Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Retro Game Review | Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999)

A long, long time ago I wrote an article about my favourite retro games to play around the holidays and one of the games I featured was Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Why? Honestly, there’s no good reason other than the fact that I first played it around Christmas of 1999. I didn’t look for it under the tree or pine over it in gaming magazines that year or anything. I just went to the rental store for something to play on a random December weekend, snagged a copy of Soul Reaver for the PlayStation because the graphics looked cool, and that’s it!

Many years later I would finally pickup a copy of my very own, but for the PC, and since then I install it during my Christmas break and at least play a few hours, if only to try and relive those memories for a little while.

It occurred to me that I had never really reviewed or talked about the game except to say that I liked playing it by Christmas light every few years, so I thought that might be a fun article to post!

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is the sequel to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, which released on the Sony PlayStation in 1996 and on the PC the following year. It was developed by Silicon Knights, who also did Eternal Darkness on the GameCube, and published by Crystal Dynamics, most notable for developing Tomb Raider.

Blood Omen was a top-down action RPG, which featured the titlular character Kain, a nobleman who has been killed and turned into a vampire. The story follows Kain as he seeks revenge for his affliction by destroying the nine pillars of Nosgoth – the fictional world the Legacy of Kain games are set in – only to find himself reveling in his new vampiric evolution.

The game was popular enough, mostly because of its adult theme and violence, all of which garnered it a sequel. Crystal Dynamics began development of “Legacy of Kain 2” immediately after the release of Blood Omen, but legal woes with Silicon Knights caused delays in the release and forced Crystal Dynamics to remove certain features and elements from the game. Ultimately, they broke through the legal issues and were able to publish Soul Reaver in the summer of ’99.

Despite having some of the game elements disabled, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a fully-featured title set many years after the events of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. SPOILER ALERT! Kain, after defeating eight of the nine pillars’ guardians, came to the realization that he was the ninth guardian. In order to restore Nosgoth, Kain had to sacrifice himself, but would not. Instead Nosgoth began a slow decline into ruin, while Kain and his vampire brood continued to flourish and evolve. One of his most trusted lieutenants is Raziel, the main character of Soul Reaver.

In an amazing opening cutscene you get some of this backgroud story and witness Kain’s jealousy and aggression when Raziel evolves and grows wings – a gift Kain himself has not yet been given. In a fit of rage, Kain destroys Raziel’s wings and throws him into a swirling vortex to toil in agony for all eternity.

1500 years later, the Elder God of Nosgoth resurrects Raziel as a Wraith – a creature of the “spirit realm”, which can devour the souls of the dead. He gives Raziel the choice to hunt down and kill Kain, both out of vengeance and to restore the pillars of Nosgoth, ending the world’s decay. Thus, he names Raziel his Soul Reaver – which is a reference to the name of Kain’s sword – and sets him loose on the dying lands with his new purpose.

Sounds incredible, right! Well, it is. The story of the Legacy of Kain games is absolutely top tier. The gameplay would also become a very important part of what the series would become and that starts here, with Soul Reaver.

Unlike Blood Omen, which was top-down, Soul Reaver is in full 3D. It’s an action game with puzzle aspects. You can move Raziel through the 3D environment of both the spirit realm and Nosgoth, which adds extra depth to all the environments of the game as they can typically be navigated in both dimensions.

At its core, the game is really a Metroidvania. I can sense a lot of “gamers” just picked up their torches and took to the comment section to ream me out!

Metroidvania is a portmanteau of the titles Metroid and Castlevania, both known for their non-linear action adventure titles, where the player is placed in an “open world” of sorts – not just moving left to right through stages – but traversing back and forth through a sustained environment, unlocking new areas by getting new abilities or finding keys.

At first Raziel can really only shift between realms and devour souls, but soon gains abilities like phasing through gates that block his path or climbing certain walls. This allows him to find his way through the dying Nosgoth to hunt and kill Kain.

After encountering Kain for the first time, Raziel gains his main weapon – the soul reaver itself. Kain attempts to use his century old blade to kill Raziel again, but instead the weapon is destroyed and its essence becomes merged with Raziel as an ethereal extension of his arm. As the game progresses, you can gain new abilities to help in battling the vampire hordes that languish in the world, as well as upgrade the soul reaver.

The gameplay can honestly be a little repetitive and the environments, although mastered in beautiful 3D for their time, can feel a little too alike. That’s kind of typical for games of its time, but what makes Soul Reaver shine is pretty much everything else.

