawed MASTERPIECE. That still makes it a MASTERPIECEand, statistically speaking, the best table in Pinball M so far. The only other table in Pinball M that has even a MASTERPIECE vote from anyone on my team is Texas Chainsaw Massacre (two of them, in fact). Only System Shock stands tall as a table entering the Pantheon of Digital Pinball. Oscar said that System Shock reminded him of the pace Getaway: High Speed II has, only if the modes were non-linear. He’s not wrong. Not that System Shock shoots as well as Getaway, but what does? I want to stress once more that you certainly don’t have to be a fan of the original game to enjoy this pin. My father had never played System Shock and Angela and Sasha had never even heard of it. If you feel old now, you’re having the right reaction. But, this is exactly the type of licensed table Zen should be doing. Non-punishing. Easy to understand objectives. No grinding. A table even an average player should be able to finish. But also a table with strategic flexibility and options that measure risk and reward. Sure, you can postpone getting multiball until you collect all nine tools, but if you drain, game over. System Shock offers that constantly. It’s Zoltan Vari’s best table and, indeed, the best Pinball M has offered yet. So naturally it’s also on Pinball FX as well. Go figure. Cathy: MASTERPIECE Angela: MASTERPIECE Oscar: MASTERPIECE Jordi: MASTERPIECE Dash: GOOD* Sasha: MASTERPIECE Elias: MASTERPIECE** (Nintendo Switch) Scoring Average: 4.71 🏛️PANTHEON INDUCTEE🏛️ *This feature will be updated as soon as Dash gets time to explain his GOOD rating. He’s been swamped with work stuff. **Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
John Larroquette’s opening narration from the original movie is here. They got that, so how come they couldn’t get him to do the callouts, too? Just call his cell and ask “hey, can you say MULTIBALL into the phone and maybe MULTIPLIERS INCREASED? What’s this for? We’re doing a pinball table based on Night Court and you’re the only cast member still alive. No, we’re not counting Karen Austin. Hello? Helllllo?”
Texas Chainsaw is currently the #2 ranked Pinball M table, and it’s certainly worth the $5.49 asking price because it’s not possible to get bored with it. The longest single game of pinball I’ve ever played in my entire life was on Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s arcade mode. I gamed the boost level-up system by maxing-out BALL SAVE, then I reached the wizard mode. With the fully-charged ball save boost, I only needed to convert one shot every ninety seconds or so to keep the ball save lit. After a ten hour long wizard mode (including all the breaks I took to ice my hands, and I’m not even kidding), I was the world champion, and then I laid down the next four balls instead of risking Pinball M crashing. There’s not a lot of tables I would play for ten hours straight. It’d be boring, even if I was on a world record pace. That alone speaks volumes to how amazing Chainsaw’s shot selection is. We were rough on newcomer Hezol’s first table, A Samurai Vengeance, but you could see this guy was going to be legit too. Chainsaw proves it.
Persistent Problem – Physics: When ramps in Pinball M or Pinball FX go bad, it’s usually very bad. For example, the teardrop ramp, which is a pretty big shot on this table. It opens a mode and it’s the skillshot. But, the ramp doesn’t work sometimes. I don’t know if it’s too steep or too tight a curve, but we’ve broken it more than once, and thankfully we got a clip of it. Not only did the ball get stuck when it should have had the speed to clear the ramp, but the ball began wiggling. How does a ball wiggle on an incline? It never stopped, either. The clip doesn’t show it but the ball was stuck wiggling at roughly the same speed for quite a while. The wiggle prevented the ball from resetting, and it was jammed so badly that nudging wouldn’t knock it loose. I almost tilted trying to. In fairness, this happened during a silly challenge in the game’s campaign mode. Had this happened during the (former) world record game, I’m not even sure I would have remembered it.
Besides the teardrop ramp, every shot is well-placed and properly satisfying. The highlight is the subtle but sweet chainsaw ramp. It’s one of the shorter ramps in Pinball FX or Pinball M, but it’s also brilliantly angled and works as both a traditional shot and as a toy. The severed head moves along a diagonal track but never feels like it’s angled in a trollish way. The “set ’em up, knock ’em down” modes where you bank points that you then earn via a “massacre” jackpot is an inspired concept, and the only downside is that they don’t pay off enough. Oscar wasn’t a fan of the score imbalance, as he feels the modes were a little more than checklists to get you to the high scoring multiball and wizard modes. When I countered “so does every table, including System Shock” he said fired back with “the shots aren’t as good as System Shock.” They’re really not, but it’s a safe bet that some people will find the shots too conservative and bland. Thankfully there’s minimal grinding and Chainsaw has one of the easier-to-reach wizards Zen has done. That was very wise, given the lack of value for standard modes. Had the scoring been more balanced, this would be a contender for the Pantheon. I think that Hezol is going to work out just fine. Cathy: GREAT Angela: GREAT Oscar: GOOD Jordi: GREAT Sasha: MASTERPIECE Elias: MASTERPIECE* (Nintendo Switch) Scoring Average: 4.16 CERTIFIED EXCELLENT
*Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
The Thing First Released November 30, 2023 Designed by Daniel “Dolby” Vigh Set: Death Save Bundle ($19.99)
Links: Pinball FX Wiki
The weirdest thing is that Zen’s Godzilla table looks colder than this table that’s literally surrounded by ice. Oh and please note that, right now, only the ratings for the main version of Thing are from the four Vices. This review will be updated in late October, 2024 when the review for Camp Bloodbrook is added.
