What I’m Playing #25 – Definitive Review Mayhem

December 5, 2024 by 7 Comments

I haven’t updated in a bit because I’m neck-deep in two Definitive Reviews, and they take a lot of time and work. Definitive Reviews and “The Games They Couldn’t Include” have become my blog’s signature features, and that’s awesome because they’re so much fun to do. For all the time and effort they take, it means the world to me that people dig them to the degree they do. And I’ve got a couple more planned for next year. My Taito Milestones reviews have done well, so what if I give them “The Games They Couldn’t Include” treatment? The home ports of the thirty featured games, assuming there are home ports. And I just bought Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection. I’ve never played any of these except the arcade original (which I reviewed a terrible remake of) and Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap (which, again, I reviewed the remake of). The rest of the games? I’m going into them icy cold, and I’m so excited. This will not be the type of review I can do all at once, so I have no time window for when I’ll get it done. Six total games, but twenty-one total builds. It could take some time.

I’m going to try to have Power Rangers up by the end of next week. And no matter what, Taito Milestones 3: The Definitive Review is going to be posted on Monday. I wanted to do a ton of bonus reviews with it, but I’m crunching for time so it’s likely to only include one bonus review: for Parasol Stars, which I bought for this feature. It’s sold separately on every platform, and it has quality of life features that I’ll cover. Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review will be posted Christmas Eve and feature full reviews of all 18 included games plus a ton of games they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) include. Seriously, I’ve already completed the release plus all its games PLUS twenty reviews and counting, including some weird stuff.

AND, on top of all that stuff I have to work on, we just got the date for Williams Pinball Volume 8. It’s next week. We’ll try to have those reviews up ASAP. The tables are Banzai Run, Earthshaker, and Black Knight 2000. Folks, this could be the strongest three table collection in years. For Pinball Arcade, I rated Black Knight 2000 the 10th best table out of 100. Angela also rated it #10, as did Jordi. Oscar was #21, while crotchety old Dave was the lowest at #32. While I’m discussing the Pinball Arcade rankings, Earthshaker I had at #19 out of 100, while Angela was #11, with nobody else liking it as much as we did. We’re Pat Lawlor fangirls. Speaking of Lawlor, Banzai Run is the greatest novelty table of all time. For Pinball Arcade, I rated Banzai Run #21 out of 100. Jordi was the highest at #12 (and MASTERPIECE status) while Oscar was #17. We’re VERY excited for this collection.

So, what AM I playing?

Taito Milestones 3, no matter what, will be published this Monday. I’m four games away from completing it, and while I’m almost certainly not going to have time to include all the bonus reviews I wanted, I am going to try to have Parasol Stars be part of it. I’ve put a LOT work into this feature and tried to do co-op where possible. In the case of Bubble Bobble, it was single-handedly responsible for its YES! verdict. If you’re anxious for Tuesday’s release, hey, Taito Milestones 3 is going to win my Seal of Approval and probably be the Milestones release with the most YES! votes. But, is it really the best?

The current scoreboard. The * in Bubble Bobble’s YES! is because I gave it a NO! for solo play. If you have no playing partner, I don’t think Bubble Bobble is very good as a single player experience. With a partner? Yea, it’s for sure the stuff of legends.

“Look at me! I’m Wolverine!”

The feature will include rankings of all thirty games that have been part of Milestones 3, and so far. Until I played Cadash, the top three (Liquid Kids, Metal Black, and Darius II) were all from Taito Milestones 2, and the #4 ranked game (Elevator Action) was from Taito Milestones 1. As of this writing, I’m not even entirely sure Cadash is cracking that top three. That top three is a very solid collection of games. I don’t think Cadash has defeated Metal Black, so it comes down to Darius II. Despite being different genres, Darius II has all the same problems as Cadash: too many cheap shots. It gets old. It’ll be interesting to see where the remaining four games fall. Oh, and I made mincemeat out of Rainbow Islands, a game everyone told me was super hard. It ain’t super hard, as long as you have autofire and get the right items. But, I had fun. The only game I can’t say that for is Rastan Saga II. Yikes! We’ll see the final results on Monday. Until then, I have to beat Cadash for a fourth time.

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What I’m Playing #24

November 28, 2024 by 2 Comments

Your favorite Atari games, only played with.. um.. popsicles? Paint brushes? Dip switches in the correct position?

My friend Ryan got the Atari 2600+ to try out. I’m waiting for one with more modern console-like features, especially built-in media capture/upload and digital stores. Besides, I’m sort of over carts. I took a “no plastic pledge” at the start of this generation (IE Nintendo Switch), which I didn’t completely stick to, but it’s not my fault. Most of the physical media I own was given to me as gifts. You can’t wrap digital data for Christmas or birthdays. I have hundreds upon hundreds of Switch games, but only around fifty physical games, and they’re mostly Nintendo ones or retro collections. It’s the same story with PlayStation and Xbox. Loaded with games, but very little in the way of physical ones. And it’s made no difference in my life. I only beat most games once, then put them away and they sit, occupying a shelf or sitting in a box somewhere. Who needs that? I get that people are upset about physical media coming to an end, but it’s something we probably all should get used to, and I’m getting ahead of the curve. With that said, I do have a lot of Evercade carts, BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT! So, what AM I playing?

That dinosaur died, and 65,000,000 years later, a beverage company found the fossilized remains and the CEO said “this dinosaur died via orange crush. Hey, wait a second, let’s call our soft drink.. Dr. Pepper!” Where did you think that story was going?

“Where the hell is Tetris Forever?” It’s done, but I’m adding bonus content and there’s so much I want to get to that I’m making it my Christmas feature this year. Last year, LCD Games IX and LCD Games X – Game & Watch Gallery: The Definitive Review did great, and reviewing EVERY Game & Watch is going to be tough to top. Then, I realized that the Tetris thing I’m already working on is better. That’s fine, as I have another collection to do: Taito Milestones 3. There will be no delay in it. The review will go live December 9 (I originally had the release date as December 8, but it’s actually December 10), no matter what. Bonus reviews are limited by time. There are a couple, but I’m only revealing one right now. It’s Parasol Stars, which you can also buy on all consoles. And hey, this means one Definitive Review will have the first three Bubble Bobble games, which I think everyone will enjoy. Unlike the games of Taito Milestones 3, I’ve already played Parasol Stars all the way. It was a surprise highlight for me in the TurboGrafx-16 mini. I *really* liked it. So, here’s the Taito Milestones 3 lineup.

The lineup, and before yesterday, I had never played any of the games on there, or at least the arcade versions, except Bubble Bobble.