The voice acting and music are too good not to mention. If you’ve played video games, you know that the voice acting can be really abysmal, but that is not the case here. Many sites and magazines will list the Legacy of Kain series as the top 50 best voice acted games and it’s a worthy kudo.

The music is also a standout. It has a very industrial feel to it, which seems off considering the fantasy aspects of the game, but it totally works. Each area of Nosgoth has a unique theme, but the music will naturally change to suit the current situation. In a battle, the music will be more epic and exciting, while it will be more muted and subdued as the player explores each region.

The story is just so engrossing. Soul Reaver builds on the already great world created in Blood Omen, but really takes everything to the next level. And, if you can believe it, things get even better in its direct sequel, Soul Reaver 2, which actually incorporates time travel!

All-in-all, Soul Reaver is an absolutely amazing game and a real triumph of its time. Yes, it can be a little repetitive, but all of the seamlessly integrated story elements and cutscenes will absolutely grab you and keep you motivated to continue on.

I’ve been playing the game on PC for many years. I can’t recall exactly how the PlayStation version looked – and I’m sure it’s serviceable – but I have to say that PC is probably the way to go, if you can. It was also released on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000, which I hear is the best console version by far. I have to say that the game still looks amazing on PC at its highest resolutions on my 720p TV.

It took a little finagling to get a new controller to work for it, but the time was worth it. The game supports Direct Input, which was the standard in the late-90s, but these days most controllers us XInput. A quick internet search allowed me to find a tool that will map a controller to Direct Input for you easily. I actually plugged in one of my PlayStation Classic controllers, which use USB, and it really helps to simulate those nostalgic vibes!

For me, there’s something special about replaying Soul Reaver with nothing but soft Christmas lights to brighten my darkened room, but as I’m sure no one else shares that attachment, trust me – you can enjoy Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver any time of the year. So go ahead and do that! It’s actually on sale as I write this for $1.09 CDN on GOG.com (Windows PC version) and runs for $5.99 as a PSOne Classic on the Sony PlayStation 3 or PSP systems (NOTE: PSOne Classics can only be purchased from a PS3 console), so you really have nothing to lose!

Is there anything tradition, movie, or game that you like to enjoy during the holidays, but it has nothing to do with the season? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Merry Christmas,
R

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Syphon Filter (1999) | Sony PlayStation | Game Review



By 1999, the year Syphon Filter was released on the Sony PlayStation, gaming was dominated by several trends. The first had actually evolved from a trend into the new standard for the vast majority of games going forward: 3D graphics and gameplay in partially 3D to fully 3D environments. 

The resounding success of Super Mario 64 in 1996 and many of the Nintendo 64 games that followed convinced publishers that 3D was not only the future of video games, it was the present. The PlayStation and Sega Saturn’s hardware weren’t as proficient as the 64’s when it came to 3D graphics but the pressure was on to produce 3D games. Both systems did go on to have some very good 3D games while 2D was seen as passé and games in that style dropped off significantly.

The other trend relevant to Syphon Filter was that of the stealth action genre. While 1997’s Goldeneye – the N64’s massively successful movie-based first person shooter – offered plenty of action and moments where the player must take on waves of enemies as is customary for the genre, the spy aspect did squeeze in a little sneaking around. It was to the player’s benefit to take out enemies quickly and quietly before the alarm was raised bringing reinforcements. The use of silencers was key as was good accuracy; often you only had one chance to silently take out an enemy and if you missed the heat would be on.



The following year saw the release of the game most responsible for the rise of stealth: Metal Gear Solid. Bringing in the elements that made its 8-bit predecessors in the series, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, unique, as well as adding in some new ones to the 32-bit realm, Metal Gear Solid was a masterpiece of, in its own words “Tactical Espionage Action”. The game’s entire premise was that of infiltration and in most places, a strategy of avoiding enemies rather than engaging them was key. Not only was it still quite different from other games of the time, it was a lot of fun. As much as gamers had enjoyed titles with a “guns blazing” approach – blasting all enemies like a space marine – this sneaky alternative proved to be extremely enjoyable. Successfully passing through areas undetected forced the player to be more thoughtful and creative. The game was a success as big if not bigger than Goldeneye so a wave of imitators was inevitable. 

Metal Gear Solid: Often imitated, never duplicated.

Which brings us back to Syphon Filter. Possibly you forgot that’s what this article is about. You are forgiven.