The consensus seems to be that either Thing or Dead by Daylight was the worst table of Pinball M’s launch. Personally, I’d rather play either of those over Duke Nukem, but to each their own. I don’t think Thing is that bad. It’s a very frustrating table, and one I’m not enthused enough with to argue too passionately in favor of, but bad? Nah. My pops and I are in total agreement: Thing has something going for it, though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what that is. One thing about THE Thing that we all agreed on was the layout didn’t do the movie justice. A traditional Japanese fan layout probably wasn’t the right way to go for a pin based on this specific flick. The 1982 John Carpenter film is one of the most imaginative horror movies of all time. How does it do it? Claustrophobia. What is the Thing pinball table? A vast, wide open playfield where every made shot can be followed-up by almost any other orbit. In pinball terms, that’s the literal opposite of claustrophobia. Hell, the Dead by Daylight table would have been a more accurate representation of The Thing’s tone than this. I get a lot of guff from my friends, family, and readers for not putting more stock into theme integration. I think it’s rarely notable unless a table does exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. Thing is exceptionally bad, at least in terms of replicating the emotions of the film, and I say that while noting that I think it’s an okay pinball table.
Persistent Problem – Bad Mini-Tables: Zen Studios has a mini-table problem, and the only good thing I can say about Thing’s mini is that at least it’s not another bland-ass circular table. I get that Dolby was probably aiming to replicate the tight, claustrophobic vibe of the movie with this mini’s shots, but it’s too tight, too limited, and over too fast. If Zen is going to keep insisting on having mini-tables, they should allow players to practice them off the menu instead of having to play a practice game and grind your way to them. Actually, I wish they overhauled their practice mode altogether. Basketball players looking to improve their free throw shooting don’t have to play entire games for the opportunity. They just go up to the line and shoot during practice. Let us do that for all your modes and shots. Do that and you’ll see scores increase across the board.
The real problem with Thing is basically the same problem all tables by Daniel “Dolby” Vigh have, to the point that I could probably cut and paste this review from any other review of his tables: punishing difficulty to the point that it becomes exhausting instead of exciting. Slingshots with hair triggers that only need a single pop to send the ball flying into outlanes faster than you can nudge to defend against it, not that the nudge is all that effective. A ramp’s wall hover directly over the drain in a way designed to funnel balls from the bumper zone straight down the drain, and since it’s right over the middle, often a nudge can’t save you anyway. Sharp toe shots being too essential to the gameplay. Rails where the ball constantly gets cruel bounces instead of kind ones. Modes that take far too many shots to complete given the extreme difficulty. I’m talking about The Thing, but that could apply to Snoopy, Kong, World War Z, Terraforming Mars, and Princess Pride. All middling tables at best, but in six tables he’s not yet gotten his first Certificate of Excellence, and World War Z we consider one of the worst tables in Pinball FX, and I think Princess Bride is just a boring slog. The shame about all this is I think Dolby has the chops to craft great shots. I think Terraforming Mars is far and away his best pin, but I’m not finishing modes on that either. Going off the leaderboards, not many people are. If players are quitting before accomplishing anything in your pin, that shouldn’t be a badge of honor. They’re not giving up because of the difficulty. It’s because it’s boring.
Persistent Problem – Blocked Shots: The physics engine of Pinball FX and Pinball M is far from perfect. The bounce you get off objects never feels quite natural. Often the ball just goes limp, as if the target was heavily padded. Consequently, it’s unpredictable what even an aimed shot will do. This becomes a problem when any Zen designer creates a table that’s ultra-punishing of missed shots, then has modes where targets block the orbits. When you really think about it, it’s a rejection that counts as make, isn’t it? But, logically wouldn’t the ball be likely to react the same way as the average miss or rejection? Uh, yea! If a table has angles and shot placement designed to increase the likelihood of a near-miss draining or outlaning, it feels like digital targets are artificial difficulty taken to an extreme degree.
The thing with Dolby’s pins is that high scores feel lucky instead of skillful. Like after dozens of games, I finally had one where the bounces fell my way. Maybe if the physics were completely overhauled, this wouldn’t be so bad. But Thing even has a mode where wind pushes the ball left and right. A table like Zen’s own Jaws can get away with that, but not a table like Thing that’s specifically meant to be as punishing as humanly possible. I don’t think Dolby is completely misguided in this stuff. For all the sh*t I’ve given him over this mentality, he’s only made one table that’s unambiguously a trash fire: World War Z (and likely Princess Bride too, but we’re waiting for patches before writing-up the final review). My team has awarded CLEAN SCORECARDS to Kong, Snoopy, and Terraforming Mars, meaning those pins didn’t get a single negative rating. I even gave TM a rating of GREAT, and so did Angela. He’s not a hack. But he has to decide if he wants to be the guy that makes tables so difficult the ceiling of enjoyment is low or if he wants to be elite. Nobody accuses Steve Ritchie of making soft tables, but they didn’t feel like they only exist to ice players right out of the starting gate.
