Indie Gamer Chick

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak (NES Review)

May 26, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 4 Comments

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak
aka The Flintstones II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October, 1993
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Barney was always the real star, anyway.

Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak is one of the three games in a trilogy of Taito NES games, along with Little Samson and Power Blade 2, that are worth a buttload of money. All recent copies listed on eBay sold for around $1,300. It’s one of the reasons why I can’t help but wonder if Taito is leaving a lot of money on the table by not putting out a collection of their Flintstones games. At first, I thought maybe they would be too generic, but then I played Surprise at Dinosaur Peak. It retains the engine from the previous game, Rescue of Dino & Hoppy. Fred’s sprite and various poses are virtually identical, as is his club attack. So, you can imagine my surprise that everything wrong with the first game has been cleaned-up here. Collision detection is improved enough that your club doesn’t clip through enemies, and it now feels like it has real world weight behind it. And, they even added a reason to charge up your club, as a fully-powered strike now creates a rumble that shakes the entire screen. As a result, the combat is very satisfying in Dinosaur Peak. It’s one of many elements that makes this not only the superior NES Flintstones game, but one of the most underrated titles on the entire platform.

Sports are back, only this time there’s no superpowers to be won. You really are just getting 1ups this time, I think. There’s only two events, with hockey going first and basketball returning for the second. I literally couldn’t believe they brought back basketball, almost identically as it was before. Except, this time you can do a running jump shot. If you time it right, it almost looks like a dunk. Oh, and this time around, each game is divided into two 30 second halves with Fred going first and Barney second. These are terrible, and since there’s a pause every time a score happens, they take a LOT longer than 60 seconds. If Dinosaur Peak gets a re-release, I sort of hope they cut these.

The biggest change is the addition of Barney. They couldn’t have implemented this better, as pressing select instantly swaps Fred and Barney. No special effects. No puff of smoke. No delay at all. In fact, there’s a couple moments built around this. Fred’s ability to grab most cliffs and pull himself up returns for the sequel, a maneuver his neighbor can’t perform. Instead, Barney can hang from wires or poles, then pull himself up and stand on them for a brief moment. He can even jump once he pulls himself up. Fred can’t do any of this, and there’s moments in Dinosaur Peak where you have to pull yourself up a wire with Barney, then jump up and swap to Fred mid-air in order to grab a cliff. It’s actually a lot trickier than it sounds to pull-off, which is why I’m thankful that type of design doesn’t show up until the end of the game. I should also note that the final sequence before the last boss requires some of the most precision movement I’ve seen, so you’ll want to practice. Thankfully, this go around the gameplay is smooth and the controls are damn near perfect. If there was a flaw in the last game, chances are it’s corrected for Surprise at Dinosaur Peak.

There’s even a brief shmup sequence that takes you to the final couple levels. A lesser game would have leaned too hard into this, but the Flintstones II’s shmup stage is over really quick, making it an enjoyable distraction.

Most of my complaints are really minor ones. Barney’s slingshot weapon is nowhere near as fun as Fred’s club, nor is there really any point where it feels like it’s necessary to use. Dinosaur Peak does a remarkably good job of mixing the platforming elements equally between Fred moments and Barney moments, but that didn’t carry over to the combat or enemies. Admittedly, I was fine with that since the club is so much more satisfying to use anyway. While the level design in general is consistently good, it never reaches the heights of true greatness. As much as I enjoyed Flintstones II, it never once managed to produce a single moment that made me sit up and go “wow!” It’s a game stuck in cruise control, and perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that it’s that rare game where the cruise control doesn’t drive it right off a cliff. That’s a minor miracle itself, because the bosses are very generic and the set pieces are unmemorable, except for the aforementioned shmup portion that’s really a glorified mini-game. Really, the most remarkable thing about Flintstones is that it proves the previous Flintstones had potential to be one of the best games on the NES, only the lack of polish wrecked its chances. This Flintstones realizes the potential and becomes one of the best platformers on a console defined by platform games.

This donut is actually a relentless chaser and an instakill nightmare. Dinosaur Peak made being chased by a killer tire a thing before the 2010 horror classic Rubber made people afraid to get their tires changed.

Easily my #1 complaint is the sudden extreme difficulty spike that happens right before the final boss. After nine stages of relatively breezy platforming hijinks, the game introduces a malevolent tire that relentlessly chases you through a series of narrow corridors. There’s spikes everywhere, and while they don’t instakill you, your damage animation will take long enough that the tire, an instakill element, will certainly catch you. It’s not a short segment, either. It goes quite a long time, culminating with an astonishingly brutal final stretch. In it, you have to use Barney to climb up a shaft of tightropes, THEN switch to Fred to smash rocks in your way THEN switch back to Barney to climb the ropes again. The last boss in the next room is a cakewalk compared to this crap. It’s one of the most frustrating and difficult precision movement sections I’ve played recently. Up to this point, I think Flintstones II was right up there with Wacky Races in the “excellent game for children under 10” category, but that final area makes me second guess that, as it doesn’t allow any room for error. I think the average child will probably need a lot of help getting through it. I had built up 16 lives by this point, and hell, I’m pretty okay at this gaming thing. I ended up burning through all 16 lives and ultimately ended up reloading a save state. I literally couldn’t believe how overboard they went with this! You can almost hear the developers say “let’s see the little bastards get through this!”

Actually, the Haunted House before this was a tricky one too. In it, you have to hit switches that briefly open doors, then sprint to them while not stopping for even a moment to do battle with ghosts that can be stunned but not killed. A few sections in this stage took me multiple attempts to finish. BUT, I don’t think a player is likely to die on that level. That wheel gauntlet at the end, on the other hand, is so cruelly brutal. I don’t understand what they were thinking. Perhaps this is one of those cases of “rental proofing” that I’ve heard about, where difficulty is ramped up in order to assure children can’t beat a game in a single weekend rental. Well, except for the fact that they didn’t produce many copies.

Even with that wheel section, I would call Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak one of the all-time most underrated NES games. I’m now officially operating under the assumption that the post-Super Nintendo era of the NES was secretly a second golden age for the console. And instead of continuing this Hanna-Barbera marathon, I’m now much more interested in exploring this. What’s most heartbreaking of all is Flintstones II is so rare that it carries that wallet-busting $1,000+ value. That tells me that NES fans in 1993-94 likely never got to play it. Sure, anyone can use an emulator these days, but that doesn’t help an NES owning child in the mid-to-late 90s, does it? Dinosaur Peak deserved to be one of the titles that ushered the NES officially into gaming’s past. A wonderful title to remind everyone why the Nintendo Entertainment System was the savior of console gaming. It’s really good, and as a member of the NES’ most popular genre, it should have been celebrated as one of the final standard bearers of arguably the greatest gaming platform of all-time. That Flintstones: Dinosaur Peak is instead famous only for its holy grail rarity is a bonafide gaming tragedy. Hey Taito, it’s time for a compilation. Here’s your anchor game.
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Flintstones, Flintstones II, Flintstones NES, Flintstones Sequel NES, Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak, Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak NES, Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak Nintendo, Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak Review, Rare Flintstones Game, The Flintstones II NES, The Flintstones Video Games

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper! (NES Review)

May 25, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 7 Comments

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1992
Directed by Isao Matono
Developed by Natsume
Published by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

“Stop playing your own game on the job! You’re having another seizure!”

And yea, before I get to the review, I have to note that if you are photosensitive in any way, you probably should not play The Jetsons on the NES. Every boss has violent strobe effects when defeated, as does every instance of activating a switch that reverses gravity, which happens several times. There’s multiple other areas where the same violent flashing effect happens. These days, with my medications and the precautions I take, it’s rare that I have to stress about a game giving me a seizure. So, it’s pretty telling that my father felt compelled to literally yank the controller from my hand while physically blocking my view during the final boss fight. Because gravity-flipping factors in so much, the final stage has a LOT of strobes, but the moment you enter the boss chamber, the NES Jetsons starts to strobe continuously, to the point that it doesn’t stop until the credits start to roll. Literally, as you jump straight from that sequence to the end credits. It’s so excessive, unnecessary, and reckless even by 1993’s standards. I have never heard of any game that strobes contiguously for the entire final boss, a strobe that continues after it’s defeated, where you then have to make your Metroid-like escape. Had the Jetsons come out during the NES’ prime, I’m certain some child would have discovered their epilepsy directly from this game. It’s THAT bad. If this were to get a re-release, there’s no way even a disclaimer would be enough. The game would require alterations. No modern publisher would allow this much flashing. Here’s the video, and needless to say, BIG EPILEPSY WARNING! Thank you to my nephew T.J. who finished the game for Aunt Cathy.

Now then, game review. Jetsons is one of many games that rode the coattails of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, building an entire platformer that’s based around picking up and throwing crates at enemies. As much as I love the first Rescue Ranger, those aren’t as strong of coattails as you would think. Look no further than the game I believe started life as the Game Boy version of Rescue Rangers, Mickey’s Dangerous Chase. Or, if we’re being honest, the second NES Rescue Rangers was kind of a disaster. If done right, crate-throwing will assure satisfying combat for the full length of an NES platformer that lasts an hour or two, but you still need fun level design and stand-out set pieces to make it over the finish line. You also have to assume that the game doesn’t have technical issues, and Jetsons does. As a post SNES holiday release, I’m guessing that Isao Matono, the man who led Flintstones: Rescue of Dino & Hoppy and the Jetsons’ Game Boy release, felt pressure to push the graphic capabilities of the NES so that it didn’t look too old fashioned now that the 16-bit era was well underway. The result is a game with a consistently chuggy frame rate, albeit one that never devolves into full-blown slowdown.

It looks great in still images.

And Jetsons IS a looker, but it doesn’t remotely succeed in replicating the look of the show at all. Instead, Cogswell’s Caper has a rough hand-drawn appearance with so many sharp edges to the sprites that it looks more like the cartoons of my childhood from the 90s and early 2000s. That look, combined with the less-than-smooth frame rate gives Jetsons an almost homemade vibe, like a big fan of Rescue Rangers tried to make their own sequel to it. That said, the box combat isn’t a complete rip-off of Rescue Rangers. You only throw screen-length line-drives like Disney’s rodents when you jump up and throw the box. Otherwise, George Jetson sort of bowls the boxes along the ground. Thus, aiming in general takes much more effort in Jetsons. You also lob boxes in a way similar to Simon Belmont’s axe from Castlevania games. Several boss battles seem tailored to this style of throwing. Overall, the combat works, especially with the BAM graphic from the Flintstones NES game returning, only this time, the OOMPH is there.