There’s a pretty strong chance my time with one game, Runark (or Growl as it’s called in Taito 3 since that’s the American name) will be extremely limited due to epilepsy concerns. No matter what, there will be a review in the feature for Runark even if I can’t write it. Unlike Tetris, most of these games are sold separately via Arcade Archives for $7.99 each. Therefore, like Taito 1 and 2, I won’t assign different values to games. A YES! is worth exactly $8 in value to Taito Milestones 3. Three of its games (Dead Connection, Thunder Fox, and Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga III) are exclusive to Taito Milestones 3. You cannot get them via Arcade Archives, but I’m keeping the value at $8 because they run off Arcade Archives’ interface. Based on my early sampling, my prediction is 5 YES!, 5 NO!, which is good enough for my Seal of Approval, but that is obviously not final. I’m not even really finished with the games I’ve written most of the review for. That’s because I haven’t gotten to co-op yet, and most of these are co-op. It’s Turkey Day in America, and to help my nieces and nephew, who will no doubt be bored waiting for dinner, I’m going to force them to play co-op with me ask politely for them to play co-op with me.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Hug your loved ones. Tell them you love them.

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Castlevania Chronicles (PlayStation Review)

November 25, 2024 by 6 Comments

Castlevania Chronicles
aka Akumajō Dracula
Platform: PlayStation
Released May 24, 2001
Directed by Masayuki Umasaki
Developed by Konami
NO MODERN RELEASE*

*Castlevania Chronicles appears to be fully delisted from all global PlayStation platforms, but I was unable to confirm this.

Hey, if the Simpsons can get away with Halloween in November, why can’t I?

I nearly did Castlevania Chronicles for Halloween, but I lost interest thinking it was little more than a remake of the first game. Hey, I have much love in my heart for the first Castlevania, but I’ve already reviewed it, so I chose to do Dracula X instead. Besides, I didn’t even have a PlayStation emulator up and running, so all I had was my Vita, wherever the hell it is. I bought Chronicles (or got it with PS+, I don’t remember which) but I don’t remember ever booting it up. Well, Chronicles has a lot in common with Dracula X. They’re both remakes of the original Castlevania. I know that Dracula X is supposed to technically be an alternative take on Rondo of Blood, but I mean.. come on. It’s a back-to-basics Castlevania, only with new level design and “fancy” graphics that are actually pretty damn bland. That sentence is about Dracula X, but it PERFECTLY describes Chronicles, except the bland part. This isn’t just a graphical overhaul along the lines of what Super Mario All-Stars did for the NES Mario games. This has new set pieces, new bosses, removes other bosses (or demotes them to one-off mini-bosses), and features seven entirely (or almost entirely) new levels. And that’s a real pain in my ass because I thought this would be a fun little quickie review to buy me time while I work on the bonus reviews for Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review and it turns out this is a whole new game that I’ve never played before. Well f*ck.

There’s something about fighting a normal Merlin-like wizard that feels completely out of place in a Castlevania game. This is like the type of boss you’d expect in one of the Game Boy Castlevanias, and in fact, this is apparently the same boss from Belmont’s Revenge. Hell, the thing in the center of the screen, which is just an attack by the wizard, should have been the boss.

Actually, it’s worse than that, because this game was first released in July of 1993 for the Sharp X68000 exclusively in Japan as Akumajō Dracula. Castlevania Chronicles is a remake/reimagining of a remake/reimagining of a game that’s then re-remade/re-reimagined a third time. You can play the “original” game from 1993, which I was certain was going to be a beat-for-beat remake of Castlevania 1. It’s not. Then you can play “Arrangement” which I figured would change up the level design. It doesn’t. Both games are, more or less, the same game, though Arrangement’s difficulty is rebalanced. The only other difference is your character’s appearance and the final boss’s appearance. They didn’t even change the backgrounds. Here’s nearly the same screenshot above, only it’s taken in the “normal” mode.

I played this version first, by the way.

Only a few special effects have been added. The giant bat you fight at the end of the first level plays identically, but now it has a spooky motion blur when it moves. I mean, sometimes, but not all the time. Oooooh. The arrange mode is a lot easier, too, though I’d be hard-pressed to explain why. The original game ate me for lunch so badly that I opted to play with save states instead of lives, but I ran through Arrange mode only losing one life the entire time. Maybe I was taking less damage, but if that’s the case, the effect is so subtle I didn’t instinctively notice. Apparently this mode has adjustable difficulty, but I have more Tetris to play and I really thought I was playing a remake of Castlevania 1 that I could knock out in a few hours, so I never experimented with the difficulty settings. Whatever was the default is what I played on. I know that I unlocked concept art when I finished, and there’s also an interview with producer Koji Igarashi, making this one of the first games with DVD-like extras (Digital Eclipse was doing this too with their Arcade’s Greatest Hits line).

If you think this is grainy, try imagining it on the Sega CD.

Only the first level and the final battle with Dracula resembles the original Castlevania, but besides those, only tiny chunks of stages show up. The “Infamous Hallway” leading to the Grim Reaper fight is here, only it takes place in front of a crumbling mural and other spooky paintings. Fun fact: the mural can be any of the four seasons, depending on the X68000’s internal clock. The original PlayStation doesn’t have a clock, but a code can change the date, which changes the mural. The section of the final level where you have to jump over pits while fighting and/or avoiding multiple giant bats that you fought as the first boss? That’s here. And.. actually, that’s about it. In fact, all the other levels feel completely different from the original game, and so do the bosses except Dracula. Medusa is no longer just a giant head. The mummies are gone completely. Frankenstein is a one-off set-piece mini-boss (I wanted to see how many hyphens I could get in a row). The Grim Reaper is a total push-over, and Dracula isn’t far behind him. Hell, the holy water isn’t the be-all, end-all to beat the game anymore. The boomerang is much more effective than it ever has been, as it does more damage than the whip, easily.

Calling “The Creature” a mini-boss is a little unfair. He might not have a life bar or the boss music, but he IS a boss that takes about the same hits (or maybe just a little less) than a normal boss. The timing of when the electrodes wake him up is totally off, though. You don’t see it come to life, but otherwise, this is functionally a mid-level boss battle that’s more exciting and intense than a couple of the real bosses, even including the Grim Reaper. There’s other mini-boss set-pieces. A stained-glass window shatters and comes to life, Young Sherlock-style (it’s so close that it’s a safe bet the producers of Chronicles were big fans of the film), and you fight a giant skeletal spider at one point.

The biggest problem with Chronicles is it has a massive tone problem. Yes, Castlevania is inherently silly, but what I think makes the original games work is they never say “oh, we know it’s ridiculous.” All those early games, including Super Castlevania IV, are totally sincere, so what should be an absurd farce actually does become genuinely scary at times. Castlevania never gets enough credit for that, but all that crap is out the window in Castlevania Chronicles. At one point you enter.. um.. what the hell is this?