Persistent Problem – Out of Reach Wizards: It’s not hard to figure out how many players have reached the wizard mode in any given pin. You just reach the wizard in the Practice Mode, look at your score, and see how many players are in the ballpark of that score on the leaderboard. The above screenshot is Thing’s Wizard, and you can see I have about 136M, so if you give me 30M to account for extra stuff I did, we’ll say 100M is the “range.” For The Thing exactly 20 players EVER have scored over 100,000,000 points in Classic Mode, and not all of them presumably reached the Wizard unless they both somehow shot VERY efficiently while also losing their balls immediately after completing modes. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s 12 to 15 wizards and 5 more who were close. Out of everyone who has bought the original bundle of table. That shouldn’t be a positive thing for designers. Oh, and you can’t use the achievements as a barometer because they were broken for a long time and didn’t work, but for what it’s worth, 0.02% of all players on Xbox have the achievement for the wizard mode in Thing. We don’t have it. Comparatively, that’s exactly the same percentage for Pinball FX’s Xena: Warrior Princess, Battlestar Galactica, and Knight Rider, all of which we have earned. This should be alarming. Again, I assume their designers had it pounded into their skulls “extreme difficulty and mind-numbing grinding is good for engagement” when all evidence says that’s just not the case and you’re boring players away, and when they’re bored away, they probably ain’t coming back for non-Williams pins no matter what license you guys score. I want Pinball FX and Pinball M to stick around, but stuff like this worries me.
The main modes last so long they become boring, and if you fail them, they don’t stay lit. On a table with so many drain angles, that’s a recipe for a middling pinball experience. The side modes aren’t much better. Like there’s a mode where a fire spreads from lane to lane and hitting shots puts the fire out. Only it might relight less than a second later. I can’t imagine why people are frustrated with Zen Studios pins lately. People like challenges, myself included, but after a while it just becomes demoralizing and a downer to play. I was sure I’d be giving this a score of BAD, but once I moved off the standard CLASSIC mode and onto ARCADE, the table had a lot less lethal angles and the outlanes weren’t so murderous. Was it actually fun? It was okay, and I’ll take okay. Now if Zen Studios is happy with okay, that’s troubling. Also, while stringing together the orbits was satisfying, that’s always satisfying regardless of the pin. Modes are what makes each table unique, and Thing’s modes are just alright. Dolby, you have got it in you to go down in history as one of the best pinball designers of the 21st century. You don’t suck, but some of your tables do, and they didn’t have to. It speaks volumes that a table as unlikable as Thing still won me over because it shoots pretty good. I think you have a gift, Daniel. And if you squander it, it’s on you, because everyone is waiting for you to make a table that cares more about being fun than it does being hard. Cathy: GOOD Angela: BAD Oscar: GOOD Sasha: BAD Jordi: GOOD Elias: BAD* (Nintendo Switch) Primary Scoring Average: 2.6 – OKAY AT BEST *Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
Wrath of the Elder Gods: Director’s Cut First Released November 30, 2023 Designed by Gary Vadócz
Links: Pinball FX Wiki Free to Play with Pinball M Installation
Kickback – Angela: Elder Gods just edges out Chucky to earn my vote for the second best Pinball FX table so far. And it’s free! What’s unique about this pin is that Wrath of the Elder Gods feels much more like a modern Stern-era arcade release in terms of the pace of the modes. Nothing lasts too long, and the table is equal parts offense and defense. Although the left outlane is a touch on the gnarly side, Elder Gods has an effective nudge and kickbacks that aren’t a chore to light, so playing defense isn’t fighting windmills. I really don’t get everyone’s problem with the multiball. So what if it’s a snap-shooter? It’s a shooter’s table! How else would you wizard it? Wrath of the Elder Gods proves Zen can still make fun-for-everyone pinball tables when they don’t go overboard with grinding or shot requirements. It might not be the best table in Pinball M right now, but I think it better represents their potential than System Shock.
The paid version of Wrath of the Elder Gods on Pinball FX has physics and orbits so busted that it’s one of only five tables on Pinball FX we’ve declared to be OUT OF ORDER. Thankfully, the free-to-play, M-rated version of Wrath of the Elder Gods mostly works. And it’s, you know, fine. I think they were aiming for “eerie” and did a good enough job with it. Oddly, you’d expect a Lovecraft-themed table to be a little slower and more deliberate, but the opposite is true. This could have just as easily been themed around the Road Runner because the ball runs so fast. It’s what we call a “Kinetic” pin because the speed and the angles are designed specifically to make snap shots instead of trapping and shooting. In recent years, Zen Studios’ design mandate seems to be that ball control is the absolute worst thing a designer can allow. It’s frustrating as all hell, but in the case of Wrath of the Elder Gods, at least the table makes sense to be anti-ball control.
Signature Shot – Strange Structure: Doesn’t this look like a fun front-and-center target along the lines of something you would expect from Brian Eddy? This COULD have been an all-time great toy target, but it’s too conservative in its design. There’s little to no feedback when you hit it. A moan. A weird chant in an alien language. Something. ANYTHING. Occasionally, it opens up, but even hitting it doesn’t do anything. The eye creepily follows the ball, and that’s fine, but it’s not enough. This table needed its own version of Raul Julia’s callouts from Addams Family. It should have been wickedly over the top. For what it’s worth, the u-turn surrounding the Strange Structure is fine. I like u-turns in pinball. Always fun to shoot.