Talk about extra effort. When you meet Elroy at his school, kids are playing basketball. If you get the ball and throw it at the hoop, the ball makes the same BANG that happens when you hit enemies and then falls down through the hoop. It doesn’t do anything, as far as I could tell, but it’s a nice touch. Meanwhile, the Detroit Pistons are going to see this review and be like “quick, when is this Jetson guy set to be born? Maybe we can pick him up in the second round!”

Jetsons features nine full levels, plus a handful of “event” type stages. While I’m the latest in what seems to be a long line of critics who compared Jetsons to Rescue Rangers, I actually think this does set pieces better. There’s several memorable sequences in Jetsons, including a flying sequence set during one of Judy Jetson’s rock concerts, and a race against giant gears that were both really exciting. Both these segments run out of gags really fast and go too long, but they still manage to be welcome changes of pace. At the same time, I’m disappointed that the Jetsons often forgets its supposed to be “futuristic.” Half of the stages are archetypal of the platforming genre with little in the way of Jetsons-like gags, with the exception of the occasional (and seizure-inducing) anti-gravity sections. Unlike the Game Boy release that did such a good job of incorporating the anti-gravity into the level design, I feel it’s just a gimmick here with little to justify having it at all.

Reverse-gravity boots are also one of five superpowers you get during the game, though it’s baffling why they decided to do that. Whenever the level design utilizes reverse-gravity, there’s always a switch to activate it first. Giving to players whenever they want is beyond stupid. It’s even worse because the sky is functionally a pit, and if you use the boots when there’s no ceiling, you die. I never felt a need to use them.

I suppose the argument could be made that the baddies being robotic or aliens fits in with the Jetsons setting, but those types of things aren’t that special in the land of video games. Not that the Jetsons couldn’t do the clichés like lava or gardens, but it doesn’t do enough to make it feel like you’re in the universe of the franchise. Like, for example, a giant spider fight happens, even though it really doesn’t thematically fit with the Jetsons. Thankfully, a couple factory-based stages feel quintessentially Jetsonian, and I can’t stress enough how much that rock concert scene really did feel almost like a music video on the NES. My gripe is that it just doesn’t consistently maintain the theme. At times, Cogswell’s Caper feels like it could have been based on any cartoon series. But, overall, Jetsons offers enough enjoyable settings and surprises to never be boring. I don’t know if I’d call it “clever” but the stages are well made and the enemy placement is spot-on, along with the placement of the crates that are used for the combat. The boss fights stand out as well, with that battle against Cogswell being pretty enjoyable. Really, this is a pretty underrated game. I’ve noticed a lot of post-SNES 8-bit games tend to be. Bonk’s Adventure got no love either. The NES seems to have had this low-key prime of life after the Super NES launched.

The flying stage goes about a minute too long, but it’s not bad.

The biggest flaw in the Jetsons involves the five “superpower” types of items that are accumulated over the course of the game. Four of them are completely useless, while the first one you collect is insanely overpowered. Using the powers requires you to collect pills (yes, really! Jetsons is basically a pharma-game) with each power taking a fixed amount of points to use. Except the previously mentioned gravity boots, which cost 1 point per second. They’re one of four useless items. There’s an invincibility shield that takes a whopping 20 points to use (pills are picked up 1 at a time, max 99) for a pitiful 3 to 4 seconds of invincibility. There’s a screen-clearing bomb for 10 points, and finally a platform that you can float on that vanishes as soon as it hits anything. It’s so clear they were taking a cue from Mega Man’s dog, only the powers all lack the NEED to use them. Well, except the first item you get. It’s a drone that, for 5 points, will kill any one enemy on screen. It works to do one damage per hit on the bosses and can nerf the challenge significantly. I’d have used it a lot more, but like the Game Boy release, SELECT goes unused, so you have to pause the game to activate your powers. Why not use SELECT, then hold UP and press B? I’ll never understand why so many developers from this era did that.

Speaking of Mega Man, the battle with Cogswell is remarkably similar to various NES battles with Dr. Wily. He even has three forms in his spaceship. AND, like the Mega Man games, it’s a fake-out, as there’s one final level and boss after this that I can’t comment on as I didn’t get a chance to play it due to epilepsy concerns.

As rough as it is, Jetsons is a far superior game to the Flintstones: Rescue of Dino & Hoppy. I don’t think it’s the best of the NES Hanna-Barbera games, as I think children would probably enjoy Wacky Races more, especially since that game seems tailored more for younger kids via its low difficulty. Jetsons requires much more precision platforming and has some pretty intense moments. It’s not an elegant game by any stretch, but it is a pretty dang fun game from start to finish. And yet, I can’t help but wish that the NES game was just a bigger version of the Game Boy release. That game felt like a truly inspired effort that built around the superpowers the different characters have. Jetsons NES gives you all these powers and no reason to use them. That could have been costly if not for the fact that the level design was solid enough and had just enough set pieces to allow the excellent combat to do the heavy lifting. It’s strange too, because Flintstones: Rescue of Dino & Hoppy had a much more professional appearance about it. It felt like a big tentpole release that didn’t quite live up to the effort. Jetsons feels sloppy as all hell, with graphics that look hand drawn in Mario Paint. Yet, it’s the better game of the two. In fact, it’s not even that close. I don’t know what it says that, as good a time as I had, I still wished this played more like its Game Boy counterpart. This whole Hanna-Barbera gaming franchise is weird. Anyway, fun game, but lose the strobe lights.
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews, Uncategorized Tagged with Jetsons NES, Jetsons NES Review, Jetsons Nintendo, Jetsons Review, Jetsons Video Games, The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper!, The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper! Review

The Jetsons: Robot Panic (Game Boy Review)

May 24, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 4 Comments

The Jetsons: Robot Panic
Platform: Game Boy
Released October, 1992
Designed by Isao Matono
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

HEY.. this ain’t too bad at all!

The first big surprise of my Hanna-Barbera marathon is that the Jetsons on the Game Boy is a very good game. Not quite great, but for the hour it lasts, likely less, it’s a pretty decent platforming romp that incorporates the entire Jetsons family. Except Astro, which is baffling. They couldn’t come up with one more level for the dog? He’s such a good boy, too! The rest of the family are all given one level to shine, along with their own unique superpower, except George Jetson, who gets all three. Before you play as him, you can take the Elroy, Judy, and Jane levels in any order. All four Jetsons can pick-up and throw crates, and although it’s not as satisfying as Rescue Rangers, enemy placement and especially puzzle design is based around the crates, making it work. They did a pretty good job in overall level design. Elroy’s the only one who has a projectile. He can throw a ball that takes out enemies, with my only real complaint being that it doesn’t have satisfactory OOMPH. Also, his stage is mostly auto-scrolling, pausing only when you enter rooms that contain health refills or heart containers. I’m not the biggest fan of auto-scrolling, and while it’s never bad by any means, Elroy’s stage is the most basic and uninspired in the game. Thankfully it seemed like it’s the shortest of the game’s five stages

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Then the Judy and Jane stages happen, and Robot Panic makes the leap into the upper-tier of licensed Game Boy games. Literally! Judy’s special power is anti-gravity boots. Not only do the boots allow her to walk on the many spikes in her level without taking damage, but in many areas you can walk across the ceiling. There’s even puzzles that involve picking up boxes so that when you reverse the gravity in the room, you have enough clearance to get to the door. Jane, meanwhile, gets a jetpack. Both Jane and Judy’s powers have limited fuel, which becomes problematic, especially when their powers transfer to George for the final two levels. The turd in Jetson’s galactic punch bowl is that you have to pause the game and manually select the powers, watch the character blink a few times, then unpause and continue. Since Judy and Jane’s powers use fuel that relatively slowly refills, you don’t want to leave their powers on (especially Jane’s jetpack). It’s frustrating because the Game Boy has a select button that goes completely unused, when it would have been much more efficient to act as a real-time item select. It doesn’t ruin the Jetsons but it does slow the tempo down.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

If not for that one mistake, I dare say Jetsons would be in the pantheon of OG Game Boy platformers. Solid, responsive play control, surprisingly decent graphics, and level design that fully embraces the superpowers with lots of clever layouts lifts Robot Panic into the discussion for best licensed black & white Game Boy release. It goes without saying I had low expectations for this one. Boy, was I wrong. Even the short length doesn’t bug me. I don’t really want to be stuck with any Game Boy action game that long. Give me forty minutes and four out of five really good stages over twenty stages that wear out their welcome any day. Jetsons maintains consistently entertaining level design from the start of Judy’s stage and never lets up. It even features an alright (if unspectacular) boss fight that was well done enough that I regret they didn’t roll the dice on putting bosses for the other characters. How come nobody talks about this one? The Jetsons is one of the most underrated releases on the Game Boy and might be the best thing to ever come out of the entire franchise!
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Jetsons Game Boy, Jetsons Game Boy Review, Jetsons games, The Jetsons: Robot Panic, The Jetsons: Robot Panic Game Boy, The Jetsons: Robot Panic Review

The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy (NES Review)

May 24, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 3 Comments

The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1991
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I’ll say this for Taito’s first crack at the Flintstones: there’s some damn gorgeous sprite work. I’m not entirely sure why they drew some of the Asian enemies in the Chinese themed stage to be literally yellow. Surely this was not cool even in 1991. If Rescue of Dino & Hoppy gets a re-release, it’s going to need someone to go in and change the appearance of the enemies.

The first Flintstones game didn’t release on the NES until a couple months after the Super NES launched in North America. In fact, it barely made it out in time for Christmas the year most NES children were probably hoping Santa brought them the upgraded Nintendo console. If not, Rescue of Dino & Hoppy isn’t the worst consolation prize. Actually, it’s not a bad game by any stretch. Over the course of its one hour or so playtime. There’s only one brief section I consider to be genuinely bad. A literal sliver of a single level that takes maybe fifteen, twenty seconds to complete. That’s pretty impressive for a platform game from this era. The problem is none of the rest of the game rises above being just alright. By golly, this really is an authentic Flintstones experience!

Even the name is bad. Given the heavy emphasis on the hanging mechanic, the name could have been “Fred Flintstone Hangs Around.” I haven’t really watched all that much of the show, so I thought Hoppy might be the name of the saber-toothed cat that throws Fred out of the house. No, it’s the family pet of the Rubbles. Why didn’t they make the game “The Rescue of Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm?” Hey, I like animals as much as the next person, but come on!

The big hook to the game is Fred’s ability to hang from and pull himself up most (but not) ledges. With the exception of moving platforms, all of which can be grabbed onto, the general rule is that a ledge that comes to a point is the one that can be held from. However, there are enough exceptions to that rule that it makes judging what can and can’t be hung onto a little frustrating. Also frustrating is pulling yourself up. You just hold the button and press up, but it doesn’t always work as fast as you’d want it to. This goes back to the “only bad section” I talked about, where you have to climb a vertical shaft that’s rapidly filling with instakill lava. For the life of me, I thought I was doing something wrong in this part and that there was some kind of “quick pull” technique I was unaware of. I wish I had looked it up, because I would have discovered there was a lot more to this Flintstones adventure than I realized.