Dracula’s day care center? I guess? A gigantic play room that sees you fighting dolls and toy soldiers. Dolls can be creepy, and the dolls in Chronicles are actually some of the tougher normal baddies to deal with in the entire game. But, stylistically, it didn’t work the way they dressed it up. It feels like a satire of Castlevania, but this isn’t the only part like that. In the second-to-last level, my jaw literally dropped when skeleton jump ropes appeared. Not just skeleton jump ropes, but DOUBLE DUTCH-STYLE skeleton jump ropes. Maybe these would have been fun and frisky set pieces for the early parts of the game, but they come in the last third of Chronicles, and they’re just too absurd to hold the mood Castlevania aims for. What was the pitch meeting the monsters made to Dracula for the jump rope? “Okay, we know that the Belmonts have defeated us for, like, century after century, but hear us out! We have a plan that will surely prevent this Simon character from ever making it to you. You know how nobody likes exercise, right? Well, what if..”

This was apparently not a fever dream I had. I double-checked and everything! This is real! That or I just uploaded a picture of a blank screen and my readers are checking with friends to make sure I’m okay.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think this game came out in the 2020s. It’s Castlevania based around subversion of expectations. Like you know the first piece of meat you find in the first Castlevania game? I gave that a whole paragraph in the Castlevania review because it was the perfect example of how to educate a player. They put a bat in front of it in order to assure players whipped the wall, revealing the meat and showing that Castlevania is a game with breakable walls. Well, that wall is back in Chronicles, only when you whip the wall, this happens now:

Since it’s hard to see them, yes, those are the jumping men. An endless stream of them, and that’s not an exaggeration. Tons of them keep spilling out until you leave the room.

That’s just a dick move extraordinaire right there. What’s frustrating about stuff like that is Castlevania Chronicles is, more often than not, pretty dang clever with its level design. This isn’t a half-hearted assortment of platforms and staircases, like Dracula X. Chronicles is solid from start to finish. I just beat it twice, and I could have kept going and challenged the time attack modes (unlocked after beating Arrangement) without being bored. It’s certainly not perfect. The difficulty curve is all over the place and some needless last pixel jumps somewhat spoil the fun. The new bosses are a little on the generic side, with the exception of the best werewolf fight in Castlevania. It takes place in front of a clock, and it actually throws the numbers off the face of the clock at you, then grabs the minute hand and uses it as a melee weapon when it’s down to its final ticks of health.

The remake of the original final battle with Dracula includes no real surprises, which was a bit disappointing. Hell, the final form doesn’t even have a different sprite in Arrangement, like the first does. However, I love how big the boss is, so I’ll let it slide.

I won’t say that Chronicles has a bad reputation, as contemporary reviews I think were more middling thanks to the timing of release. People wanted new in 2001, not old. The PlayStation 2 was already out by the time Chronicles was released, and the GameCube and Xbox were literally just about to come out, but Castlevania wasn’t so old that it qualified as “retro.” Had this come out today, in 2024, I honestly think it’d get 9s and 10s from critics. Instead of a “bad reputation” I’d argue that Chronicles has the WRONG reputation. It’s just not a remake, period, end of story. Try to imagine it as the REAL Castlevania II that happened just before Dracula’s Curse. On those terms, Chronicles is actually kind of the perfect sequel.

It also makes a lot of bone-headed decisions, like having the skeleton spider, a one-off set piece, be obscured by the status bar. We might reach the remake singularity, but screw it: someone really ought to remake this again, because this is easily the most underrated of the linear Castlevanias.

If this had an entirely different first level, they could have done exactly that, retconning Simon’s Quest out of existence and substituting Chronicles as “Castlevania II: Simon’s Chronicles” or something like that. There’s more levels (eight instead of six), better combat (you can whip downward and down-diagonal when you jump) and bigger set-pieces, but there’s still a direct line between the first game and this one. A subtly of evolution that makes it succeed in a way the Dracula X could never have hoped for. I wanted a little review to buy me time while I work on Tetris, and instead, I found one of my favorite Castlevania games. Chronicles isn’t just underrated, but CRIMINALLY underrated, and worth a look, even if it’s too silly for its own good.
Verdict: YES!

THE INDIE GAMER CHICK CASTLEVANIA REVIEW SERIES
 Castlevania (NES) Dracula’s Curse (NES) Adventure (GB) Belmont’s Revenge (GB)
Super Castlevania IV (SNES) Dracula X (SNES) Rondo of Blood (SuperCD²)
Chronicles (PSX) Circle of the Moon (GBA)  Kid Dracula (NES) Kid Dracula (GB)
ROM Hacks (NES) Konami Wai Wai World (NES) Wai Wai World 2: SOS!! Parsley Jō (NES)

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What I’m Playing #23: Sega Arcade System Problems and Alexey Pajitnov’s SEIZURES: THE GAME!

November 22, 2024 by 2 Comments

Hey everyone! I have two pieces of news. The first is I have Taito Milestones 3. I’m under embargo for another week and the game doesn’t come out until December 10, which is around the time I’ll be posting the review. The second news is that the main Tetris Forever review is done, edited, and ready. I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s tough to review 17 different Tetris games (plus a game of Go!), but I’m so happy I did. I discovered a lot about what makes Tetris work and what its shortcomings are. So, where’s the review? Well, it’s not done because I’m adding extra reviews to it. So, what AM I playing?

I’m pretty sure this game tried to murder me.

Among the bonus reviews in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review is the Sega Tetris Trilogy. It’s three arcade games licensed by Sega in the late 80s/early 90s that use the Tetris engine. And, today I found out that two of them, Tetris and Bloxeed, have variations depending on the hardware. So, dammit so much, I have to go back to the Sega Tetris.

Bloxeed on Sega System C hardware.

I thought I had already finished it. I have no idea if it does or doesn’t affect gameplay, but because I don’t know, I do have to play the variations before I publish. Also, from now on I’ll do my best to note what arcade hardware coin-ops are on in the headers for each review. In the case of Bloxeed, it’s both a Sega System 18 and a Sega System C release. It took me, oh, one second of seeing the gameplay to realize it’s not the same build.

Bloxeed on Sega System 18 hardware.

If you’re looking at the above screenshots and shrugging “so what?” trust me, I am too. But, I want to be thorough and FAIR, and that means I have to do all the hardware options. I really want this to be my best feature ever, and with these games, there’s just so many variations. Also, while it might be totally subtle like in the above pics, that’s only for that game. Other times? Not so subtle. This is Sega’s Arcade Tetris:

Sega System 16 Tetris

And this is.. Sega Arcade Tetris:

Sega System E Tetris

And literally as I was writing this piece, I realized that, yea, it’s going to make a difference. Goddammit, game developers of the 1980s: couldn’t you just put out one format like a normal company? And the funny thing is, this crap isn’t even the worst thing to happen to me today. In trying to be as comprehensive as possible, I discovered a little Famicom Disk System game called Knight Move designed by the man of the hour himself, Alexey Pajitnov. And it’s………. the single most strobe-heavy video game I’ve ever played. There’s nothing close. Not even the Jetsons for the NES. HUGE EPILEPSY WARNING for this video.