The biggest problem with Wrath of the Elder Gods is that it wants to both be a multiball-heavy table while also making multiball as difficult to enjoy as humanly possible. In the wizard mode, balls fly onto the playfield at the speed of light, and there’s just so many balls that you can’t possibly hope to juggle them since the auto plunge is tailored specifically to interfere with shooting. The balls are likely to bounce back in the direction they came too, making shots on the left side of the table especially difficult. Five balls total, on a table that runs fast and has fairly dangerous outlanes. Oh, and what lane is one of two lit during the first part of this insane five-ball multiball? The one that the balls are auto-plunged onto, on the left side, which of course prevents the shot from being made if you’re not in complete control of all five balls at once. God, I really hope the giggles Gary had in Zen’s offices when he came up with that outright trollish crap was worth it. I’m sure the excuse was this would come across as chaotic madness in line with the Lovecraft theme. Instead, it’s the total opposite, because when you can’t get a shot off in pinball, the table becomes really boring. Wrath of the Elder God’s wizard mode is basically like a five year old child trying to shoot a basketball, only to have Shaquille O’Neal slap down every attempt and then taunt the child to “git gud.” Well, at least while the ball save is lit. Oddly enough, the best strategy is just flick away while ball save is going, but then settle it down to a two-ball multiball after the protection fades. I should note that Angela LOVES this style of multiball. She’s adopted, in case you couldn’t tell.
Thanks everyone for reading the Pinball M feature here at Indie Gamer Chick or The Pinball Chick. Whichever you’re using!
Wrath of the Elder Gods has the theme, layout and modes to be an all-timer. It’s the mechanics that ruin all the fun. The slingshots are SO violent. The kickbacks are SO violent. The auto-plunge is SO violent. Anytime the table itself takes over the ball movement, the fun stops and the recovery process begins. The end result is a table that’s both fun and a trash fire. Despite what Angela insists, there’s too much defense on Wrath thanks to the fast speed, violent slingshots, and bouncy rails. Balls are so drawn to that area around the left flipper’s lane rails that you’d swear there’s a vortex there from another dimension. I guess I can’t rule out that’s actually the case with this table, but the table isn’t better for it. I’d also like to note that any goodwill this table built up by being the freebie of Pinball M is burned away as long as the paid version on Pinball FX is unplayable. It literally just drops the ball right between the flippers. This does NOT happen on Pinball M’s free to play version. This is weird, Zen! You know, it’s been almost 600 days since Sky Pirates came out and it still hasn’t been patched. Do you really think fans are still angry over Pinball Pass or not getting legacy tables they already paid for once for free on the new platform? Maybe the anger is more about the feeling that you’re giving us a giant middle finger with the lack of urgency to fix stuff people already paid for, or the overall direction your original pins have taken. You recently re-released Super League Football, and it got everyone excited. Maybe it’s because that table comes from an era where your designers weren’t obsessed with trolling players and just wanted to make fun shooting tables. You need to call a meeting of your designers and remind them that you’re making pinball, not Dark Souls. Cathy: GOOD Angela: GREAT Oscar: GOOD Sasha: GOOD Elias: BAD* (Nintendo Switch) Primary Scoring Average: 3.25🧹CLEAN SCORECARD🧹 *Nintendo Switch Scores not factored into average. This will be updated at a later time.
REVIEW COPIES WERE SUPPLIED FOR SOME MEMBERS OF THE PINBALL CHICK TEAM WHILE SOME TABLES WERE PAID FOR OUT OF POCKET BY THEM OR BY A MEMBER OF THE VICE FAMILY. PINBALL M TABLES PLAYED BY MY FAMILY WERE PAID FOR BY OSCAR, WHO IS VERY CROSS WITH ME FOR MEMORIZING HIS CREDIT CARD NUMBER. FOR BOTH PINBALL FX AND PINBALL M, WE LIKELY PURCHASED BETWEEN 2 TO 3 VERSIONS OF EACH TABLE, IF NOT MORE. WE ALSO PURCHASED A FULL YEAR MEMBERSHIP OF PINBALL PASS. IT TURNS OUT WE SHOULD HAVE SPENT THAT MONEY ON TABLES INSTEAD.
Cash Cow DX Platform: Nintendo Switch, Steam Released February 16, 2024 on Steam
Released September 26, 2024 on Switch Developed by Pixel Games Published by Flynn’s Arcade $4.79 (Normally $5.99) had a cow in the making of this review.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
I sure loved Donut Dodo. Boy, what a fun game that was. Not just one of the best indies I’ve ever played.. not just one of the best neo-retro games I’ve ever played.. one of THE best games I’ve ever played in my entire life. Cash Cow DX is by the same developer (who also developed the middling, decent but bleh Sigi) and.. boy, I sure loved that Donut Dodo. I don’t love Cash Cow DX. Or like it at all, really. It’s just an endless series of cheap shots and dick moves that might work if this was an authentic 80s arcade game trying to earn $0.25 per play. Or would it? If I game-overed twenty seconds into my first play of a coin-op, and had no fun at all during that twenty seconds, I think I’d be unlikely to put a second quarter in it. The biggest mistake developers designing ultra-challenging games make is assuming the challenge is the attraction. It’s not. Do you know why someone in 1980 put a quarter into Defender, lasted only a minute, and then put another quarter in it? Because during that one minute, when they weren’t dying, they were blowing sh*t up and having the time of their life. Cash Cow DX, which mashes up elements from Mappy,Mappy Land, Popeye, and Pac-Man, gives players a high body count and plenty of aggravating moments, but without any dynamic gameplay. It’s just flailing against overpowered enemies with too much to collect and not enough means to defend yourself. It feels like a game that forgot somewhere along the way that it’s supposed to be fun, and consequently it’s one of the most miserable experiences I’ve had reviewing an indie game in recent years. A big reason why I’ve moved away from reviewing indies is I don’t like doing reviews like this. It’s not fun for me to tell someone I respect that I hate their game.