Superpowers are won by playing three identical games of 1 on 1 basketball. I figured I was winning free lives or coins or something. I think I was half paying attention during my first play session. Oh, and I want to note that I was impressed that they actually worked in a jump shot mechanic AND that Fred flicks his wrist on the shot. I’m gushing over Fred Flintstone having good shooting form in a thirty-two year old NES title’s basketball minigame, and people think I’m some kind of ogre?

I didn’t know that there’s three superpowers I actually did unlock, but I didn’t know I had them. Hey, I never paused the game to discover them. Not that I was missing much. All three superpowers cost coins to use once you have them, so only one of the superpowers is generally useful: the high jump, which allows you to spring off a dinosaur high into the sky for five coins. The other two, a pair of wings and scuba diving equipment, are pretty much worthless because each flap of your arm besides the first one when you activate the powers costs you four coins. In the case of the wings, they’re theoretically useful to save you if you mistime a jump and aren’t falling to your doom, but the only time I tried using them, I died anyway because I didn’t have enough coins to get back up to the platform. In the case of the scuba gear, I never found a single situation where it was useful.

Cost to use the wings? Four coins per flap. Cost to Fred’s self esteem for dressing like a choad just to rescue the family pets? Incalculable.

To the Taito’s credit, they were all-in on the hanging from ledges mechanic. Every single level is built around using this for navigation, start to finish. If you’re going to use a movement gimmick to stand out, Flintstones is proof that you really ought to stick with it, through thick and thin. The hanging carries the game over the finish line, because god knows the combat doesn’t. You would think bludgeoning your enemies to death would be satisfying, especially since it has an accompanying POW! impact bubble with each landed strike. But, the combat in the first Flintstones NES game is kind of awful. The collision isn’t sprite-for-sprite accurate, and it’s not rare for your swings to go right through an enemy. Even worse is that they seem to be given a lot more latitude in hitting your collision box than you do with them. It’s never a deal breaker, but the club feels oddly feather-like and lacks the OOMPH that I desire from such a weapon.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Sticking with the sub-weapons makes more sense. There’s three, and all are useful at various times. The axe is straight out of Castlevania, thrown in a big arc that goes high in the air before coming down. The slingshot is a straight-forward long range weapon, and then there’s the egg. It’s a literal screen-clearing bomb, and yes, it works on bosses, though with them, it takes a few hits. In fact, I used it to beat all three forms of the final boss. The club can be charged up, but I never really found it all that useful. There’s a couple basic enemies that move slowly and are so ridiculously spongy that I genuinely, no joke, think they only exist to finally give the players an excuse to charge-up the club. Oh, and I used it on the ice level’s boss, but only because I ran out of coins. The bosses also suffer the same collision issues the basic enemies have. Usually, games like this need the bosses to be satisfying to fight. Flintstones is weirdly the opposite: the level design, set pieces, and the small handful of one-time special events carry the day, while the bosses nearly burn away all the goodwill. They’re boring at best, and far too spongy. The collision is mediocre and the movement is slightly sluggish, but it’s not bad, either. Flintstones NES is one of those games that is right in the middle, just above the divider line.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

At only eight levels, one of which doesn’t even have a boss, Rescue doesn’t last long enough to wear out its welcome, and there’s a couple unexpected set pieces that put a smile on my face. The fact that they worked in some cartoon gags, like Fred ducking by his head retracting into his shirt? That’s cute. It’s a sweet-hearted game and it’s okay. The best thing I can say about the Flintstones is that kids who didn’t get to upgrade to the NES had one decent, visually spectacular (by NES standards) game for the 1991 holiday season. While playing Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, it was really clear that Taito wanted to do for Hanna-Barbera what Capcom had done for Disney with titles like DuckTales. In a way, they completely succeeded, since Hanna-Barbera has always been a poor man’s Disney. Sorry fans, but it’s true. Not that their product is bad, necessarily, but they’re always in Disney’s shadow. That’s the case with the Flintstones. It’s fine. It’ll do, but it’s not in the same league as the best 8-bit Disney games. Assuming this really were a Disney game, it’d be a B-Tier one, above Adventures in the Magic Kingdom but below Mickey Mousecapade. In a sense, the Flintstones is one of the most accurate licensed games ever. It’s a b-lister game for a b-lister media franchise.
Verdict: YES!

Flintstones, The - The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy (USA)-240522-141432

Barney Rubble is clearly high on peyote here. “I told you not to eat that cactus, dum-dum!” Oh and that’s NOT Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm. That must explain why Wilma is in her mourning dress. The kids were probably eaten by a dinosaur while Fred was having his adventure. That also explains Barney turning to drugs. Thank god the review is over, because this is starting to go to the dark place.

Filed under Retro Reviews, Uncategorized Tagged with Flintstones 1 NES, Flintstones NES, Flintstones NES Review, Rescue of Dino & Hoppy Review, The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy NES, The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy NES Review, The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy Review

The Flintstones (Sega Master System Review)

May 24, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick Leave a comment

The Flintstones
Platform: Sega Master System
Released November 1991 (1988 on Home Computers)
Adapted by Paul Marshall
Published by Grandslam Entertainments
Released Only in Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

That green thing above Fred’s head is the paintbrush. I never understood half the jokes in the Flintstones. Logically, the joke that they use living animals to replace electronic appliances makes sense, right? The humor is supposed to be they’re the MODERN stone age family, with all the conveniences a typical nuclear family of the 1960s has even though they don’t have electricity. Instead, animals are their electric can openers, garbage disposals, or laundry machines. In fact, that’s the Flintstones punchline in its entirety. Why a living paint brush though? Why is using an animal more convenient than a stick with hair? Do the Flintstones need the satisfaction of knowing, when they stare at their living room wall, that an animal suffered SO MUCH to make it that color? It’s funny they use an animal that lives under their sink as a garbage disposal, in part because we really used to stick pigs in our outhouses and rain shit down on them. They loved it! They never ate better! But Michelangelo didn’t take one of the piglets and use it to paint the Sistine Chapel! At least when it was still alive. I can’t say with certainty The Last Judgment wasn’t painted with the snout of a dead piglet, but he was definitely not using a living one. It’d squirm too much!

It’s rare that I play a game so bad that I think the developers should be ashamed of themselves, but that’s the Flintstones for the Sega Master System, and presumably the earlier 1988 home computer games that this version copied. An absolutely atrocious, lazy licensed game that has no soul at all. It’s divided into four segments. First, you paint a wall. Do I even need to go on? It’s not even a fun video game type of paint the wall, either. You have to catch the paintbrush, because, well, Flintstones. Then, you have to dip the paintbrush in the paint bucket, which you cannot move. Then, you put some paint on the walls. Then you repeat this step until the wall is done. The challenge is a strict time limit, moving a ladder into the right place, and the fact that Pebbles escapes the crib and draws on the bottom part of the wall, ruining your work. The collision detection makes no sense for where your paint will be, and this is made worse by the fact that your brush runs out of paint really fast. Also, it still consumes paint to do a portion of the wall you’ve already done. It’s awful, but once I figured out that Pebbles being out of the crib too long doesn’t lead to a fail condition, I won pretty quickly. I just painted the top part of the wall and most of the bottom while she sat there doodling. Then I dropped her in the crib, caught the paint brush, and finished the bottom. This was so boring that I’m half surprised level two wasn’t “now watch it dry!”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The second level is a very quick drive to the bowling alley that lasts under a minute. Over the course of a few screens, you have to hop over rocks. The collision is god awful and the timing is weird, but it’s over with fast. Then, an actual full-sized game of bowling is the third level. It’s one of the worst bowling engines I’ve ever experienced. At the point of impact, the balls and pins are replaced with a BAM graphic. Even when the ball is being delivered right into the pocket, the head pin and other pins COULD be left over. Even with this problem, once you find the sweet spot and the right amount of left hook and power, getting a strike is easy. In my first full game, I had a 230. It should have been a 220, but whoever made this doesn’t understand how bowling works. The 10th frame has a max of three balls. Not complicated, right? Except when I played the tenth frame, I got a strike, a 9, and then got the spare.. and it gave me another ball. Are you kidding me? By the way, the object is to beat Barney’s score, and he’s a terrible bowler. I won 90 to 230. It wasn’t even close, but it might actually be entirely random. While I was learning the mechanics, at one point Barney had a double strike and was neck-and-neck with me. Once I understood what I was doing, I couldn’t miss and Barney couldn’t hit. What a bizarre game.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

After all this, the game suddenly becomes a terrible platformer. Flintstones’ home computer roots show here, as it’s along the same lines of the type of sloppy, unpolished shovelware that my older readers had to slog through to find the rare quality games on their Amigas or Sinclairs. You make your way up a shaft, dodging enemies and compensating for gusts of wind. There’s a helmet that, once you grab it, you don’t even have to bother dodging the nuts and bolts that try to crush you later. Grab Pebbles and bring her back the way you came and.. that’s the whole shameful game. I have played some doozies at Indie Gamer Chick, but Flintstones might be the most cynical. I got the distinct impression this version of the Flintstones was not a game anyone wanted to make. There’s no heart to it. There’s no polish. What little extra effort there is to be like the cartoon is undone by atrocious gameplay. Anything resembling charm is entirely dependent on the connection to the show itself. Like, hey, Fred does his tippy-tingle-toes approach before releasing the ball in bowling. That would be commendable if the game was good, but it ain’t, and so that effort becomes obnoxious instead. The best thing I can say about the Flintstones is it looks the part, but that actually takes on a sinister vibe when the gameplay is as horrendous as it is here. They knew what they needed: the license and the graphics to look enough to get kids to pester their parents to buy it. That’s cruel, isn’t it? The Flintstones is the rare game that’s so bad that it’s borderline evil for it.
Verdict: NO!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Flintstones Sega Master System, The Flintstones Sega, The Flintstones Sega Game, The Flintstones Sega Master System Review, The Flintstones SMS, The Flintstones SMS Review, The Flintstones Video Games

Little Nemo: The Dream Master (NES Review)

May 16, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 22 Comments

Little Nemo: The Dream Master
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September, 1990
Designed by Tatsuya Minami
Produced by Tokuro Fujiwara
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The object is to find the keys. The meta object is to avoid throwing your controller through the screen.