The idea is you have to hop around a grid using only the L-pattern of a chess knight. If you step on a tile three times, the tile breaks and you score points. You want to break as many tiles as possible before moving to the target piece, with the heart. Very clever idea and the game seems every bit as addictive and fun as Tetris. And it was even published by Nintendo! Why haven’t I heard of this? Maybe because nobody played it because that five second long strobe in the video above? It happens after every single round where you knock out even a single tile on the board. You know, the object of the game. Rounds of Knight Move (not to be confused with Knight Moves, a different game by Pajitnov) don’t take very long to finish, and depending on how you play, you could get a five second long ultra-violent strobe effect every 20 seconds or so, but probably closer to once or twice a minute. Unf*ckingreal, and everyone involved in this should be ashamed of themselves, even in 1990.

I’m still going to go forward with including the review of Knight Move in the feature, even though I can’t play it again. HOPEFULLY awareness of this game trickles to the current regime at Nintendo and they include it on Switch Online. When they do that, they tend to remove the strobe effects from NES games. I want a build of this I can play, because the two or three minutes I played before I figured out the object of Knight Move and then nearly had a seizure from it, I was having fun. I want to play this. I can take risks on some games, but Knight Move is totally out of the question. It’s just too intense with the flashing. What the f*ck were they thinking? Were they even thinking at all? Did they give themselves headaches and slap high fives?

The best thing I can say about it is that this reminds me how far we’ve come. This sh*t wouldn’t fly in the 2020s. I think even people who aren’t photosensitive are likely to get, at best, very annoyed by Knight Move. But, I think this is so intense a constant a strobe that it would affect more than people who typical consider themselves photosensitive. My father has never complained about strobe lights, loves walking through haunted house attractions (which tend to lean heavily on strobe lights), and in general is just unaffected by this stuff. He played Knight Move for ten minutes and complained that his eyes were killing him. And that kind of strobe effect is known to give people headaches. Nintendo absolutely should have put a stop to it. It’s too intense, even by the standards of the era, and it’s beyond the pale that it was allowed to be published in this state. What a shame. Completely ruins what seems like it could be a very fun game. So it’s going to be the angriest review in the feature, and the only review I’ve ever done for a game that I only played for two minutes. So that sucked.

Thankfully, I have seventy games that are either Tetris games or games inspired by Tetris to pivot to. For God’s sake, please don’t recommend more. I have a family that loves me.

An asterisk means the game is commercially available today, and if it is, I paid for a copy out of pocket.

Tetris (MSX) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Tetris (Arcade – Sega) – REVIEW (mostly) COMPLETE
Tetris (NES – Tengen) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Tetris (Game Boy)* – REVIEW COMPLETE
Flash Point (Arcade) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Blockout (Arcade)
Tetris (NES – Nintendo)* – REVIEW COMPLETE
Nintendo World Championships 1990 (NES) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Tetris (Wearable Game Watch) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Pipe Dream (Arcade)
Bloxeed (Arcade) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Klax (Arcade)
Columns (Arcade)
Hatris (Arcade)
Klax (Atari 2600)
Knight Move (Famicom Disk System) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Dr. Mario (NES)*
Klax (TurboGrafx-16)
Columns II (Arcade)*
Pipe Dream (NES)
Welltris (Arcade)
Hatris (TurboGrafx-16)
Puyo Puyo (Famicom Disk System)
Yoshi (NES)
Pyramid (NES)
Super Scope 6 (SNES)
Pipe Dream (Super Famicom)
Wordtris (SNES)
Yoshi’s Cookie (SNES)
Pac-Attack (SNES)*
Columns III (Sega Genesis)
BreakThru! (SNES)
Tetris 2 (SNES)
Wario’s Woods (SNES)
Tetris & Dr. Mario (SNES)
Dero~n Dero Dero (aka Tecmo Stackers, Arcade)*
Kirby’s Avalanche (aka Super Puyo Puyo, SNES)*
Super Bomberman: Panic Bomber W (Super Famicom)
Baku Baku Animal (Arcade)
Panic Bomber (Virtual Boy)
V-Tetris (Virtual Boy)
Magical Drop (Super Famicom)
Tetris Attack (aka Panel de Pon, SNES)*
Virtual Lab (Virtual Boy)
Tetris Plus (Arcade)
3D-Tetris (Virtual Boy)
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (Arcade, Re-Review)*
Cleopatra’s Fortune (Arcade)
Columns ’97 (Arcade)
Star Sweep (Arcade)
Tetrisphere (Nintendo 64) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Puyo Puyo Sun (Nintendo 64)
Tetris: The Grand Master (Arcade)*
Wrecking Crew ’98 (Super Famicom)*
Kirby’s Super Star Stacker (Super Famicom)*
Wetrix (Nintendo 64)
Tetris DX (Game Boy Color) – REVIEW COMPLETE
Magical Tetris Challenge (Nintendo 64)
Gunpey (Wonderswan)
New Tetris (Nintendo 64)
Tetris: The Grand Master 2 – The Absolute PLUS (Arcade)*
Pokemon Puzzle League (Nintendo 64)*
Tetris Worlds (Game Boy Advance)
Rampage Puzzle Attack (Game Boy Advance)
Columns Crown (Game Boy Advance)
Tetris Advance (Game Boy Advance)
Meteos (Nintendo DS)
Hexic HD (Xbox 360)
Tetris DS (Nintendo DS)
Lumines Remastered (Played on Xbox Series X)*

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What I’m Playing #22 – The Famicom Tetris Review

November 18, 2024 by 2 Comments

It was a 58 year old man whose best days were decades behind him against a 27 year old in the prime of his athletic life. What did people think would happen? I was born in 1989, and so by the time I was watching and remembering boxing, I had to go off my dad’s word that Mike Tyson was a generational talent. I never got to see it until years after the fact. My father is a huge boxing fan who ordered all the fights on pay-per-view, and he was HYPED for Tyson/Holyfield. As a young child, I thought Tyson seemed like much ado about nothing. I was a couple weeks away from turning 8 years old when the infamous “Bite Fight” against Evander Holyfield happened. I liked Holyfield as a kid. Him and Lennox Lewis were my favorites. I got hooked on boxing during the original Tyson/Holyfield fight, which did live up to the hype and was an exciting fight, at least for a 7 year old. The whole time my dad was saying “it’s too bad this didn’t happen in 1990!” But it didn’t, and even by 1997, almost everything about Mike Tyson that made him a boxing phenom was already gone. He was a good, but not great, tactician with a good chin, but he didn’t have the explosiveness that made him famous to begin with. I missed that stage of his career entirely. So, even as a kid, I didn’t “get” Tyson. To me, he was just another cooked boxer, like George Foreman.