Developed by the little-known Eidetic, whose only game to that point was one of the absolute worst of the aforementioned wave of fully 3D games, Bubsy 3D, Syphon Filter is no Metal Gear Solid clone, but it’s definitely strongly influenced by the Konami title. The player finds himself in control of a covert agent Gabriel Logan engaged in a series of missions. The agency is tracking terrorist Erich Rhoemer, who has acquired a deadly biological weapon called Syphon Filter (which, yes, is similar to Metal Gear Solid’s FOXDIE) and has just launched an attack on Washington, DC. Just like Goldeneye and most spy movies, Logan’s quest brings him to a variety of locations throughout the world. The story is fairly standard and it’s not necessary to relate it here. Logan himself is a fairly bland character and his voice actor makes him sound approximately seventy years old.

The gameplay takes place in third person with Logan going through 3D environments and the player can rotate the camera as needed. While the camera isn’t perfect and you can sometimes end up with some inconvenient angles, it’s usually not enough to truly hamper you. It’s not a platformer requiring precise jumps like Super Mario 64 after all.

That isn’t to say precision isn’t required, though. Aiming certain weapons shifts the perspective to first person and it can be tricky if you’re under pressure from enemies. While the game favours a stealthy approach, Gabe is still going to see plenty of combat as enemies sometimes come at him in waves. But the real challenge lies in entering new rooms or areas where enemies have already taken up firing positions. Cover isn’t always available and even when it is, it’s tenuous.

I haven’t watched videos of people playing Syphon Filter so I only really know how I chose to play it. My main strategy involves almost constant movement once I’m in a gun battle. This frantic style of play enables you to dodge bullets but makes aiming difficult and weapons do run out of ammo. So in some of the later levels it can take several attempts to figure out the best way to navigate a prolonged battle. A few years later, I’d apply a similar strategy to the Max Payne games but it was easier there because of that game’s feature of being able to slow down time.

While Syphon Filter falls well short of the standard set by Metal Gear Solid in terms of gameplay, story, voice acting and music, it still does add a few neat wrinkles of its own. For instance, in taking advantage of the game’s decent lighting effects, some areas are dark enough to require you to use a flashlight. In certain instances this can be a calculated risk as light can alert nearby enemies when you’re trying to sneak past them.


Syphon Filter was well received and spawned two sequels in quick succession. I’m fairly certain I’ve played both; I know for sure I did play Syphon Filter 2 but can’t really remember much about it beyond it playing exactly like the original game. Beyond that trilogy there came several more I never played: Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain in 2004, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror in 2006 and Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow in 2007. The latter three were all for the PlayStation 2 and were mostly lost in the shuffle during those years. But playing once more through the original has made me curious about them.

Syphon Filter may have been the byproduct of trends but it’s still a solid game that’s fairly fun to play and takes some skill to complete. I was even driven to frustration at some parts but I wouldn’t call the difficulty cheap or unforgiving. One just has to make the proper adjustments. In the end, Gabriel Logan never joined the upper echelon of classic video game characters but he sits somewhere comfortably in the middle as the protagonist of a pretty good series. That’s more than can be said for many others.

cole d'arc

Cole d'arc is a writer based out of Halifax, NS. He is a practiced blogeteer and professional lister at Five-O-Rama, is the man behind Cole Talks Comics on YouTube, and talks about movies and video games live from the Movie Discussion Pocket Dimension and The Final Dungeon

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (1987) - Nintendo Entertainment System


This one has been a long time coming.

First off, readers of the site might - if you try reaaaaally hard - remember that I wrote a review for the original Castlevania during Halloween... 2014. Pretty much right after I wrote that piece, I actually had designs to play its sequel and the years just kept flying by without me devoting the time.

Here we are five years later and I've finally done it!

Now, that's not all. If you'll take a quick trip back in time with me for moment, you'll see a young RyHo, sitting in front of a dusty old Nintendo Entertainment System in a cabin near a lake. It's summer and it's nighttime. After spending the day swimming it's time to find something to while away the long, hot night.

The young lad's cousin has an assortment of games that he's never played before. One of them is Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. With no manual to aid and a cousin who knows next to nothing about the game, the youth tries and tries again, but can't make heads nor tails of how to even play this title. It's not like the Castlevania game he's used to, but all the spooky monsters and bright vibrant colours keep him absolutely enthralled.