In fact, I wouldn’t have even played enough to go forward with the review if I hadn’t taken a review code weeks ago. I played it for a few minutes, hated it, and thought “okay, maybe I’m not feeling it today.” After a few weeks of this, I thought “oh crap, I really am stuck having to play this thing enough to review it.” I couldn’t even get my niece to play the game with me and she’s been asking to help with an indie review for weeks.
Mind you, all this stuff I have talked about and will talk about is on the mode labeled “EASY.” As opposed to what? What could possibly make this harder? Presumably on NORMAL the enemies have projectiles and on HARD the game lights your hands on fire. How the hell did anyone put this down as an EASY mode? I’m guessing that Cash Cow DX is one of those games where the developer forgot that, while they’re in the process of making their game, they’re the best player in the world at their own game. It happens all the time. Developers don’t realize that it makes perfect sense that YOU, the developer, can easily beat a level YOU created that YOU’VE tested 5,000,000 times. Or maybe they only have one or two play testers and they watch them beat stages too easily during their 50th hour of playing. Because they forget that, they begin upping the stakes to make it harder, as if the game was easy in a vacuum. This continues until your own game is fun for you, the developer, who knows exactly what to do, where to go, and what enemies will do. But, you’re going to eventually hand it off to consumers who haven’t devoted their entire lives to the game, and you expect them to have as much fun as you did? Yea, no.
The deaths happen so quickly and so out of nowhere that it’s hard to learn from them and improve. When you’re about to die in a game like Mappy or Pac-Man, you see it coming, and that gives you a chance to imagine where you went wrong. That anticipation is part of the excitement of the genre. The chase matters most. The “chase” elements of Cash Cow DX are limited to tiny bursts due to the most of the things that you die from having been off screen a second or two before you died. This should be re-themed as a horror game because, without hyperbole, I experienced more jump-scares playing this than I did that Blair Witch game. Other times I had to record a clip to figure out where I could have dodged.
The biggest problem with Cash Cow DX is the cheap enemy placement and abilities. I’m guessing most players will die within the first second or two of their first play session when they’re killed by a green fireball that, like you, has the ability to jump across platforms. Players are wired to move right when they start a level. And what do you know? The first enemy is timed to be synced perfectly with the very first platform 90% of players will jump to, in a way that you can’t anticipate even with an arrow warning of it. It screams of a developer who said “this part is too easy. I’ll fix it” for every square inch of the game. No, you didn’t fix it. You broke it, and immediately set a tone of hostility towards players. This feels like a game that isn’t meant to be fun, but rather simply be as difficult as possible.
I’m on one story. The enemy was down on a different story and can’t jump up to my story. I died anyway because it can jump just high enough to kill me from below, and that blue thing next to me is a wall, so I can’t dodge left. Scratching out distance often isn’t even enough. The rules and mechanics are stacked too much in favor of the enemies. Imagine if Pac-Man’s ghosts or Mappy’s cats could kill you when there’s a literal wall and/or story separating you and them. Popeye does it, but you can always see Bluto and work around him, whereas here, enemies move fast and come from off-screen.
I have nothing positive to say about this one. Even the graphics aren’t a net positive because the character sprites are too big, the visible playfield too cramped, the platforms often too small, and the enemies (and you) too fast, which means that almost every death will be something you couldn’t anticipate. When you fall through the floor, you get a very brief grace period of invincibility, but that hardly matters when enemies (who can jump, mind you) are placed on the shallow platforms you’re going to land on (and they can fall through the floor too) and the level layouts are tailored towards trapping you in situations where avoiding enemies is unlikely. The game counts on springing enemies on you when you’ve already committed yourself to an action. Actually, this game shares a lot of DNA with Sonic The Hedgehog. You might not move Sonic-fast, but you’re pretty fast, and so are the enemies, only there’s nothing like Sonic’s rings that allow you to continue when you run into enemies. You die and get moved back to the starting space. So, this is kind of like Sonic as a maze chase, without rings. That sounds awful, and it is.
The worst part of all of this is I genuinely think Cash Cow DX would have been a lot of fun if the game had eased you in during the first cycle of levels instead of just immediately going for the throat. Imagine any of your favorite maze chase games, only if the first couple cycles of levels never existed. Imagine Donkey Kong starting on the third or fourth cycle of levels, with the barrels coming at a continuous stream, or the springs, or the fireballs. Does Donkey Kong still become an all-time cherished classic? Probably not to the same degree. There was absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by making Cash Cow DX so punishing right from the start. It just turns a likely good game into a historically bad one. I’ve been reviewing games for over thirteen years now, and I’ve never played a game with so much potential, with so many seemingly fun ideas that went so far out of its way to prevent fun right out of the starting gate. It made me sad, because it didn’t have to be this way.