I didn’t see the guy who was annihilating guys in the first round. I didn’t see the guy who won his first 37 matches. There’s a reason why the Buster Douglas loss was so shocking. It was unfathomable a guy on his level would lose to a guy on Douglas’ level. It’s not one of those situations where people look back on and say “well, it was inevitable.” It feels like if you replayed reality 100,000 times, we live in the one and only reality where Douglas actually won. If you need proof that it didn’t feel inevitable, just remember that Tyson himself beat a guy who was 21 – 0 to become Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion, and that, by all accounts, had an inevitability about it. Not Tyson, though. He was legit, and so amazing as a boxer that I don’t think the sport ever recovered from him. Tyson was one of those athletes who, when it was over, it was REALLY over. He had matches that ended on stoppages after committing fouls. He was disqualified after the fact against Andrew Golta for failing a drug test. No, not steroids. Weed. Which is only a performance enhancing drug if the winner gets a bowl full of cookie dough. A month before I turned 16, Tyson had his final bout against a guy named Kevin McBride. McBride was seemingly chosen because he was exactly the type of journeyman Tyson had plowed through in the twenty or so fights he had before he became the world heavyweight champion. It’s the type of match an aging boxer takes as a confidence booster, except that’s not what happened. McBride completely tuned Tyson, who didn’t just quit the match in the sixth round, but retired from boxing altogether. In the 19 years that followed, apparently people forgot that, in his final professional match, Tyson was literally beaten into an on-the-spot retirement by a nobody.

Anyone who was excited to see Mike Tyson fight nearly twenty years after he retired apparently forgot that everything after 1997 from Mike Tyson was just kind of sad. I know, because that was the only version of Mike Tyson I ever got to see. Having now found and watched his old fights, I get it now. There has never been a combination of speed and power like Mike Tyson. As a fighter, he was a one-off. Most people don’t know this, but there’s a reason why in Mike’s Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, for the first minute and a half of the Tyson match, one punch knocks you down. Because Tyson legitimately did knock down fighters with one punch in multiple bouts in 1985 and 1986. He even won a few of those matches with one punch! Imagine paying good money to see a match that lasted one round, and everyone walks away happy. That would never happen now, but that was Tyson early in his career. Why would people be happy to see a one round fight? Because everyone left with the impression that they had seen a type of fighter they would never see again, and they were right. Being cooked with no “post-prime” isn’t exclusive to boxing. Some of my favorite basketball players were that way. Steve Nash, Allen Iverson, Boogie Cousins, Dwight Howard, (some might disagree with me on that one) and most recently Derrick Rose, when it was over, it WAS OVER. They might have still been technically playing, but what stuck around was a shell that made you wish they’d turn back the clock for one vintage performance that would never come. Sports are cruel like that. In a way, I’m happy Netflix didn’t cooperate on Friday. If a vintage Tyson performance never happened when I was 8, why would I expect it at 35?

So, what AM I playing? Like you even need to ask. Here’s a preview of the upcoming Tetris Forever review: the full review of the Famicom version of Tetris. This is directly from the feature.

Tetris
aka “Famicom Tetris”
Platform: Famicom
Released December 22, 1988
Programmed by Bob Rutherford
Developed by Bullet-Proof Software
Never Released Outside of Japan

Dynamic scoring! WOOO! And.. lives? What the f*ck?

The first ever console version of Tetris is also one of the weirdest builds of Tetris I’ve ever played. First thing’s first: I love how Digital Eclipse felt compelled to put a warning that the controls are so stupid that players will want to change them. It doesn’t say it like that, but it’s not wrong. In this Tetris, pressing DOWN rotates the blocks, while the buttons do hard drops. I assume they did it this way because people hit DOWN accidentally. I sure have, but I’d prefer doing that sometimes to how the controls are set up. It’s worse because the only remapping is via the emulator itself, and while it is an option, remember that changing what button is the hard drop means that new button, presumably DOWN, is now “enter” for the menus, and now you can only scroll one way when you enter your name. So awkward, but the weirdness of Famicom Tetris is just getting started.

Dad called this “Christmas Tetris” because of the color scheme.

So yes, dynamic scoring is here and players FINALLY have some measure of risk/reward to deal with instead of just stacking for efficiency. But, there’s a catch: this Tetris is played in 25 line intervals. There’s no uninterrupted marathon mode, and also I might have a concussion for banging my head on the desk. It’s honestly incredible how many versions of this game needed to happen before the Tetris we all love emerged. I’m six games into this feature, five of which are Tetris games, and I’ve still not reached a Tetris that feels like my Tetris. And the weirdness keeps coming in the form of lives. You get to fail three times, and when you die, you still get all the points you earned for this 25-line interval, but then you restart with a new 25 line target. You also don’t get to know how well you’re doing until the breaks, as the score isn’t tallied until you die or reach 25 lines. It’s like Game Boy Tetris’ B-Mode as a solo game.

My motto of “find the fun” took a little longer with Famicom Tetris. The 25 line or bust gameplay engine put up a fight. But then I realized, screw it, embrace it by jacking up the handicap to the max. And lo, the fun was found.

Not strange enough for you? If you play with handicap and clear 25 lines, whatever progress you’ve made is retained for the next 25 line batch. But if you die, you start from scratch with a fresh pile of garbage blocks on the playfield. I don’t recommend playing on level 0, as it’s just not fun. Even if you use handicap, start on at least level 5 for speed. This is one of the rare Tetris games where the garbage blocks are the best part of the game. Without a marathon and a much slower sense of progression, challenging tall stacks of garbage is the best thing Famicom Tetris has going for it. What stood out to me the most about Famicom Tetris is how everyone involved still had no idea what they had with Tetris. I appreciate that they realized what they were doing, and what Spectrum Holobyte had done, was certainly not maximizing its potential. This was a big step, and while they had a ways to go, I did manage to “find the fun” by treating this as a hybrid of a logic puzzler and Tetris. BUT, if you just hate the Game Boy Tetris’ B-Mode, feel free to imagine this verdict flipped.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in Value added to Tetris Forever

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What I’m Playing #21 – Henk Rogers and The Hair of Extreme Distraction

November 14, 2024 by 2 Comments

Banzai Run has been confirmed as the next Williams table for Pinball FX. With this announcement, every Pat Lawlor table from the arcade era of pinball is now in Pinball FX. There’s still one table left to be announced, and the only hint is it’s from 1989. No other hints were given and if I were to spoil it, Zen Studios would no doubt call the POLICE on me, but that’s fine, hopefully we don’t have to wait 2000 years for the PARTY (monsters) to start. I know I’m doing a scattershot of potential table teases. What can I say? I’m a BAD CAT. So, what am I playing?

GODDAMNIT LET ME YANK THAT F*CKING THING OUT!

Oh, for the want of a pair of tweezers. I’m totally digging Tetris Forever except for one hugely distracting lip hair on Henk Rogers. It’s like gravity reversed on his face, but only for one specific hair follicle. I’m told a patch is coming to fix this, and they hired the same guys who took out Superman’s mustache in the Justice League movie so you know that no expense is being spared.

“Tell me Henk.. do you tweeze? Well you will!”