That was my first attempt at playing Simon's Quest, circa 1990 or so. This game has been a monkey on my back for approximately 30-effing-years.


This feels good.

I played the game on the new Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which released in May of this year in conjunction with developer Konami's 50th anniversary, alongside two other collections: Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection and Contra Anniversary Collection.

I've had the thing on the NES Classic since 2016, though, and I could've picked it up on just about any Nintendo Virtual Console since 2007, so I have no excuses. Not to mention the fact that copies of the game fall out of NES collector's pockets constantly there's so many of them around.

Be that as it may, I took the plunge and made Castlevania II part of my Halloween 2019 celebrations and I'm so happy I did!

Most people think of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as the first of the Castlevania "Metroidvania" titles, but the fact is that it all started with... Vampire Killer?

Oh, you never heard of that one? It's considered an alternative version of the original game, which released in Japan and Europe for MSX2 PCs. It landed on European shelves before the series made it to the US and would receive its branding under the "Castlevania" title.


Simon's Quest is the second Castlevania game of this style, which hit shelves in Japan in 1987 and in the US in 1988. That said, since most people don't even know Vampire Killer exists, many would consider this as their first open-world CV game.

All of the classic elements are there: an open, non-linear environment for the player to traverse and new weapons and upgrades that can unlock previously unreachable areas of the map. The player is just plunked in the middle of a town with no idea which direction to traverse and they must speak with the villagers to gain clues on where their adventure should take them.

The game brings back the hero of the original title, Simon Belmont, who after having defeated Dracula has found out that the Master of Darkness managed to place a curse on him before his demise. In order to remove the curse, Simon must find the five parts of Dracula (I dunno what the townsfolk did to the dude after the first game, but shit got dark), which are holed up in five different mansions around Transylvania, and resurrect the monster... so he can kill his blood-suckin' ass again!

As I mentioned, you can go anywhere you want in the game - no levels here- but in true Metroidvania style certain enemies will be too tough to deal with unless you've completed a certain area, retrieved a new item, or upgraded Simon's strengths.


Simon still has his trusty whip to aide him in his quest, which you can upgrade throughout the game thanks to finding hidden gypsies. Yes that says gypsies and I don't mean like kinda hidden. Whoever developed this game doesn't like you and didn't want you to complete it.

This is among a handful of titles for the NES that I usually refer to as the "Nintendo Power sellers", because they garnered subscriptions to the famous magazine like Evians in the desert. Not only are many of the required items and clues hidden in the most devious of places, even if you have all the right pieces to the puzzle the game requires you do the strangest things to progress.

Like, if you have the Blue Cystal, which you need to magically drain a river at the beginning of the game, what would you think? You'd equip it in the menu and hop in, right?

WRONG!

You'd equip it and kneel next to the water for several seconds until the game revealed the hidden path.

This kind of stuff cropped up in The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, as well. I'm sure it was all a scheme of sorts. You should see my conspiracy board sometime!

So, if you can find the right path, get the right items, figure out all the crazy hidden secrets, survive the mansions, and defeat Death and Lady Camilla, you can take on your old pal, Drac and say bye bye to that curse!

Provided you finish your quest in under 8 "video" days. If not, you die anyway. Yeah, that's what we used to call "Nintendo hard" back in the day, kids!


Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention the "day and night" mechanic, which is surprising, because it will drive you mad as you enjoy this perfectly wonderful game! Every night at 6PM in the game, which by the way you don't have a handy pocket watch or anything so you have no idea when, the game flips you into night. It pretty well just means that the colours get spookier and the enemies get harder, ya know, in case you weren't having enough troubles as it was.


All in all, Simon's Quest is a great game that I wish I had just tasked myself with completing a long time ago. Although I came of age with Symphony of the Night, which is certainly a much more playable Metroidvania, there's a lot to enjoy here. The only issue I would take from the game is the repetition.

They reuse a lot of enemy sprites and the music isn't very varied. I remedied the music problem by listening to Dino Drac's Halloween Jukebox (I can't promise if that link will work after October 31st or not), which I couldn't recommend enough, by the way! As for the enemies, they spice things up by giving them outlandish different colour palettes and I just can't get mad at a game that lets me fight nuclear green skeletons.


Once you get into the groove of deciphering all the crazy stuff the townspeople say and you figure out the trick to finding pretty much all the secrets (just throw Holy Water everywhere... that's it. That's the trick) you'll realize how much fun you're actually having. Just make sure you have that copy of Nintendo Power handy - you know, the one with the beheaded Dracula on the cover (how did they sell this thing to kids?) - and you'll be right as rain!