And even after factoring-in the fast movement and shallow jumping, Cash Cow DX continued to pile on limitations to further up the challenge. Like, say you’re on a ledge and there’s a ledge below you and you want to, without jumping, just run off the ledge you’re on and fall at an angle to the ledge below you. Well, when you get to the edge, your character will automatically hesitate for a split second, losing most of their forward momentum and preventing you from getting to the platform you wanted. It’s subverting a player’s instinct for the sake of making the game harder, but without adding anything positive to make up for it. Ain’t nobody allowed to have fun on their own terms with this one. It feels like there’s limited potential to craft your own strategies. Again, everything here could have been fun if the difficulty had been toned-down and scaled like a normal coin-op does. Each stage has its own unique gimmick, all of which would normally be a ton of fun, but the enemies have too much of an advantage while you have every conceivable movement disadvantage except the ability to barely jump over an enemy. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t work falling deaths into the equation. Because the difficulty is so relentlessly intense, there’s not enough breathing room to actually study and learn the rules to the movement and enemies. This game does not scale. It’s an immediate brick wall that’s presumably followed by taller and thicker brick walls.
Found a bonus stage. Didn’t even realize the game had bonus stages, but it transitioned quickly from the main stage to this before I even realized it happened and then I died in about 0.1 seconds from walking off the edge.
Cash Cow DX is one of the most unlikable indies I’ve ever played in my life. Movement is too loose, jumping too shallow, and there’s not enough “turn the tables” elements to make the chase part fun. One per stage. ONE. Good lord. It’s like the polar opposite of Portal, where its designers used play-testing to fine-tune it to intuitive perfection. Cash Cow feels like it was fine-tuned so that every platform, jump, enemy and obstacle is as mean-spirited as possible. Let’s game this out: what was the benefit to all this? What the f*ck did Cash Cow DX have to gain by making the first series of five levels this ridiculous? Nothing. I have no objection if the second wave of levels was this hard. But the first wave? The best case scenario is that you’ve made a game that fits a VERY small niche market of people who want a Dark Souls-like challenge in every genre. Where “fun” for them is to never be able to relax and smile for a single damn second. If you want an arcade punisher that isn’t specifically enjoyable on its gameplay merits but offers the satisfaction of just surviving, you might actually like this. For everyone else, the GOTCHAs and cheap deaths just make the whole thing pretty boring. I don’t want an arcade game like this where I have to constantly be in a state of caution. Even games that eventually become hard like Pac-Man or Popeye aren’t 100% all intensity all the time right from the start. They ease you into it. There’s no sense of that here. This is like teaching a kid to ride a bike by plopping them on the seat and pushing them into rush hour traffic. Donut Dodo wasn’t easy either, but everything could be seen on screen at once. You were almost never blindsided. This is a game of constant blindsiding, and that’s actually not exciting. It’s just very boring.
I wouldn’t have even seen the last two levels (of five total) if not for the game’s “practice” mode which still uses a life system anyway. Normally I’d keep playing until I finished the whole game, or at least a full cycle, but I actually didn’t feel I was close even after a couple hours of gameplay and I want to be done with this and go back to the projects I’m actually having fun with.
And if I seem mad, I’m really not. I just know Pixel Games is better than this. You can’t make a game as good as Donut Dodo by accident. It has to come from a place of genuine talent. I also know that maze chases are a tougher genre to pull off than people realize. That genre has become such a major part of my gaming existence that, for my site’s 13th birthday, I reviewed 40 different versions of Pac-Man games. I LOVE a good maze chase, but Cash Cow DX violates just about every rule that goes into a fun maze chase. I actually wonder if a Defender-like radar instead of the almost-worthless arrows would have made a difference. Or maybe if the game had utilized a wide screen. Or maybe if the game had not had a confusing “Inertia Mode: Modern/Classic” option. Instead of making two versions of one game, just get one version right, for God’s sake. I don’t know what the difference is between the two. The default is “modern.” I switched to “classic” and it seemed like maybe movement was a little easier, but all the blind jumps and OP enemies were still there. It’s a massive dick move to put an enemy who jumps towards you on a platform with a gap so big that you can’t see what’s on it. The warning arrows were often only indicators I was about to die because they showed up too late. It’s a mean game, and I’m so glad to be done with it. But, for all the hatred I just showed on Cash Cow DX, it was classy that Pixel Games put an option to disable screen flashing. Their next game is a cartoonish tribute to Lunar Lander, one of my all-time favs. Will I be there for it? Yep. Sure, Pixel Games has gone 1 for 3 at IGC, but so what? Do you know what you call someone who bats 1 for 3 in baseball? An all-star. And Pixel Games is an elite developer who made one amazing game and one terrible one. They’ll be back, and I’ll be there when they are. Verdict: NO!
A Review Copy was supplied for this review. Today, a copy of Cash Cow DX was paid for by me at the discounted launch sale price of $4.79. I also bought my niece Donut Dodo so that she’d have a game that’s fun too.