Capcom was able to do some amazing things with the 1983 hardware standard that was really created only to be able to run a convincing version of Donkey Kong. By 1990, they were releasing instant classics like Mega Man 2 & 3, DuckTales, and Rescue Rangers. It’s one of the hottest hot-streaks in the entire history of gaming, so much that a game like The Little Mermaid sticks out so much more because it’s this oddly subdued and kind of boring blip on the radar that’s so clearly on a lower level than the highs they were reaching. I mention that because one game often lumped in with the hot streak is Little Nemo: The Dream Master. It’s one of the most famous NES games, and maybe their highest profile NES game that never got a re-release. And I don’t get it at all. Little Nemo is one of the absolute worst NES games I’ve played yet. A title that has no redeeming value from a gameplay perspective. Sure is pretty though. Well, I mean, assuming you overlook the endless flicker. And then it’s mostly just stark colors in the background. In fact, I’d say this has the most overrated graphics on the NES. Most of the settings are pretty dull and there’s only one set piece that stands out. It’s not ugly to look at, but it ain’t all that either.

I would not have been able to use the bee suit if autofire wasn’t an option. Christ, and I thought the arcade version of Balloon Fight was bad.

You have to search levels for six to seven hidden keys. Well, at least to start, and “searching” isn’t always involved. The sixth level just puts the six keys right next to the exit. You can barely jump and there’s no ropes or ladders to climb. The only “advanced” move you can do is swim. Otherwise, to navigate, you have to use a variety of animals that you put to sleep by feeding them candy. Candy famously being something that puts you to sleep. The implied drugging of animals should have been good for a laugh, but actually playing Little Nemo: The GHB Master is agony. Oh, and everything kills you, INCLUDING the animals that you pacify with your roofies. There’s even a window between feeding them the third and presumably lethal piece of candy and the moment they actually finish swallowing it and slip into a coma where you can still be damaged by touching them. Without the animals, Nemo gets no offensive move until the last couple stages. You can stun enemies by throwing candy at them, but I only found this useful two or three times over the course of the game, especially if there’s no animals around. Capcom usually does such a good job with enemies, so it’s downright shocking that the combat is so boring and so needlessly cruel in Little Nemo.

This is one of those games where spikes are instakills, no matter how much life you have left. Oh, and see that little evil dandelion seed? They all but ruin the game.

What’s truly remarkable is that every opportunity Little Nemo has to ping a cheap shot on players is taken. Enemies are always placed in a way to assure that you will take damage, especially the dandelion seeds that heat-seek you and continuously rain from the sky in several sections. There’s no elegance at all to the enemy design, placement, or combat in Little Nemo. No finesse. No balance to it. It feels like a sadist said “wouldn’t it be funny if we put this enemy here?” Not really, because it just makes the whole game miserable to play. Often with the old NES games that people call “Nintendo Hard” I can at least see some redeeming quality that makes me understand why someone would convince themselves it was a good game. You know, when they were children. Battletoads has some good fisticuffs and amazing OOMPH for a two-button NES brawler. Batman had fun combat and, well, it’s Batman. But Little Nemo? I literally have nothing positive to say about this one. Having decent-to-good graphics becomes obnoxious when the gameplay is as terrible as Nemo’s is.

I quit the US version and switched to the Japanese one on the off chance that maybe it was easier, even though Cutting Room Floor didn’t mention it. Some games have easier versions in different regions, most famously The Adventures of Bayou Billy (which I reviewed in my Definitive Review of Zapper/Super Scope games). Sadly, this one was not such a game. The only difference was a couple characters had cigars in their mouths. By the way, in the train stage you need six keys to unlock the door, but it gives you two at the start and two at the finish. Between those two points, the train ride itself, which is the entire stage, offers up five keys. You can actually finish with nine. As far as I could tell, this is the only stage that does that.

The levels themselves aren’t particularly well made. Besides the train level as seen in the above picture, the stages are sprawling, but in a way that makes them feel underpopulated and empty. The one and only consistent theme is dickhead enemy placement. Wherever you have to climb, make a jump, or change screens, enemies will be positioned in a way where you’ll almost certainly take damage. The animal helpers that have means to attack are basically worthless, with the exception of the frog. With it, you can jump on enemies in the classic Mario hop ‘n bop tradition. The others might as well not have an attack at all. The giant gorilla’s punch barely extends beyond its body and has a big recovery delay. The same with the hermit crab, and if you do miss, you end up buried in the sand. Usually if I tried to play offensively, I was just as likely to take damage. This is mostly because your hit box apparently becomes MASSIVE, while enemies, well, aren’t.

And then you have moments like this one, where the animals walk away from you and hide where you can’t get to them WHILE other enemies continue to attack, and you might have to wait quite a while before they actually move back to a useful position. In fact, usually if there’s an animal close by, there’s some kind of targeting enemy zeroing in on you while you’re trying to subdue the animal. The evil dandelion seeds, or these birds dropping eggs on you, or tadpoles if you’re underwater. It always takes three candies to put an animal to sleep, and usually the area where they’re located is closed in and cramped. Remember, the animals hurt you if you touch them. There’s so many no-win situations. I’m guessing maybe 0.1% of all players ever beat this fair and square and most “fans” are fans in the sense they played it for a single rental, maybe two, made it to the second world, third at most, and quit. Unless they had a Game Genie or used the level select code.

The collision might be the worst of any popular game I’ve played. For me, the most telling section in the entire game is when you have a mouse with a mallet that can break through special blocks, but the blocks seem to have a single pixel of vulnerability that isn’t in the center. Even standing right in front of them, the hammer often just plain doesn’t work. It just clips through the breakable blocks like they’re a background wall. At first, I thought they were. I spent a while looking for the right blocks, because it was just unfathomable to me that even the worst Capcom game could mess up such a commonplace gaming trope as “breaking a block that’s in your way with the special block breaking item.” You know, that thing that’s so common, even from games of this era, that it’s a cliché? Well, the first blocks were the right blocks. The breaking block mechanic is just broken. I had to sort of jump at the blocks from an angle to get the collision to register. There’s tons of NES games that could do the “break a block” mechanic. How could they not get this right? This is basic stuff to screw up. I walked away from Little Nemo with the impression that the people who worked on this game didn’t want this assignment and simply didn’t give a sh*t how it turned out.

Right through the blocks.

It really speaks to how popular Capcom was during this era that even Little Nemo: The Dream Master can be famous for being a fun game. I do have a question for its fans: did you actually play this for more than a rental? Did you ever make any progress at all? Without using a Game Genie or Level Select code? Because I kept waiting for this legendary game to show up, and all that happened was one GOTCHA after another. That is, when the world isn’t just a dead maze of spikes or “puzzles” that involve breakable blocks that don’t want to break. Even after the keys are ditched and the combat is opened up, it’s not like you spend most of your time fighting enemies. You still need the animals, which means you’re mostly not using the scepter. Instead, that’s saved for the three spongy, lazily-designed boss fights. Capcom usually does great boss battles, but these are more about sponginess and hard-to-hit attack patterns. Oh, and you have to charge-up the scepter for maximum effect, because of course you do. I have never been more baffled by a game’s popularity than Little Nemo’s. It’s never fun. Not even a little bit. In fact, it feels like the brakes are slammed every time the potential for fun presents itself, as if the developers said “whoa, whoa, let’s not do it like that. Someone might enjoy this!” The big hook, the use of the animals, is subdued and dull because they aren’t really aren’t useful for anything but temporary transportation. You don’t feel empowered in them. It often feels like you’re just opening up whole new ways to take cheap shots and lose lives.

To be honest, I expected the dandelion seeds to rain down on you during the last boss. I don’t know what it says about Little Nemo’s design that the three bosses couldn’t compare to a basic enemy.

This is the one time where I’m completely convinced that nobody actually likes Little Nemo and that they only say they do because critics gave it high marks. That includes other critics, some of which place this on “best of NES” lists. Are you f*cking sh*tting me? I just refuse to believe anyone had fun with this, but nobody wants to be the one standing alone saying otherwise. The attitude seems to be hey, if you’re not having fun, it’s probably your fault you’re not, right? After all, everyone else is having a good time. Why aren’t you? It couldn’t be because the game is impossibly difficult, or that the level design is really empty and boring, or the collision is god awful, or that some mechanics just plain don’t work, or that taking over a fairly large variety of animals isn’t anywhere near as enjoyable as it seems like it would be on a paper, right? Actually, yea, all those things are true and it’s okay to come out and say it: Little Nemo is Capcom’s worst NES game that doesn’t involve Micronics, and hell, I’m willing to say it’s their absolute worst 8-bit game. At least Ghosts ‘n Goblins has a fun theme to it and is remarkably true to the coin-op. Little Nemo doesn’t have that going for it, nor is it so inept that it’s actually kind of funny, like 1942. Little Nemo is the terrible game that walks like a masterpiece, and I absolutely f*cking despise it.
Verdict: NO!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Little Nemo, Little Nemo NES, Little Nemo NES Game, Little Nemo Review, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, Little Nemo: The Dream Master Capcom, Little Nemo: The Dream Master NES Review, Little Nemo: The Dream Master Review

Nemo (Capcom Arcade Review)

May 15, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 4 Comments

Nemo
Platform: Arcade
Released November 20, 1990
Directed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In December, I reviewed Capcom’s arcade anti-classic Willow. A terrible game that everyone goes gaga over that’s directed by Yoshiki Okamoto and based on a middling movie. Six months later and I’m reviewing Capcom’s Nemo. A wonderful game that nobody ever talks about that’s directed by Yoshiki Okamoto and based on a middling movie. When people think of “Capcom” and “Nemo” they likely think of the NES game Little Nemo: The Dream Master. Both the coin-op and the NES game beat the film to the US market by a couple years, not that it matters. This is one of those licenses where people should have known the film was going to bust. The joint Japan-US production with a script from Chris “Goonies/Home Alone/Harry Potter” Columbus spent years in development hell, then released four days after I was born in 1989 only to become a historic box office bomb, losing about sixty million bucks (adjusted for inflation). Like Krull before it, this is one of those situations where the coin-op is the best thing to come out of the whole fiasco. Actually, I’d call this easily Capcom’s best arcade platformer from this era. It’s also the rare Capcom coin-op that doesn’t feel like a quarter shakedown. I’m sure the two things aren’t related and it’s a complete coincidence. Uh huh.

If Capcom ever does release this, I hope they restore the two deleted levels that are still there, in the game code. This one especially, where you slide across a rail, is both original and has a sense of childlike wonder about it that few games from the cynical early 90s achieve. I really had a good time playing Nemo. This is exactly the kind of lost classic I started covering retro games for. If you want to play the deleted levels, Cutting Room Floor has the instructions.