Like I said, there's no lack of ways to get your hands on Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, but I couldn't recommend the Castlevania Anniversary Collection enough, which is loaded with other awesome games from the series for the price of a pizza ($26 CDN, to be exact). Oh, and the Anniversary Collection also includes Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, which is the October 2019 Game of the Month for the Cartridge Club! See, win-win.


Keep it spooky!
R

Friday, June 14, 2019

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) - 1989

Do you remember the very first video game you ever played? I know mine! It was Super Mario Bros. Do you know the second? Ooh, I do! It was Duck Hunt. But can you recall the third video game you ever played?

Mine was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!


It was Christmas 1989... but also possibly 1990? I'm a little nebulous on this. I know that my mother has a photo from the Christmas morning in question, but I haven't been able to find it to confirm. Either way, that Christmas I received a Nintendo Entertainment System Action Set, which came packed in with Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, but I also got another game, which was TMNT.

Regardless of the year, at this point in my life nothing mattered more than the Ninja Turtles. I was the prime demographic for the show when it launched in '87. By the time '89/'90 rolled around I would've been watching the Turtles almost every day in syndication, had plastered my walls with TMNT memorabilia, and swam in a bucket full of Playmates Turtle action figures. The video game, however, couldn't have been further from my mind.

I was around 6 and I actually had no idea what a Nintendo was. I can still recall getting it for Christmas and having no idea what I was looking at. My parents actually had an Intellivision when I was really young, but it had stopped working, so they were familiar with the concept, but I was totally in the dark.

As I recall, the first game I booted up was, of course, Super Mario Bros. It took a while to get used to how to move - which included a lot of me jumping with my controller, like I was somehow tethered to Mario himself - but I eventually got the hang of it. The controls in SMB make it easy. They are so tight. Once you get used to the idea of pushing buttons at the same time and how gravity works in the Mushroom Kingdom, you're well on your way to mastering the game.

This is, unfortunately, not the case with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The controls were a little bit "floaty". It takes some getting used to, but I would argue that the controls for TMNT get a bad rap. They are a little off, but the same could be said for countless other video games at the time and not just on the NES.

Another thing that jumped out at me while playing TMNT NES for the first time was how batshit crazy it is! The first enemies you encounter have some familiarity. There are Mousers and Foot Soldiers, but also killer bees? After a few moments, however, one of the game's weirdest features will rear it's ugly head. The enemies in the game will swap randomly. The other sets of baddies you face are out of some crazy nightmare.

Do you remember when the Turtles faced off against the Human Torch? Or a chainsaw wielding maniac in a hockey mask? Yeah, me either, but they're in there! There are also giant mutant frog men, robots with flying heads, a creepy hunchback that turns into smaller creepy hunchbacks, and these Lovecraftian jumping leg things that cling to the ceiling, just to name a few.

Honestly, I appreciate the creativity with the bad guys in the video game. Sure, the programmers had a lot to work with, having access to already established comic and cartoon universes, but there's no reason the monsters and enemies they created couldn't have existed in any other TMNT canon. I mean, there's a character in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics that is literally a flying, talking cow's head that slurps up/spits out its passengers and can cross whole dimensions of time and space.


You're my boy, Cudley!

I thought for years that the game must have been in development before the cartoon launched and that explained all the crazy bad guys that didn't marry up with the show, but that wasn't the case. The video game was certainly put into motion because of the fervor the cartoon stirred up and wouldn't have existed without it.

The game was developed by none-other than Japan's video game powerhouse, Konami. It was published by Konami in Japan, but under the Ultra Games imprint in North America and PALCOM in Europe, which was just a super hinky way for Konami to release more games in other regions than Nintendo would allow for at the time.

A quick note that the game was so popular in the PAL regions it actually got it's own NES bundle. Everything you needed to play Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles! Yeah, apparently ninjas are frowned upon overseas.


The game was released in Japan ahead of the Japanese dubs of the cartoon show, so maybe my theory about the progammers having to make up their own ideas holds some weight, but I'd say its just another case of Japanese developers doin' they thang.