Space Raft Platform: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Entertainment System Released August 15, 2024 Designed by Jordan Davis Published by Nami Tentou
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, NES $9.99 wore a Space Life Preserver in the making of this review.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m friends with Safe Raft designer Jordan Davis and programmer Dale Coop. That doesn’t really help either of us in Space Raft’s case. A game that promises, quote, “recognizable people and places from the Milwaukee independent music scene, including DMR alumni!” I know of Milwaukee, but I honestly have no clue how big its music scene is, and so I have no idea how much inside baseball is being played here. I’m sure there’s a lot of gags that are destined to sail over my head and probably the heads of 99% of the world’s population. But, this isn’t a music game. It probably should be. I know I just said that about the Blues Brothers and in retrospect I should have said it when I reviewed the coin-op based on the band Journey. But, for what it’s worth, this is the best “should have been a music game but isn’t” title I’ve done at IGC. Space Raft is part auto-scrolling shooter (in the form of scenes with the band’s SUV) and part maze chase played without fixed movement. And apparently all the chip tunes are by the band. They’re decent enough.
I could have done without the van segments.
I should point out that if you buy the Nintendo Switch version, you’re getting two very different versions of the game in one. There’s a special arcade cabinet that was created specifically for a legendary arcade, the very famous X-Ray Arcade. I got a giggle because they’re located in a place called Cudahy, Wisconsin. There’s only one other Cudahy in the United States and it’s right here in California as part of the Greater Los Angeles area. The two cities are named after different brothers, too. Small world! Anyway, you get that game too in this package. The games play out quite a bit different, as well. In the NES version, now called “Space Raft Deluxe”, you must collect every chicken sandwich in each stage, and then the game switches genres entirely with a more open-world type of search for missing car keys and roulette tables. The arcade game is only single-screen-at-a-time collecting sessions where you can skip straight to the exit without collecting everything. The catch there is your health is based on the chicken sandwiches you collect and not normal hit points. The NES version has fixed hit points and scrolling through screens. Both games have levels that start with driving segments too, but they’re functionally side-scrolling shmups with the occasional ramp to go off. The bosses of these parts are fine, but overall these go a little too long for my taste and are a bit samey. They’re always scrolling right, too. It’d been neat if each of the driving segments had a different direction you were going. Something to break up the repetitiveness.
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The collecting parts are the highlight of the arcade game, sorta. Sigh, this is where it gets frustrating to review a game like this. I think that a lot of the segments are supposed to be wink-wink nods to famous Wisconsin area hangouts and local celebrities, so it’s okay if the gameplay isn’t the greatest. Well, if you’re from Milwaukee, which I’m not, and there’s no references to Giannis Antetokounmpo or the Bronze Fonz, which means this game excludes everything I know about that city. Oh, and Red Letter Media, but they don’t show up either. What is here is a fairly basic arcade scoop-em-up where you have to collect all the items. There’s usually one antagonist on the screen who spits fireballs at you as you do this, along with what I think are birds. You can switch between any of the four band members on the fly, and here’s where things do get unique: each of the four members has unique movement speed and a unique weapon. But, I only found two useful. The red one can throw bowling balls the full length of the screen, while the blue one only throws a close-range punch, but his attacks are instakills and he has the most accurate play control. Everyone else moves too loosely for my taste, including the bowling ball guy. The other two guys drop bombs and spit fire that I found ineffective, at least at first.
The arcade game. You can tell because it says credits up in the top corner.
The movement can be so touchy that there were multiple times where I walked into the stage exit when I didn’t intend to. The arcade game is short and fine for what it is. It’s not amazing. It’s okay. It’s rough, though. None of the movement is “fixed” and it’s inevitable you’ll get hung-up when attempting to turn corners or walk through gaps that are a single character length. Even the computer AI seems to have problems with it for the enemies. None of the baddies had anything resembling patterns that I could make out. This feels a lot like a prototype that has placeholder algorithms for most NPC movement. I couldn’t decide if my #1 “want” for this game was more elegant enemy attack patterns or better movement parameters, which is probably not the best sign, since those two things are really important to games like this. I’ll settle on “I wish movement was better.” Actually, I kind of wish this moved more like something like, say, The Adventures of Lolo where you move a half-space at a time. But, for all of its faults, I had fun with this. If we’re splitting the two games included apart, I’d give the coin-op a very mild YES! because it’s not boring and I feel there’s just enough intense chase moments to make this worth a play.
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Initially, I liked the coin-op more. I even quit the NES game a little too early to skip over to it, and I’m happy I did. If you end up picking up Space Raft, play the arcade game first, then play the main Space Raft Deluxe game (technically they’re both NES games, but that’s neither here nor there). When I returned to the Deluxe, something I didn’t expect happened: I liked it a lot more now. All the problems of the coin-op are here. The movement sucks, and the enemies can be kind of nonsensical in their behavior. It’s also still “inside baseball” but at least in Space Raft Deluxe, Bernie Sanders and the Green Bay Packers show up, so I’m not completely staring at the screen blankly thinking “I have no idea what’s happening.” But, it’s also clearly the better game. I think the only area where the arcade game is superior is in the driving parts, which are my least favorite sections anyway. Deluxe lives up to the name. The level design is better. The bosses are better. It also does a lot more to change-up the formula. Some rooms might not have you collecting anything at all and instead just clearing a path to the next screen. Hell, the genre itself changes in the third world for two levels and feels more like Legend of Zelda dungeons. Best of all, this more expanded Space Raft made me nostalgic for the type of smaller, more heartfelt personal game that is weird and means more to the developer than it ever could to the player.