Nemo is such a blast, and I say that thinking the movie is BORING. It’s a favorite of my father, who loves anime feature films, but for me, I was like.. man, this ain’t no My Neighbor Totoro. Imagine the degree of difficulty Capcom had in adapting THAT to a viable platform game, but they nailed it! Unlike the NES game, there’s no animal shenanigans this go around. Instead, most enemies can be killed by jumping on them. That old chestnut. If that’s not to your liking, you can also use the scepter from the movie as a weapon that functionally works like a sword. It’s satisfying enough by itself, I guess. It’s not an amazing weapon or anything, but it can be. It can be powered-up by grabbing the famous Capcom pinwheel, turning Nemo red and letting you create a chain reaction with the enemies, IE hitting them back into each-other. Now THAT’S the good stuff, and my only regret is that they didn’t build the game more around this. A couple bosses are, though. Bosses where you can hit them directly, but it’s more efficient to knock smaller baddies into them. During these fights, the pinwheels might even continuously spawn for players. Collision is pretty good all around and the enemies are fun and imaginative. For the thirty to forty minutes or so you’ll need to finish Nemo Arcade, fighting the basic enemies never gets boring. That’s half the battle right there!

You can also pick up and throw crates and barrels. I threw one once that rolled so far that I was racking-up points for a solid 10 seconds even though it’d scrolled off the screen. I LOVE THIS GAME!

And the level design is pretty impressive too. Capcom took a very high risk by not starting off with a basic “move right, jump over pits” type of design you’d expect from a first level. Instead, it’s an auto scrolling train. I hate auto-scrolling, but I loved that stage, and I loved that Capcom took it on faith that players understand the concept of a platform game at this point. After that, Nemo relies on spectacular set pieces, including a memorable haunted forest, a sinking steamboat, and adventures in the clouds. Even when the level design devolves into straight corridors, the enemies are spaced out and fun enough to do battle with that it never gets boring. To further break-up the action, there’s hidden chests all over that reveal themselves after you step on their platform, and unlike many Capcom games, there’s no whammies in them! How come nobody talks about the coin-op Nemo? I hear about the sucky NES game all the time, but this? It’s great! It’s such a shame that Capcom didn’t roll the dice on porting this to something like the Genesis, which could have used a marquee arcade platformer.

I hate that it’s unlikely this will get a re-release. Capcom should just reload the license and then release this with the NES game in a 2 for 1 pack for $14.99. People with fond memories of the NES game will be burned thanks to being drunk on nostalgia. BUT, they’ll have a hell of a surprise by what is the REAL reason to own such a package.

If I have to complain, it’s that there’s not enough upgrades to the scepter. Get this: I didn’t even realize until my second playthrough right before going to press on this that there WAS an upgrade to the scepter. In fact, judging by the screenshots, I even picked it up without realizing it. It gives a subtle, nearly imperceptible electric effect to your attack that doesn’t functionally feel stronger, more energetic, or whatever the hell they were going for. Obviously, since I didn’t even realize I was doing it when I did it. I also think the bosses are too spongy. It’s a Capcom coin-op, so if that wasn’t the case, I’d be shocked, frankly, but it does matter quite a bit. Your scepter often needs several wacks to even cause the boss meter to drop a tiny sliver. For many bosses, hit points are weighed too heavily on extracurricular hits, IE throwing crates or using the red-Nemo power to knock enemies back into them. This is a little troublesome because there’s a learning curve to picking up the objects you can throw. Your sprite might be physically on the object’s sprite, but you’re still not able to pick it up because you’re not ALL the way on it. As a result, some of the bosses cross the line into being.. gasp.. boring. In the case of the 4th boss, a giant gear, really boring, actually. F’n thing took me probably 20% of the playtime by itself. When I noticed the stage timer stopped working on bosses, I literally LOLed because it’s a genuinely laughable solution to the problem. “Well, we can’t get rid of the sponge. We’re Capcom! (shrug) Just stop the timer!”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On one hand, I’m grateful the basic enemies weren’t also damage sponges since they pretty much sealed Willow’s fate, but on the other hand, balancing bosses is a big deal too. The sponge might also be because Nemo is a co-op game, but I didn’t get a chance to test that. I will update this review if I get a chance to play with someone else, but I can’t imagine it would be any better even with two players. And nothing I just complained about is a deal breaker because most of the bosses, spongy as they are, still manage to be fun. Only the third and fourth ones really feel sloggy, which happen to be the two bosses based mostly around throwing stuff at them. So is the giant tree but the means to do it isn’t something you have to work hard at. It’s such a shame that Capcom didn’t roll the dice on porting this to something like the Genesis, which could have used a marquee platformer in 1990. In fact, Nemo vanished from gaming’s collective memory. I’ve found it on Capcom arcade lists a couple times and immediately forgot about it. Nobody talks about this one, and I don’t get it. After playing both the NES and arcade versions of Nemo, I think the wrong Capcom Nemo game is the famous one.
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Capcom Little Nemo, Capcom Nemo, Little Nemo, Little Nemo Arcade, Little Nemo Arcade Review, Little Nemo Review, Nemo, Nemo Arcade, Nemo Arcade Review, Nemo Capcom Review, Nemo Coin-Op, Nemo Coin-Op Review, Nemo Review

Spatter (Sega Arcade Review)

May 14, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 1 Comment

Spatter
aka Sanrin San-chan, aka Tricycle-San
Platform: Arcade
Released in December, 1984
Designed by Yoshiki Kawasaki
Published by Sega
Never Released in America* (See Caption Below)
Coin-Op Never Re-Released

*Yes, a newly developed port of Spatter was included in the second Genesis Mini, but technically that’s not the arcade game, and it doesn’t do much to help console owners anyway.

Sega threw their hat into the maze chase ring a few times with titles like Ali Baba and 40 Thieves, Congo Bongo, Pengo, etc. I figured I’d played all of them, but I was wrong. I’d never even heard of Spatter until my friend Dave said “you’re going to review Pac-Mania eventually, right? (UPDATE: Here’s my Pac-Mania review!) This is like a proof of concept for Pac-Mania.” Hey, I like Pac-Mania! So, I gave Spatter a try and actually, he’s right and wrong. He’s right in the sense that Spatter is one of the first maze chases that features a maze bigger than the screen itself. And he’s also right in the sense that Spatter is one of the first maze chases that offers players an unlimited dodge move. But, the similarities end there, because Spatter offers something most maze chase games don’t: unlimited knock-outs of your pursuers. And it’s so satisfying.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Spatter’s object is to grab all eight bouquets of flowers in each stage. As you do this, you’re pursued by chasers in go karts. You can’t jump just anywhere. There has to be a guardrail and not a solid wall. But, if there is a guardrail, Spatter’s incredible twist reveals itself: the jumping move is into the guardrail itself, causing it to bend in a cartoonish fashion. It works both offensively and defensively, and what’s truly bonkers is that it’s equally satisfying both ways. This is especially true if you dodge someone as you’re turning a corner, as it almost feels like cheating at a game of chicken. Hell, if you time it right while taking a corner, the rail will snap back like a rubber band and kill the guy in the oncoming lane. The enemies don’t exactly have the complex algorithms of Pac-Man ghosts. The karts chase you directly, but this is the rare maze chase that built around that, giving you means to dodge AND the instant gratification of bashing them off the road. It really is just as simple as doing a jump when they’re on the opposite side of you, and it has more OOMPH than most karate games from this era do.

Later stages have a lot more solid walls, like this section here. Also, the transparent roads were pretty spectacular as far as 1984 games go. At one point, Spatter was earmarked for Sega’s 3DS program, but it was cancelled because the game was too obscure. Um, hello? I know a way to take something out of obscurity: RE-RELEASE IT!

Mind you, the enemies respawn almost instantly. It’s a maze chase at the end of the day, and not every enemy can be defeated by the rail. A little green bomb robot and a bulldozer eventually enter the maze. The bulldozers are indestructible, but the bombs can be taken out by shoving boxes into them. Oh yea, there’s boxes, which contain bonus items that score you points. There’s a lot of bonus point opportunities, including tons of boxes on the playfield, points for quick completions, points for enemy knockout combos with the boxes, paper airplanes that fly in from outside the maze, and bonus rounds where Spatter temporarily becomes a 2D platformer where you have to avoid drops of water and climb up a series of ledges while collecting fruit. These were the weak links in the game and are so out of place that I wonder if this was originally the concept and they pivoted when they realized it wasn’t very fun. Or challenging, for that matter. I never once failed it. As you get deeper into the game’s 40 levels (which the level count includes the bonus stages), the stages still present plenty of bashing opportunities. I figured they’d up the challenge by eliminating them altogether. Instead, they space them out, but that only serves to increase the enjoyment. Seriously, why does nobody talk about this one?

If the water killed you instead of making you spin out, that’d be one thing. But even when I got hit multiple times, I still ultimately won, and usually quickly. My worst round still had 7 seconds remaining.

As much as I enjoyed the gameplay, I have to concede that Spatter has a massive problem with scoring balance and the risk/reward factor. Especially with the blocks, which score too little points to encourage using them, especially since they take too long to shatter after you kick them. I inadvertently doomed myself a lot more often than I killed enemies with them. There’s also too many points available in the bonus round for the meager challenge it presents. Giving these stages wrap-around screens nerfs the challenge completely. Part of me wonders if Spatter would have been better served removing the Pac-Man-like collecting aspect and instead turning the game into an entirely combat focused type of maze chase.

The paper airplane scores 2,000 points, which is only 1,600 less than you get for getting all the flowers in a level before the time bonus factors in. I wouldn’t know where to begin with balancing a game like this that has such a heavy emphasis on combat, but I know the bonus items are overvalued.

Then again, I did run through all the levels using the infinite lives dip switch and I never got bored with that, nor did I get bored when I limited myself to three lives and three bonus lives. The level design is never dull. In fact, there’s times where I was shocked by the game suddenly presenting a small box as the entire stage, and it was so exhilarating when it happened. Frankly, it’s because the engine is built around close calls, near misses, and great escapes. Even with dumb AI, Spatter soars because the maze designs are built around making that dumb AI work towards a greater good. Jeez, it’s such a shame Spatter got no love from their own developers, then or now. I’m stunned they even bothered with making it a +1 in the Genesis Mini II. Sega tends to re-release the same handful of famous games over and over again. Spatter is good enough to anchor a collection of their hidden gems, because it might be the shiniest of the bunch. Hell, let Nintendo remake it as a Mario Kart spin-off. It feels like kin anyway!
Verdict: YES!

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Spatter Arcade, Spatter Arcade Game, Spatter Arcade Review, Spatter Coin-Op Review, Spatter Game, Spatter Review, Spatter Sega, Spatter Sega Review

Super Pac-Man and Pac & Pal (Arcade Reviews)

May 12, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 6 Comments

Super Pac-Man
Platform: Arcade
Released September 26, 1982
Designed by Toru Iwatani
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Super Pac-Man is the rare game where my review is written for me by the developer, who called it, simply put, “boring.” Well then, I’ll just get back to watching this video of ten hours of silence occasionally interrupted by the Taco Bell dong.