Otherwise, yea, Tetris Forever is fantastic. Mostly. The lack of English ROM translations is a pain in the ass, especially for the included game of Go by Bullet-Proof Software. It’s called Igo: Kyū Roban Taikyoku, and I hope you know how to play Go and/or read fluent Japanese. If neither of those apply to you, this is not going to help you learn the game.

It’s hard to say I’m disappointed because there’s 18 games, but this is one of those bad habits I don’t want Digital Eclipse/Atari to get too deeply into. Up to this point, language barriers haven’t factored into any of the games in the Gold Master Series. That’s certainly not the case with Igo: Kyū Roban Taikyoku. Even a totally unnecessary +1 to a game collection becomes a drag on the whole package if it feels like the extra effort wasn’t there. Part of me wonders if the language barrier is why Black Onyx wasn’t included. I’m grateful it wasn’t. The time I could spend doing a JRPG I can instead put towards the growing list of bonus reviews I’m including. So, I’m going to go until this Tuesday, a week after Tetris Forever was released. If I have more time, more bonus games will be added. Remember, I can’t include EVERY version of Tetris, including your favorites. In addition to the eighteen games included Tetris Forever, all of which get a full review, here are the twelve bonus reviews included in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review.

Tetris
Platform: Arcade
Released December, 1988
Developed by Sega
NO MODERN RE-RELEASE*
*The version in the Genesis Mini doesn’t count.

Tetris
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released May, 1989
Designed by Ed Logg
Developed by Tengen (Atari Games)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Tetris
Platform: Game Boy
Released June 14, 1989
Designed by Masao Yamamoto
Developed by Nintendo
Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)

Tetris
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1989
Developed by Nintendo
Included with Nintendo Online Subscription (Standard)

Hatris
Platform: PC Engine
Released May 24, 1991
Developed by Micro Cabin
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Tetris 2
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released July 8, 1994
Directed by Masao Yamamoto & Hitoshi Yamagami
Developed by Tose
Published by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Tetris & Dr. Mario
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December 30, 1994
Developed by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

V-Tetris
Platform: Virtual Boy
Released August 25, 1995
Directed by Norifumi Hara
Developed by Locomotive
Published by Bullet-Proof Software
Never Released Outside of Japan
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

3D-Tetris
Platform: Virtual Boy
Released March 22, 1996
Developed by T&E Soft
Published by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Tetrisphere
Platform: Nintendo 64
Released August 11, 1997
Designed by Steve Shatford
Developed by H2O Entertainment
Published by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Magical Tetris Challenge
Platform: Nintendo 64
Released November 20, 1998
Directed by Hidemaro Fujibayashi
Published by Capcom
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Hexic HD
Platform: Xbox 360
Released November 22, 2005
Designed by Alexey Pajitnov
Published by Microsoft

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What I’m Playing #20 – Pit…..stop?

November 12, 2024 by Leave a comment

Hey everyone. It’s Tetris Day and, shortly, Tetris Forever will be downloading on my Nintendo Switch. I’m going to go ahead and prioritize that, and walk away from Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. I threw on the Sega CD version and I was just so bored I didn’t know what to do with myself. I think I’d rather spend my time reading old issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Which I could do if I backed this Kickstarter. Basically a coffee table book dedicated to what was the best gaming magazine for most of my childhood, with one brief window where the Official Dreamcast Magazine was my fav. What a great idea this is, and the best part is, it’ll lead to a way to read all 260+ issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly.

The next Williams table in Pinball FX’s Williams 8 pack will be announced on Thursday. You’ll want to RUN, not walk, to this video to watch it. Even if that run is vertical. So, what AM I playing?

I really did want to give this the old college try but Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure is so dang boring. It feels like it’s modeled after the Virgin Interactive Disney games, right down to having an animation studio (in this case, the ones behind FernGully, a movie that bored the living hell out of me as a child) do the graphics. It looks so good. In fact, I think this looks better than a lot of the Virgin Disney stuff. Except there’s a lot of visibility problems. The enemies are too subtle, often stay out of sight until you’re close by, and I just was constantly blinking and taking damage without realizing what was on top of me. The platforming has a parkour quality about it, but it’s just not fun, you know? So, instead, I’m going to jump straight to Tetris Forever and pour myself into it so the review can be up by this weekend. Sound good?

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What I’m Playing #19 – (I)REM Sleep(er Hits?)

November 10, 2024 by 2 Comments

You try coming up with fun names for these posts. The time for Tetris Forever is almost here, but I have enough time to squeeze in one more game, and I’m struggling to pick it. I can tell you that, right now, it won’t be Irem Collection 2. I was generously offered a review code by ININ, but I don’t have the time for it. So, here’s what I’ll do instead: I just bought both collections for Switch instead of taking a review code. They look hella fun, and at some point in 2025, I’ll catch up to them and do both. Sound good? No? Well, there’s going to be five of these bad boys total. So far, only the first two have been released. I will do the whole collection in 2025. All five volumes. We cool? Cool.

So, what AM I playing? I honestly don’t know. Nothing right now. Could be Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear for the Game Boy. Apparently I have played it, but I don’t remember a thing about it. Not a lick. Wizards & Warriors did okay at IGC, and the brand new Ironsword review is doing fine. Another option is the final game of the NES trilogy. I did sample it a bit and..

Wizards & Warriors III - Kuros...Visions of Power (USA)-241110-065407

THE GUY IN THAT PICTURE IS GETTING HIT BY MY SWORD! LOOK HOW FAR AWAY HE IS! HO..LY.. SH*T!

Okay, maybe I should hit the randomizer. Let’s do that. Ooh, this game came up just a few weeks ago and I re-rolled. I won’t re-roll this time. Twice in a month’s span, when the pool is nearly a thousand games? Sounds like fate to me. Let’s do it!

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Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (NES Review)

November 9, 2024 by 5 Comments

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1989
Designed by Ste Pickford & Steve Hughes
Developed by Zippo Games via Rare Ltd.
Published by Acclaim
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Oh, thank heavens that all the good stuff was removed from the first game and all the crap stuff was left in, like sliding-based punishments for platforming f*ck-ups. I was worried this wasn’t a sequel!

Look, I can’t argue that Wizards & Warriors was some kind of amazing platforming adventure. It’s probably one of the worst games I’ve ever given a YES! too. The main criticism was as follows: “Most damning of all is that Wizards & Warriors has one of the most flimsy and unimpactful primary weapons in the history of gaming. A sword so weak that it’s genuinely embarrassing.” That returns for the sequel, and this time, there’s no permanent boomerang-like weapon to supplement it. I suspected the “Dagger of Throwing” single-handedly saved Wizards & Warriors from being flushed into the sewers of gaming history, and Ironsword confirmed that I was mostly right. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if that dagger is a big reason why Ironsword sold well enough that it got yet another sequel. The third game, Kuros: Visions of Power was the end of the franchise. I honestly wonder if people who bought Ironsword felt like they got ripped-off when the best part of the first game wasn’t in the second and “noped” out of the franchise for good. Because Ironsword, a game with SWORD right in the title, has the worst sword combat I’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s awful.