See, stuff like this is strange for me. I feel like I’m almost reading a person’s diary or something. This game has a lot of call backs to the good ole days. They’re just not MY good ole days. I’ve always had this belief that if there is such a thing as Heaven, then it’s probably reliving the best, most happy days of your entire life on an endless loop. Space Raft is like someone took that and made a game based loosely on it. By the way, the next graphic is of the Mistreaters standing in front of their burning van. Who are the Mistreaters? (shrug) No clue. In my headcanon, they’re to Space Raft what the Misfits are to Jem and the Holograms.
Space Raft isn’t a fantastic game by any stretch. The movement is frustrating and the enemies feel like they just sort of wander aimlessly. Plus, all the inside jokes were overwhelming for me. Have you ever been to a party where there’s a group of people listening to someone tell a story, and they’re clearly hanging on the person’s every word, but you missed most of it. Then, when everyone laughs at the resolution, you feel awkward but laugh anyway? Yea, that’s where I’m at with Space Raft. I feel like these jokes and references might kill with the right crowd, while I’m just nodding along and feigning a smile. But hell, I used to play games like this ALL THE TIME in my first few years of Indie Gamer Chick. This is exactly the type of personal experience I want to see translated more to games. It’s a quirky game created for the amusement of a small group of people that the developer had the guts to put out for the masses, even if they won’t understand most of the bits. I just wish I felt more invited into this world. Maybe this is the best you can do with 8-bits. A lot of the gags in the game feel like they’d make for a better sitcom than a video game. Something for these guys to think about.
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As a trip down memory lane from the developer’s point of view, I’m not sure it hit the right notes to leave me charmed. All I have is the gameplay stuff, and it’s fine. I can’t say it makes for a convincing NES game because it has swearing and battles against sentient dog sh*t. I always prefer when developers follow the restrictions studios had in the 80s and 90s and see how close they can come to crossing the line without actually crossing it. But the level design is decent enough and there’s an effort to change up the set pieces and create a sense of adventure. The emulation package is decent, too. No rewind, but it’s not exactly the world’s hardest game. Save states are here, along with concept art and the original NES instruction book and box art. Nice.
This is the part I lost the most lives on in the game, by far. All the van parts are auto-scrolling, and it’s too easy to get hung up on the barrels and unable to move unclip yourself before the scrolling kills you.
If I have one last gripe, it’s that they didn’t quite stick the landing on ending the game, as the worst driving sequence in Space Raft is actually the grand finale. They should have recognized the Zelda-like sequences were their bread & butter and finished on one of those. There’s a LOT of room for improvement, but as a 2019/2020 first game from the guys involved, guys who are getting a LOT better at making games, I’ve played a lot worse. Most importantly, what’s here is a little more fun than it is frustrating, and fun is all I’ve ever cared about. But, realistically, this should be a game that’s made as a limited-quantity physical release that’s sold in Wisconsin gift shops. I don’t even mean that as a negative, either. I think it’s wonderful that an indie game can celebrate local culture. Seriously, if *I* were to make a game, I’d probably be something like this, only it’d be about Emperor Norton and you’d only be able to find it in mom & pop shops in the Bay Area. Put that game on the eShop and people would be like “who the f*ck is Emperor Norton and what the f*ck is Original Joe’s?” It’s inside baseball. Verdict: YES!
Super Mario Bros. 2
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Super Mario RPG
Super Mario Land
Super Mario Land DX
Tetris
Tetris
Igo: Kyū Roban Taikyoku
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Welltris
Hatris (JP Version)
Hatris
Hatris (US Version)
Tetris 2 + BomBliss
Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss
Tetris Battle Gaiden
Super Tetris 2 + BomBliss Genteiban
Super Tetris 3
Super BomBliss
Super BomBliss DX
Super BomBliss
Tetris Time Warp
FINAL TALLY – NINETEEN GAMES (following 12-20-24 update)
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Tetris
Flash Point
BlockOut
Tetris
BlockOut
Nintendo World Championships 1990
Pyramid
Tetris
Pipe Dream
Bloxeed
Klax
Klax
Columns
Hatris
Klax
Knight Move
Klax
Dr. Mario
Dr. Mario
Klax
Columns II: The Voyage Through Time
Pipe Dream
Klax (Namco)
Welltris
Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen
Hatris
Puyo Puyo
Yoshi
Wordtris
Oh My God!
Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
Poto Poto
Tetris 2
Tetris & Dr. Mario
Bust-a-Move
Baku Baku Animal
V-Tetris
Virtual Lab
3-D Tetris
Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III
Bubble Bobble
Cadash
Champion Wrestler
Dead Connection
Growl
Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2
Rastan Saga
Rastan Saga II
Thunder Fox
Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III
Warrior Blade (Taito Milestones 3)
Qix (Taito Milestones 1)
Alpine Ski (Taito Milestones 1)
Front Line (Taito Milestones 1)
Camp Bloodbrook
Cathy: 
Chucky’s Killer Pinball
Cathy: 
Dead by Daylight
Cathy: 
Duke Nukem’s Big Shot Pinball
Cathy: 
System Shock
Cathy: 
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Cathy: 
The Thing
Cathy: 
Wrath of the Elder Gods: Director’s Cut
Cathy: 
Cash Cow DX
Space Raft
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