Okay, okay! So, why is Super Pac-Man boring? It’s a little more complicated than “the maze sucks” like I said in my original Pac-Man review. One problem is that it looks boring. Super Pac-Man’s unfathomable decision to replace dots that cover nearly every surface of the maze with large sprites strips a large part of the original’s liveliness. The 240 dots have been replaced by 15 keys that open 37 gates (though not every gate can be opened), 4 power pellets, 2 super pellets, and 31 items. It seems like it’s still a lot of stuff, but the keys don’t even need to be collected in their entirety to move on to the next stage. Huh? A Pac-Man maze chase with optional objects is kind of weird, isn’t it? Oddly, you are still expected to chomp the power pellets and super pellets. Those aren’t optional. And don’t say “keys aren’t food, that’s why!” because neither are tennis shoes but eventually you have to eat those too. Look at the slideshow above. Doesn’t it just seem.. dead? Amazingly, a mess of abstract dots can have a LOT more personality than a series of sprites that look like food. Or footwear.

While ghost movement is more randomized, all the personalities from the original game carry over, along with their “SCATTER” corners. I will say that Clyde seems to follow you more often. In fact, I’d say that he frequently feels like a second red ghost. Also, the ghosts have random seizures now. I mean that literally, too. They freeze up and go all twitchy, apparently some kind of transition between “modes” though it doesn’t seem to be between SCATTER and CHASE. I honestly don’t know what’s happening when it happens.

And the “super” concept was also botched, but not for the reasons creator Iwatani thinks. He’s of the opinion that Pac-Man gets too big, and not that it doesn’t do anything to the ghosts. All Super Pac does is grant you the ability to dash and eat the gates without the need for a key. The dash can work in collaboration with power pellets to eat the ghosts easier via the dash, which is theoretically a gameplay plus. But, when you stop and think about it, it’s really only adding an extra step to the thing you can do anyway from the first game. It’s not fitting for the term “super.” Frankly, it’s a massive let-down. If Super Pac interacted directly with the ghosts by itself, like say, squashing them into the ground, causing them to be frozen in a spot for a while, that would be better than what they came up with. Or, maybe they did come up with it but changed their minds, because something like that happens in one of the cutscenes, complete with new sprites for the crushed ghosts. The whole concept of keys and gates feels like it only exists to justify the giant Pac-Man. Being able to eat as many gates as you can while big was foolhardy. Even in later stages when it wears off faster, there’s enough time to grab the super pellet and then crash through all the center gates (assuming you hold the run button), opening up the tunnel (where the ghosts slow down, just like the first game) with no tension at all.

Let’s face it: Super Pac-Man only exists as wish fulfillment because one of the cutscenes in the first game had you turn into a giant Pac-Man and Namco probably got letters asking “how do you do that in the game?” Oh and the cutscenes are back this time, and they’re fine as always. I still think Jr. Pac-Man’s “boy meets girl” story was just about the most adorable thing I’ve seen in any coin-op. It’s weird because in these Pac-Man games, all the gags land.

I’m not a game designer, but I could easily come up with a better idea for the super dots: eliminate the timer for them. Instead, they only work on one thing. Instead of being able to crash as many gates as you can, you can only do one before shrinking into regular Pac-Man. But, if you hit a ghost while on one, the ghost is taken out for, say, ten to twelve seconds and it activates the roulette star in the center for points. The ghosts experience a slightly longer downtime than they would be if eliminated via a chomp and a return to the ghost house. Also, make it so the effect isn’t diminished as you get deeper into the game, unlike the duration of being energized by the power pellets. This would add so much risk/reward. Anything would be better than how they are now. Actually, it’s the strangest thing, because the super pellets are both overpowered and under-powered at the same time. Under-powered in the satisfaction sense, but overpowered in the gameplay sense. Super Pac-Man is an absolute disaster of a game.

There’s bonus rounds that are of the “clear the screen” variety where you’re permanently Super Pac-Man. The fact that they didn’t have to change a thing and this concept works tells you everything you need to know about how overpowered those super pellets are in the early stages.

But yea, Super Pac-Man’s biggest flaw is the maze just plain stinks. There’s too many short wall segments, which can get even shorter if you open the gates around them. Pac-Man never fully demands you make too tight of turns. Super Pac-Man asks it constantly. It’s also tougher to use the walls as a sort of guider for Pac-Man. The way the walls felt in the original game almost gives the maze a race track like quality. If that’s the case, Super Pac-Man’s maze is more like a parking lot full of U-turns and tight squeezes. It makes for a more frustrating controlling experience. Frustration that increases significantly when you try to aim Super Pac. I’d be VERY impressed if someone was good enough to use it without ever letting go of the sprinting button. Sometimes, it honestly feels like Super Pac’s center of mass isn’t actually in the center. I wondered if maybe it was my emulator, but the problem doesn’t exist at all when you’re normal Pac. It’s so odd that Super Pac-Man doesn’t have a maze tailored to the giant-sized Pac-Man’s strengths at all.

Behold, the one and only time I got the max value of the roulette wheel. You get 2,000 points for matching two items and 5,000 if the two items are that level’s “dot.” Often, I didn’t go for the roulette at all because it was either too high risk to do so OR my only means of escape would have involved using a super pellet when I didn’t want to. I hate this game.

So the tricky controls make Super Pac-Man harder, right? Actually, I habitually get to level 10 with minimal fuss, and have reached as high as level 21 without actually playing what I would consider to be all that good. My best game was 207,820 to my father’s 60,960. On one hand, it’s satisfying to have annihilated a sweet old man who I have it on good authority has a wife and kids. Shame on me. But, I got so many lucky breaks in that score. As in a ghost literally on my tail only to have one of their freeze-and-shake moments, or hell, once they just slowed down for no reason in the middle of the board. Their speed literally reduced and I couldn’t figure out why. It was like they entered a tunnel, but they hadn’t. Now granted, the difficulty can be adjusted with the dip switches, but the maze can’t be. A single aspect of Super Pac-Man put a smile on my face: eating the ghosts inside the ghost house as Super Pac-Man. It’s just funny how rude it is. Otherwise, this is a baffling game that, again, I think only exists because of that one cut scene from the first game. Before starting this review, the only game in the original series I considered worse than this was Pac & Pal. Having played both back-to-back, I’ve changed my mind. Of all the games in the franchise, Super Pac-Man has the fewest redeeming qualities, and if that isn’t grounds for earning the title of “worst of the franchise” I don’t know what is.
Verdict: NO!

Pac & Pal
aka Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1983
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Congratulations Pac & Pal: you’re officially not the worst game in the franchise, try as you might. You are an absolute bore of a game, but I genuinely think there’s something charming about you. Pac & Pal is a fairly problematic game, owed largely to a dull concept. It’s probably best to think of Pac & Pal as a reworking of Super Pac-Man. The gate concept that I thought completely failed the first time around was retained, only now the keys are replaced with playing cards that correspond to one of eleven “chambers” on the playfield. The cards aren’t randomized, and like with Super Pac-Man, Pac & Pal starts by placing cards close by their corresponding chamber, IE the cherry card is right next to the cherry chamber. Then, the more you progress, the further you have to travel after turning over a card. So, in later levels, a card in the bottom left corner will likely unlock the upper right chamber, and so forth. That aspect is a big turn-off for a few players, but I think it’s fine. It’s a perfectly logical challenge progression for this type of concept. If it’s not fun, it’s because the base concept is just boring. Even when you factor in the addition of the “Pal.”

Unlike Super Pac-Man, where you can go around and collect all the keys, Pac & Pal caps you at a max of three unlocked items at a time. Also, that orange area in the center replaces the tunnels as the “slow the ghosts down” escape method.

The titular twist is that an NPC “pal” named Miru wanders around the maze until you unlock a chamber. As soon you do, it makes a beeline to the item. The name “Pal” is a bit of a misnomer, as the Pal doesn’t bring the items to you. In fact, it’s more like a kleptomaniac member of the Ghost Monsters that doesn’t help you as a “pal” would. Instead, it drags the item to the ghost chamber, costing you the points for it. You have two advantages over the Pal. When Miru drags an item, it moves at half speed and it’s guaranteed that, no matter where the item is, it’ll cross directly under the ghost house before walking around and entering it. If you can snag all the items without Miru managing to vanish any in the ghost house, you get bonus points. Miru doesn’t hurt you, but it can screw you if it collects one of the power-ups. Also, I found the collision detection to be kind of unforgiving, especially when trying to catch Miru and the item it’s dragging.

Trying to chase down Miru before it gets the items into the ghost house isn’t quite as exciting as I think they were hoping for. Also, it doesn’t matter if you play the version with Miru or you play the version that uses the dog from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. That version was commissioned by Bally Midway, but it was never released in America because, well, come on. They knew this game stank. Thank God for General Computer’s Jr. Pac-Man.

The other twist is that you don’t chomp the ghosts. The “power pellets” are the two items in the center above the cherry and strawberry, and this time around, you fire a short-range projectile that stuns the enemies. It scores the same as chomping, capping out at 1,600 points for hitting all four, but you can actually score a lot more with it. In the early stages, the power lasts longer than the enemies are stunned, and if you time it right, you can continue to score 1,600 points for re-stunning enemies before the power wears off. The problem with it is that it front-loads the scoring to the start of the game instead of the later levels. It’s also probably too powerful, as you can spray your projectile through up to two walls and still hit the ghosts. This includes when they’re in the ghost houses. This is the main reason the game never once feels even a little like Pac-Man. It feels more like Namco wanted a tank game with a Pac-Man heritage.

Are we 100% sure this started development as a Pac-Man game?