The only attack resembling one with any reach is to duck and attack. This allows you to poke at enemies like you’re checking to see if they twitch. This is the only range you get for at least half of every level.

I’d call this “flail-based combat” but that seems far too generous. Flailing implies some sort of striking attack, but almost all your moves stay close within the character sprite box itself. Because of the complete lack of range, your sword is little more than a glorified shield that you have to just wait for enemies to run into. It really, really doesn’t help that most enemies are optimized to work around the sword by circling around you and coming in at you from below, which there’s really no way to defend against. As the game progresses, you can pick up shields and helmets that I assume shrink your collision box, but even late in the game there were enemies that could take an entire life bar down to a sliver or worse from a single hit. But even in instances where they’re coming right at you in a straight line, swinging the sword is ineffective, and there’s never any OOMPH when you actually do successfully land a blow. Oh my God, I figured out the word I’m looking for! “Shoo.” That’s it! Ironsword is shooing-based combat! “Shoo, get away from me, bat! I’m only wearing F*CKING ARMOR!” And by the way, how the hell does a bat flying into a knight’s armored knee do a one shot kill?!

I knew Ironsword was heading to the dump when the second area in the game was a cloud-based trampoline park where you have to hop around to explore. That’s a mid-to-late game trope, not something you can pull out as early as Ironsword does.

By the way, you do get projectiles, but how Ironsword does it is kind of strange. The first four game worlds are divided into two areas, the second of which will always contain a spell that you need to shoot the boss with. Once you have the spell, the projectile can’t be turned off. If you want to use your sword to defend yourself against basic enemies and your magic meter is anywhere but empty, you HAVE to shoot them and waste what can be a precious resource. Disappointingly, none of the four magic spells you pick up feel themed to the stages. They’re just four different types of basic video game peashooters, and you lose them as soon as you beat the boss. There’s apparently a way to trick the game into keeping them, but I never pulled it off, and I was trying to! I also didn’t really care for the projectiles because it didn’t feel like it fit the vibe the game was going for. They’re guns, more or less. This is Wizards & Warriors, right? It doesn’t FEEL like magic. The air one shoots in front of you. The fire one is lobbed in a way that reminded me of a grenade. The best one was probably that fire one, but only because the boss was built specifically for it. I would normally compliment that, but it was hard to take it seriously when it looks like something drawn by a 6 year old with MS Paint.

(blinks) Seriously?

The best thing I can say about Ironsword is that the exploration is fine. The emphasis is kept squarely on locating stuff and plotting your jumps to avoid slopes that cause you to slide and lose progress. In the first half of each world, you have to find some kind of golden doodad to give to an enormous animal, who will give you passage to the second half of the world where the attack spell used to beat the boss is. Along the way, you can find (and buy) keys to open chests, some of which have treasure and some of which have single-use spells that can give you temporary buffs or alternative means of slaying baddies. There’s also permanent upgrades to your sword, shield, and helmet (along with a single movement upgrade that you find in the final level).

This is in the shop in level 2-1. You get what sure seemed to me like the most effective melee weapon in the game barely one-fifth of the way into Ironsword, which means it’s not exciting to find swords afterwards.

The way the upgrades to the sword were scaled didn’t work because the best weapon can be gotten in the first part of the second level. I got this lance-looking thing in from the shop above, the Diamond Sword, that sure felt more effective than the shorter-range swords. The most effective “attack” in the game is jumping into things because, like the first game, you stiffen-up when you jump and hold the sword upright, like you’re skewering enemies. Don’t mistake this for feeling good. It’s got no weight or OOMPH at all. Again, the sword is a glorified shield itself. That’s why having a lance that extends beyond the sprite itself is especially valuable because the best you can hope for is to position yourself in a way where enemies fly into it without having to press the attack button. Attacking is more likely to expose you to damage than sitting still. By the way, I was crushed when I saw that I’d assembled the titular Ironsword after beating the fourth boss, because it meant I had lost the more effective diamond sword. Sure, the Ironsword has the permanent ability to fire, but it was the final level and enemies had an easier time getting through my defenses with the Ironsword than they did the Diamond Sword. What the ever-loving hell were they thinking?

It looks SO FUN in screenshots, but Ironsword isn’t even a tiny bit fun.

Anything else I can say about Ironsword is immediately overridden by how historically terrible the combat is. While the jumping physics and level design, along with all the sliding, might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it does work. But, the combat is the worst, so who cares? The bosses do feel.. large, I guess. I mean, the game ends with you fighting the four LOGOS of the bosses (one at a time, mind you), which are smaller than your sprite, and then the game just ends after you beat the last one. It’s one of the worst last bosses I’ve seen, but the other four bosses are alright, I guess. At least you can shoot them. Too bad the combat along the way is the worst. And the game looks gorgeous, with some of the best sprite work on NES. Who cares though, because the combat is the absolute worst!

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And hey, no grinding-up gems to get past toll booths this time. Crying shame that the combat is the worst. Also, and people might disagree, but I think the color-coded keys and treasure chests from the first game were that game’s strongest concepts. They just worked for me and made for an effective primary driver for the entire game, but that’s COMPLETELY gone in the sequel. Doors never require keys, keys only come in one flavor, and keys are ONLY used on chests. There’s no permanent secondary items, an aspect of Wizards & Warriors that made it so weirdly compelling, like the Boots of Force or Feather of Featherfall. How the hell did they maintain the emphasis on exploration while surgically excising almost every exploration element from the original? It’d be an impressive feat if Ironsword wasn’t so f*cking horrendous.

If you’re low on money, you can gamble. I most certainly did not cheat using save states and rewind at any point in this review to build up my loot and make shopping go quicker. Why would you think that? DAMN YOUR ACCUSING EYES!

Everything comes back to the combat, and the ultimate deal breaker was how inconsistent and awful your defensive collision detection is. Ironsword is probably one of the most fascinating games to experience with modern emulation tools, especially rewind. Because there was never any consistency to when I did or didn’t take damage. Enemies that scored one-shot kills in one instance took only a tiny sliver of health the next time from nearly the same angle. HUH? This was constant throughout Ironsword, to the point that I started laughing hysterically at it. It reduces the defensive game of Ironsword into something that feels like real-time Dungeons & Dragons-like probability. Sometimes enemies would hit me in the feet and die, and other times I’d start to blink from damage. WEIRD! But it makes Ironsword a game where you can’t properly gauge risk when you’re dealing with enemies. I assume all this was intentional, but I’m not sure why anyone would make a game that plays like Wizards & Warriors does have combat like this, because it doesn’t make for a fun game!  It’s all frustration and no reward.

Believe it or not, that little smiley face is one of the last bosses. I told you that you’re fighting logos!