Again, I’m open to the possibility that this formula could make for an exciting game, and it’s just that Pac & Pal fumbled the execution, largely because of the terrible shape of the maze. But, perhaps the maze is only terrible because the attack patterns of the ghosts from the original Pac-Man are largely retained. I’ll never understand the logic in that, for this game or for Super Pac-Man. Those behavior patterns were created and then presumably fine-tuned to work specifically within Pac-Man’s 240 dot maze. They make little sense in a game where you don’t have to cover nearly the entire surface of the playfield. They don’t work when mazes have dead ends or hairpin turns. Take Pinky, who is programmed to anticipate Pac-Man’s next move. In Pac-Man, it targets the area roughly four spaces in front of Pac-Man, right? Well, wouldn’t “anticipating your next move” have a completely different meaning in a game where the object is to turn over cards at a max of three of a time, then go grab the corresponding items? Shouldn’t a couple of the ghosts have their attacks be based on, you know, the cards and/or items? Also, there’s now a Dig Dug-like olly olly oxen free moment where the ghosts all go after Pac-Man. Oh, and the “ghosts have seizures” bit from Super Pac-Man is retained. I think they really wanted it to work this time, and while it’s a better game than Super Pac-Man.. it’s not by a big margin. Nah, Pac & Pal sucks.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hey look, I’m all for experimenting with established formulas. It’s sort of why I wanted to start Indie Gamer Chick in the first place. But there’s tweaking a winning formula and then there’s forgoing it all together. Pac & Pal, simply put, is not a Pac-Man game. Actually, part of me wonders if Pac & Pal started life as something different altogether. Besides the ghost house, there’s nothing inherently Pac-Manish about the gameplay. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a drawing board concept that they thought would maybe work, and they attached Pac-Man to hedge their bets. But the Pac-Man elements are the problem. The ghosts aren’t fun to be pursued by this time around. The one big change, the power-up, flopped because it lacks the satisfaction that eating had. It’s not a total wash, like I expected going into this. In those rare instances where you have a chance to work with the Pal and not be in a position to race against it, it’s satisfying enough that I get what Namco was aiming for. Maybe if they had tailored the ghosts around that and not just copy & pasted them from OG Pac-Man, it would have worked. One of the great ironies of gaming: Pac & Pal is the Pac-Man game doomed by its own connection to the franchise.
Verdict: NO!

Actually, we DID have a lot of fun with this video. My family probably thinks I’ve lost my f*cking mind, but I left it playing in the background and cheered every time it rang. Soon, they were playing along and doing it too. We left it all day yesterday and it was so fun by the end. Every time it rang, we’d burst into cheers and applause. In those rare instances where the bong rings not long after the previous one, we’d go completely bonkers. It’s so smart, too, not overdoing the bong. You really never know when it’ll ring. I’m telling you, this is my new favorite thing.

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Pac & Pal, Pac & Pal Review, Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp, Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp Review, Pac-Man Coin Op, Super Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man Arcade, Super Pac-Man Arcade Review, Super Pac-Man Coin-Op review, Super Pac-Man Review

Pac-Man and Pac-Man Plus (Arcade Reviews)

May 10, 2024 by Indie Gamer Chick 18 Comments

This review would not have been possible without Chad Birch’s excellent write-up on Pac-Man’s ghosts. A must-read that helped me to better appreciate what Pac-Man accomplished. And I’d like to also give a shout out to the inspiration of that post, the Pac-Man Dossier by Jamie Pittman. If you’ve never read about the ghost patterns in Pac-Man, do me a favor: read those, then play Pac-Man and tell me if the experience feels somehow changed to you. It’s the strangest thing but it feels transformative. I’ve never experienced that before with any game. It’s wild.

Pac-Man
Platform: Arcade
Released May 22, 1980
Designed by Toru Iwatani
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I was born in 1989, and I started gaming regularly when I got a PlayStation for Christmas in 1996. Pac-Man had seen better days by that point. It wasn’t an important character to my childhood at all. Not even a little bit. I’m sure my older readers will have an aneurysm hearing that, but it’s true. I did play Pac-Man games, of course. Soon after I got that PlayStation, but before I got the Nintendo 64 for my 9th birthday in July, 1998 that changed my life and really made gaming my thing, my father got me a pair of the original Namco Museum releases for my PlayStation. Volumes 1 & 3, aka the ones that everyone had. I don’t remember playing most of the thirteen games in them, but I know for certain I only played Pac-Man once. Why on Earth would I want to play that boring old version when Ms. Pac-Man had four mazes and bonus fruits that hopped around the mazes instead of just sitting there lifelessly in the center? To 7 year old me, the original world-conquering Pac-Man held no appeal at all. I’m not proud to say that I stuck to my guns on that long after I had launched Indie Gamer Chick in 2011. Pac-Man? Boring! I didn’t change my tune on it until last summer, when my sister asked me pointedly “how is Pac-Man’s one maze any different from pinball? You wouldn’t complain that a pinball table plays the same game, and only that one game.” I couldn’t believe how ashamed of myself I was at that moment. She was completely right, and I had always been completely wrong about Pac-Man.

Few things in life are so satisfying as the 4th chomp of a single power pellet. And yes, I’m playing with five lives instead of three.

The weird thing is, I kept that bias against the original Pac-Man despite taking the time to better understand the maze chase genre as a whole. It was the Atari 2600 port (which is one of several Pac-Reviews in Atari 50: The Games They Couldn’t Include), along with my fandom of games like Popeye and Jr. Pac-Man that helped me to figure out why some games succeed and others fail. It’s all about the chase itself. Not the collecting, or the turning the tables on the enemies, or even the presentation and/or theme of the whole package. The entertainment comes mostly from the close calls and exhilaration you get from scratching out just enough distance to free yourself, or just barely beating out a chaser hot on your heels to win a level. Being charming, looking good, or having memorable characters is nice, but if the chase is no good, it doesn’t matter. I never understood why Pac-Man succeeded where so many others failed, but the really weird thing is neither did Namco, or the man who made Pac-Man to begin with.

There’s so many idiosyncrasies that make Pac-Man.. well, Pac-Man that I couldn’t possibly count them all. For example, the places where I’ve put the arrows are known as “blind alleys.” The ghosts can NEVER travel upward along those specific paths. They can go down, but never up. If you perform it right, you can even park in the lower right hand blind alley and remain safe. The ghosts will never find you. Pros use this to take potty breaks (though the use of this is controversial).

Look at many interviews with Toru Iwatani and he’s sure to conclude that people relate to Pac-Man.. especially women.. because Pac-Man, you know, eats. Eating! That’s a thing people do! Especially us women folk, whereas men are too busy for that, what with all the bread winning, and usually opt instead for good old fashioned photosynthesis. Of course, other games are about eating too, but only Pac-Man became a global icon. Or maybe it was the shape, serendipitously created (discovered?) when Iwatani took a single wedge from a piece of pizza? Or the name, which was originally “Puck-Man” until someone turned the P into an F and Namco had second thoughts. Or was it the ghosts? The colorful, menacing pursuers that were each programmed to have their own personalities? The sound effects? Sure, those all matter, but I think if you leave everything the same but have a crappy maze design and Pac-Man doesn’t blow up like it did. The straightaways at the bottom are the exact right length to make players hold their breaths. There’s no unreasonable twisty-turny moments. The ghosts slowing down in the tunnels lends an almost Hanna-Barbera vibe to the chase where you can imagine the ghosts shaking their fists at you in anger as the distance between you and them increases. The eating part is also only exciting because, YOU GUESSED IT, its effect on the chase. Eating dots slows you down, and there’s so many dots! That’s a lot of space where you aren’t going your max speed. The maze is, frankly, kind of perfect.

My best 5 man game.

My best 3 man game.

Namco figured everything was responsible for Pac-Man’s success, except the maze itself. There, their attitude seemed to be “any maze will do!” They went on to prove this twice in a row. The next Pac-Man game THEY made, Super Pac-Man, turned the abstract dots into the type of food us eating eaters eat. In theory, if eating is the appeal, it should have been a big hit, but it wasn’t. Maybe because the game itself sucked, mostly because the maze sucked. It didn’t lend itself perfectly to the best moments in maze chases. Scratching out distances, close calls, and nail-biting sections? Nope, just a mess of walls and dots with no rhyme or reason. Then they repeated the same folly with Pac & Pal. For all I know, the base concept of those games might be ingenious, but with the mazes they feature, there’s no way to know for sure. I kind of wish a ROM hack existed that changed the mazes. Weirdly, it was a rogue “enhancement board” developer named General Computer that fundamentally got it with Pac-Man and made the best of those early sequels: Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man.

Pac-Man is one of the first cases of the original Japanese script having helpful tips that were lost in translation. Specifically Pinky being “Speedy.” In fact, Pinky doesn’t move faster, but the word for what it meant didn’t have a perfect one-to-one English translation. In Japan, its name is “Machibuse” which roughly means “to ambush” or “being ambushed.” Unlike some bad translations, it’s not a stretch to see how they reached for a word that conveys the concept of an ambush and came up with “Speedy.” The “speedy one” is usually the one ahead, right? Pinky’s attack logic is to use the direction Pac-Man is facing and target an area roughly four lengths ahead of Pac-Man. Clyde (the orange one) is in the same boat. “Pokey” is his name in the US. WTF does that even mean? In Japan, his name translates to “feigning ignorance.”

If the maze design itself is the most important aspect, the chasers are a very close second. When I play a maze chase for the first time, sometimes I need time to figure out if a maze works or not. That’s rarely the case with chasers. If they just immediately make a beeline for you, it’s usually not a good sign. Pac-Man doesn’t do that, and I think that factored really big into why it took off. While the ghosts each have a unique personality and accompanying attack method, all four ghosts collectively run on three “modes” that apply at the same time to all four. The modes are called SCATTER, CHASE, and FRIGHTENED. The main two are SCATTER and CHASE, which run on a fixed timer, with SCATTER running much shorter. Sometimes astronomically shorter. CHASE can last seventeen minutes before giving players another SCATTER, though by that point, you’ll probably just finish the level or die. In SCATTER, each ghost goes to their own designated corner to wander on “patrol” for a few seconds. In CHASE, the ghosts each have a strategy based on using a “target” on the board that refreshes every step they take. The red one always targets the space Pac-Man is currently occupying and takes the shortest route to get there, leading to it feeling like it chases you the most directly. The pink one tries to anticipate your move by targeting four spaces in front of the direction you’re facing. You can use this to scare Pinky off. If you’re near a junction and you move straight at him, his target tile will be BEHIND HIM and cause him to change directions. It works every single time.

The blue ghost bases its position on Blinky (the red one) and Pac-Man’s position, and if Blinky closes in on you, it’s not rare for Inky to be close by. Finally, Clyde, the orange one, really is kind of a coward. If he’s far away from Pac-Man, he uses Blinky’s targeting system, but as soon as he gets within eight spaces of Pac-Man, he retreats to the left hand corner using the same target tile as his SCATTER mode target. While he’s not specifically dangerous as he doesn’t target you, what he’s really doing is cutting off a potential means of escape. There’s a LOT more complexity. Like seriously, read this and try committing it to memory. I made it to Chapter 3 and about two minutes later, as I tried making sense of which tile counted and how each frame of animation mattered a great deal, my ears started dripping blood. I took it as a sign to stop and just enjoy knowing that I could stare-down the pink ghost.

The ghosts in their “SCATTER” patrol zones.