I’m not sure what the point of Ironsword was. It seems that almost everything that made Wizards & Warriors ultimately work was dropped from the sequel. Wizards & Warriors is sloppy as all hell too, but it had moxie, for lack of a better term. Like the Dagger of Throwing, the Potion of Levitation, and the Feather of Feathered Feathery Feathers were there because the designers were bound and determined to take the abject disaster of a game they built and shove it, kicking and screaming, over the finish line of decency by sheer force of will. That’s ALL gone from Ironsword. It’s everything bad about Wizards & Warriors with none of the good. It’s fascinating! Like someone saw the sales figures of the first game and wanted to convince themselves that the core swordplay and jumping physics were the real reason for the success and not everything else that had to built around that sh*t to make it worthwhile. I’ve never seen a sequel like Ironsword, and that’s a statement that everyone should celebrate.
Verdict: NO!
And yes, I can totally believe it’s not butter. It’s margarine. I know what margarine tastes like.

Great job, Timmy. Keep up the good work.

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What I’m Playing Right Now #18 – Colecovision: The Awesome Console That Can’t Have a Collection

November 5, 2024 by 1 Comment

Need a giggle? Just imagine a person waking up from a coma since 2015. It kind of is funny to think about. Well, assuming they don’t have severe brain damage. So, what AM I playing?

COLECO-ENVISION

I solemnly swear I’ll never do another review like the Campaign ’84 review again. Yea, that crossed the line from “silly” to “stupid” and whatever else you think about me, I learn from my mistakes. BUT, there was something positive that came out of that review. It gave me a chance to glance at the Colecovision library, which I haven’t done a lot at IGC. Actually, before Campaign ’84, I’d done exactly one game, and it never even got released. It was Pac-Man, which you can read in Pac-Man Museum: The Games They Couldn’t (or Wouldn’t) Include. It got a YES!, so after today, Colecovision is batting .500. The Yankees are looking to sign it, but it’ll probably do time in the minor leagues first. You don’t want to rush these things.

This is my new favorite screenshot. Of all time.

Anyway, Coleco, and WHOA, what a library! Of course, it’s a problematic library for a modern collection like Atari 50. See, almost every major game on Colecovision is a licensed game, in some form or another, but mostly arcade games. That was Coleco’s business model. Coleco spent most of their budget securing Donkey Kong, 1981’s hottest arcade game. In fact, Warner Bros. brass was shocked by Ray Kassar for declining to simply match Coleco’s $2 a cart bid (some sources say $1.40, like the Wikipedia page, but the Colecovision page says $2, and I’d always heard it as $2). Kassar refused, claiming $2 a cart would screw up their margins. It’s a little more complicated than that, since Coleco had a side business that Atari didn’t in those little arcade table tops like the one I reviewed in LCD Games IX, which net Nintendo an additional $1 per unit. Still, it was unfathomable Atari refused to match the offer. The Warner suits even told him something to the effect of, in another year, he’d sell his soul for a deal that good. It gets even worse when you consider that anyone in their right mind would have known that, without Donkey Kong, Colecovision was dead on arrival no matter how good the rest of the software was. This isn’t a knock on the rest of the library. It’s a GREAT library, but there’s nothing on the level of Donkey Kong in terms of cultural impact. It was so desirable people would pay good money JUST to play a convincing home port of it. A fact of life Atari knew the value of already from Space Invaders. It’s absolutely unreal Atari didn’t get Donkey Kong.

And Donkey Kong on Colecovision is solid. The playfield is reversed which is weird, but the gameplay is the same. The worst aspect is that a lot of the personality is missing. Like the barrels don’t explode with a satisfying sound effect like they do in the arcade. Killing a barrel in the Coleco version makes a noise similar to picking up a coin in Super Mario Bros. But, it’s fine. Donkey Kong CV isn’t an amazing game, but it is convincing. That mattered a lot more in the early 80s than it does today.

Coleco was ALL-IN on Donkey Kong, and with the remainder of their war chest, they secured high quality games with cult followings. Stuff like two favorites of mine: Lady Bug and Mouse Trap. These are GREAT GAMES that Atari had the path to secure and didn’t. Colecovision owners certainly had a wealth of great software. But, the problem is, that doesn’t transition well to a retro collection today, in the 2020s. Colecovision is a console entirely defined by other people’s games, like no console before or since. I bet the average gaming fan can’t name a single unlicensed Colecovision game. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. Coleco went where the market was at the time, which was arcade ports. But, they weren’t making arcade games themselves, so even their first-party games were essentially third-party games. That creates a problem for access NOW. Below are six games that have a pretty good chance of getting a YES! from me: Pitfall!, Popeye, Cabbage Patch Kids, Mr. Do!, Burgertime, and Carnival. Each of those six games are owned today by a different company.

Pitfall (Rights: Activision)
Popeye (Rights: Nintendo)
Cabbage Patch Kids (Rights: Konami & Jakks Pacific)
Burgertime (Rights: G-Mode)
Carnival (Rights: Sega)
Mr. Do! (Rights: Saudi Arabian Misk Foundation)

And that likely will keep Coleco forever out of reach. OR WILL IT? There IS a way Digital Eclipse could do a Gold Master Series for it. It just wouldn’t look like a normal Gold Master Series release. It would require selling a base that contains the documentary without any games at all. Just the raw documentary/history/behind the scenes feature, however many chapters that is. You could sell it as low as $9.99 to $19.99, depending on if you can include a teeny tiny handful of games. Probably no more than five, and they’d have to be ones that Atari already owns. The real magic happens when you sell the licensed games at $0.99 to $1.99 a pop as DLC. Or, sell entire chunks of games, IE every Konami port comes in its own $9.99 pack. Why not? People REMEMBER the Colecovision. Like most classic platforms, it has a passionate fanbase that still develops new content to this day for it. While it almost certainly has no path towards the type of compilation the platform deserves, one that can put money in every rights holder’s pocket isn’t out of the question. It would suck to do it that way, but someone has to test the waters on this model anyway. Might as well be you, Digital Eclipse/Atari.

But, I’m not doing Coleco right now. I think that library will mostly show up when I look at ports of popular games. Expect it to be a “Games They Couldn’t (or Wouldn’t) Include” staple.

IRON-BORED

“WEEEEEEEE!”

Yep, that’s Fabio.

I really am just treading water until Tetris Forever, Taito Milestones 3, and Power Rangers hit. If you see a slowdown in reviews soon, that’s why. I’ll be posting at least daily updates on those reviews when I start them, but until then, I hit the randomizer using only my review pool, and it spit out the sequel to Wizards & Warriors. I gave W&W a YES!, but very barely so. If that game hadn’t had the boomerang-like throwing knife, I don’t think I would have liked it. Luckily.. or unluckily, more than likely, I can now directly test that theory. That’s because the sequel, Ironsword, has none of that. You do get projectiles unique to each stage which are used specifically to fight bosses, but you get limited ammo. In fact, one of the objects of the game is to build up enough ammo to beat the boss. Otherwise, this is a sword & sorcery game where your hero has almost no attack range and level design based around leaps of faith. This isn’t going to be pretty, folks.

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