I was wrong about Pac-Man being boring. Now that I approach it the same way I do a pinball table, knowing that I’m playing one specific maze that operates under one specific set of rules, I think I kind of love this game. Maybe someday, I’ll even commit the professional patterns to memory. Right now, I’m just content to practice and get better at anticipating the moves of the ghosts and utilizing it to make the type of moves I once thought were bold, but now I know are completely safe. Besides, I kind of like how good I am at it now, where scoring a 1,600 point 4th chomp is still a big deal to me. I don’t know if I ever want to cross that threshold where scoring 50,000 points isn’t a “good game” anymore. There’s something comforting about knowing just enough about Pac-Man to do alright, but not enough that I could play it for hours, completely zoned out. It’s a game I have to pay attention to, and that’s kind of what I want out of a maze chase anyway. If I reached the point where my brain is calculating what frame cycle I’m currently in so I can pinpoint exactly what direction the edible ghosts will turn, that doesn’t sound as fun for me. Hey, 50,000 is a good score for me. It’s a pitiful score for pros. But I bet I’m the one having more fun.
Verdict: YES!

Pac-Man Plus
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1983
Published by Bally Midway
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet
NO MODERN NON-ARCADE1UP RELEASE

Original Pac-Man Maze

Pac-Man Plus Maze

Pac-Man Plus is the unofficial-official ROM hack that DIDN’T find its audience. It’s unclear how involved Namco was. MobyGames says it was completely unauthorized by Namco. The Pac-Man Wiki says it was actually made by Namco. Everyone seems to agree that Plus was commissioned by Bally Midway to compete with the prevalence of popular-but-unauthorized enhancement kits and ROM hacks (some of which I reviewed in Pac-Man Museum: The Games They Couldn’t or Wouldn’t Include), the most famous being one that just sped up the game significantly. While Plus retains the same maze as the original Pac-Man, the gameplay is fairly heavily modified. Oh, and the maze is teal now. My father speculated teal might be kinder on CRT monitors than the stark blue of the original. Real life Pac-Man cabinets are NOTORIOUS for permanently searing the maze’s shapes and features into the monitors themselves. By 1983, enough Pac-Man units were probably experiencing monitor-scaring that arcade operators requested that it, you know, not do that anymore. That’s just my pops’ speculation, though. Another cosmetic change is that the first item is a can of Coca-Cola, which is apparently one of the first examples of product placement in a video game. Also, when you eat a power pellet, the ghosts now have stems on their head. It seems like a needlessly cruel reminder that, yes, they’re food now. As if being dead isn’t bad enough. The cosmetic changes are fine and honestly, the stem-head thing is cute, but gameplay is king.

“Aww sh*t. We’re food. Wait, how did ole Pinky not change?”

There are three notable changes to the standard Pac-Man gameplay. (1) The ghosts are “more aggressive” now, by which it means they spend less time in the “Scatter” algorithm and more time in “Chase.” They also move faster, but then again, so do you. (2) The power pellets are now red kryptonite instead of green. In other words, you never know what will happen. Sometimes you’ll get the standard “all four ghosts can be eaten” from the first game, but sometimes the power pellets only work on three of the four ghosts. When this happens, one ghost seemingly chosen at random will not be affected. What the hell? Well, this is “professional-proofing.” You see, by 1983, the patterns that skilled players used to manipulate the ghosts and rack up high scores were widely known. Instead of creating new “marching orders” for the four ghosts, having one not become vulnerable completely wrecks the established patterns used by pros. Oh, you can still use patterns, but you will also always need to think on your feet. Other effects also include making the ghosts invisible, making the stage invisible, and making the stage AND the remaining dots/pellets invisible. Because OF COURSE that happens.

Well, it wouldn’t be a mod of an established game from the early 80s if “invisibility” wasn’t one of its tricks.

(3) The bonus items aren’t just for points anymore. They’re functionally extra power pellets. Not just power pellets, but SUPER INVISIBILITY Power Pellets! When you eat them, the ghosts become edible, but they turn invisible (facepalm) until the blinking starts. If you eat them, they score double the points they normally do: 400, 800, 1600, 3200. Being able to fully utilize this requires you to have a fairly good understanding of the behavior of the ghosts running the “FRIGHTENED” algorithm, since you won’t be able to eyeball which direction they take. Wait, how does FRIGHTENED work? Oh, the directions the ghosts turn are based on a pseudo-random number generator. Well crap. So unless you memorize the frame-by-frame gameplay to be able to predict the behaviors of the ghosts, chomping them with the item is pure luck. Anyway, I played Pac-Man Plus a few years ago and I didn’t really like it all that much, but now that I’ve taken the time to understand the idiosyncrasies of Pac-Man, actually.. it’s okay! It’s not an amazing upgrade. It’s fine, but it is something you have to be really into Pac-Man to appreciate. I can also understand why purists wouldn’t like it. I had a decent enough time messing around with it, but it’s no surprise why Ms. Pac-Man is the official-unofficial ROM hack that became a hit and Pac-Man Plus was relegated to the status of historic curio.
Verdict: YES!

Ignore the “high score” which was done via cheating tomfoolery. This was my legitimate high score.

Filed under Retro Reviews Tagged with Pac-Man, Pac-Man Arcade, Pac-Man Coin-Op Review, Pac-Man Plus, Pac-Man Plus Arcade, Pac-Man Plus Review, Pac-Man Review

← Older posts

Newer posts →

Indie Gamer Chick

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak (NES Review)

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak
aka The Flintstones II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October, 1993
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like this:

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper! (NES Review)

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1992
Directed by Isao Matono
Developed by Natsume
Published by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like this:

The Jetsons: Robot Panic (Game Boy Review)

The Jetsons: Robot Panic
Platform: Game Boy
Released October, 1992
Designed by Isao Matono
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like this:

The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy (NES Review)

The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1991
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like this:

The Flintstones (Sega Master System Review)

The Flintstones
Platform: Sega Master System
Released November 1991 (1988 on Home Computers)
Adapted by Paul Marshall
Published by Grandslam Entertainments
Released Only in Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like this:

Little Nemo: The Dream Master (NES Review)

Little Nemo: The Dream Master
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September, 1990
Designed by Tatsuya Minami
Produced by Tokuro Fujiwara
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like this:

Nemo (Capcom Arcade Review)

Nemo
Platform: Arcade
Released November 20, 1990
Directed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like this:

Spatter (Sega Arcade Review)

Spatter
aka Sanrin San-chan, aka Tricycle-San
Platform: Arcade
Released in December, 1984
Designed by Yoshiki Kawasaki
Published by Sega
Never Released in America* (See Caption Below)
Coin-Op Never Re-Released

Like this:

Super Pac-Man and Pac & Pal (Arcade Reviews)

Super Pac-Man
Platform: Arcade
Released September 26, 1982
Designed by Toru Iwatani
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Pac & Pal
aka Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1983
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Like this:

Pac-Man and Pac-Man Plus (Arcade Reviews)

Pac-Man
Platform: Arcade
Released May 22, 1980
Designed by Toru Iwatani
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Pac-Man Plus
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1983
Published by Bally Midway
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet
NO MODERN NON-ARCADE1UP RELEASE

Like this:

New at Indie Gamer Chick

Indie Gamer Chick's Links

What’s Hot

Blogroll

Indie Gamer Chick on Facebook

Follow the Chick

Indie Gamer Chick RSS

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak aka The Flintstones II Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released October, 1993 Developed by Taito NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Share this:

Like this:

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper!Platform: Nintendo Entertainment SystemReleased December, 1992Directed by Isao MatonoDeveloped by NatsumePublished by TaitoNEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Share this:

Like this:

The Jetsons: Robot Panic Platform: Game Boy Released October, 1992 Designed by Isao Matono Developed by Taito NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Share this:

Like this:

The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Released December, 1991 Developed by Taito NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Share this:

Like this:

The Flintstones Platform: Sega Master System Released November 1991 (1988 on Home Computers) Adapted by Paul Marshall Published by Grandslam Entertainments Released Only in Europe NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Share this:

Like this:

Little Nemo: The Dream MasterPlatform: Nintendo Entertainment SystemReleased September, 1990Designed by Tatsuya MinamiProduced by Tokuro FujiwaraPublished by CapcomNEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Share this:

Like this:

NemoPlatform: ArcadeReleased November 20, 1990Directed by Yoshiki OkamotoPublished by CapcomNEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Share this:

Like this:

Spatteraka Sanrin San-chan, aka Tricycle-SanPlatform: ArcadeReleased in December, 1984Designed by Yoshiki KawasakiPublished by SegaNever Released in America* (See Caption Below)Coin-Op Never Re-Released

Share this:

Like this:

Super Pac-ManPlatform: ArcadeReleased September 26, 1982Designed by Toru IwataniPublished by NamcoArcade Archives ReleaseIncluded in Pac-Man Museum+Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Pac & Palaka Pac-Man & Chomp ChompPlatform: ArcadeReleased July, 1983Published by NamcoArcade Archives ReleaseIncluded in Pac-Man Museum+Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Share this:

Like this:

Pac-ManPlatform: ArcadeReleased May 22, 1980Designed by Toru IwataniPublished by NamcoArcade Archives ReleaseIncluded in Pac-Man Museum+Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Pac-Man PlusPlatform: ArcadeReleased March, 1983Published by Bally MidwayIncluded in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe CabinetNO MODERN NON-ARCADE1UP RELEASE

Share this:

Like this:

New at Indie Gamer Chick

Indie Gamer Chick's Links

What’s Hot

Blogroll

Follow the Chick

Indie Gamer Chick RSS

The Flintstones: Surprise at Dinosaur Peak
aka The Flintstones II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October, 1993
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1992
Directed by Isao Matono
Developed by Natsume
Published by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Jetsons: Robot Panic
Platform: Game Boy
Released October, 1992
Designed by Isao Matono
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1991
Developed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The Flintstones
Platform: Sega Master System
Released November 1991 (1988 on Home Computers)
Adapted by Paul Marshall
Published by Grandslam Entertainments
Released Only in Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Little Nemo: The Dream Master
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released September, 1990
Designed by Tatsuya Minami
Produced by Tokuro Fujiwara
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Nemo
Platform: Arcade
Released November 20, 1990
Directed by Yoshiki Okamoto
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Spatter
aka Sanrin San-chan, aka Tricycle-San
Platform: Arcade
Released in December, 1984
Designed by Yoshiki Kawasaki
Published by Sega
Never Released in America* (See Caption Below)
Coin-Op Never Re-Released

Super Pac-Man
Platform: Arcade
Released September 26, 1982
Designed by Toru Iwatani
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Pac & Pal
aka Pac-Man & Chomp Chomp
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1983
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Pac-Man
Platform: Arcade
Released May 22, 1980
Designed by Toru Iwatani
Published by Namco
Arcade Archives Release
Included in Pac-Man Museum+
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet

Pac-Man Plus
Platform: Arcade
Released March, 1983
Published by Bally Midway
Included in Arcade1Up’s Pac-Man Deluxe Cabinet
NO MODERN NON-ARCADE1UP RELEASE