The story is basically ripped from the cartoon: The Turtles find out that the Shredder has a "life transformer gun" (uh-huh...) and that they can use it to turn their master Splinter back into a human, so they're seeking out the Shred-dude to find it. Along the way they have to save April O'Neil from Bebop and Rocksteady, stop the Foot Clan from blowing up a dam on the Hudson River, save Splinter from Mecha-Turtle, find the Turtle Blimp at JFK Airport, chase Shredder to a hidden base, and finally face off against their enemy in the Technodrome. And eat lots of pizza along the way!


I think the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES is the box art. It was incredible. I had no idea at the time that it was ripped from the cover of the comic book! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Volume 1 Issue #4 featured cover art by the original artists/creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird (I honestly don't know who drew the cover). When it was re-issued years later, Michael Dooney re-imagined the artwork and took it to the next level. It was this artwork that was lifted for the game's box and label art and it's just so iconic.


If nothing else, the cover art confused every child that saw it. "Why are all the Turtles wearing red!?" Considering the wave caused by the TV series it is certainly surprising that they went with a comic book cover depicting the brothers in all red face masks, but that was how things were in the early comic books.

The player takes control of all four Turtles, each armed with their weapon of choice. This will lead you to a team hierarchy, whether you like it or not. Leonardo uses the katana, which are a great mid-range weapon that deal decent damage. Michaelangelo uses the nunchaku, which I would say makes him arguably the exact same as Leonardo, but sacrificing some range for speed. Donatello uses the bo staff, which while it is the most powerful of the stock ninja weapons is a little trickier to aim. Finally, Raphael uses the sai, which seem to be the least powerful and have almost no range. For Raphael fans, like myself, this sucks as Raph basically gets relegated to the "Turtle you're okay with sacrificing". I personally try to reserve Don for boss fights where his bo can get a few extra powerful hits in and for the most part I play as Leonardo or Mikey interchangeably, leaning on Leo since he's the first Turtle on the pause menu.


You can also collect sub-weapons. Most of them appear is random drops from enemies, like shuriken, triple shuriken, and the boomerang. You can select and de-select them with the... wait for it... select button. The most coveted sub-weapon is the Kiai - or as everyone else knows it - the scroll weapon, made famous by the greatest Nintendo commercial ever created, The Wizard! This bad boy was the most powerful and took up a lot of pixels for maximum effectiveness. You couldn't get this one from a drop, however. It was hidden somewhere in the game!


Another handy item you'll find along the way are the missiles, which you can launch from the Turtle Van. That's right, you get to drive the van! In the third stage you'll find it waiting for you on the overworld map. It protects you from Foot Soldiers roaming around the streets of NYC (just run them over!) and the missiles can break through roadblocks that keep you from finding Master Splinter. The last item that comes to mind is the rope, which you'll need to cross from rooftop to rooftop in a few places.

At the end of the day, even if you can master the controls and know where all the best weapons and items are hidden, this game is still so friggin' hard. If you've beaten Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES then you've earned a badge of Nintendo Honour, my friend. Most people I talk to can't get past the Hudson Dam.

Now, the NES wasn't the only place you could play this TMNT game. In addition to being available on Playchoice-10 arcade machines (essentially just arcade units with an NES in them), in anticipation for its popularity the game was ported to just about every PC platform available at the time. There were ports for the Amiga, Amstrad, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS DOS, MSX, and ZX Spectrum. There is a lot of varying quality here, as some of these were written by one or two coders at most and under strict timelines.

I haven't played any of the PC ports of the game, but the MS DOS port was one of my most coveted games when I was a kid. Back in the early-90s my local K-Mart had a really cool video game section, which none of the other stores around me had at the time. In it, behind glass, was a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for MS DOS in this beautiful big box and, boy, did I want it.

And, boy, am I lucky I never got it. From what I can tell it's easily the worst port of the game. The Amiga, Amstrad, and Atari ST versions seem to be the best graphically, and the C64 and ZX versions appear to be somewhat playable, but the MS DOS version just looks like hot garbage. The Pause Screen images are some of the most hilarious I've ever seen. April looks like some kind of insect woman.


Even better is that the QA behind the North American DOS version wasn't up-to-snuff and there is an impossible jump in the game. Some people have discovered a "no clip" code that allows you to bypass the jump, and some even more industrious individuals have written files from the European releases, which contain a fix for the issue, onto their NA copies of the game, but at the end of the day I doubt most people had enough patience to play the DOS version enough to give a damn.

So, like I said in the beginning, I think that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES gets a bit of a bad rap, because its fairly difficult and has slightly wonky controls, but it is without a doubt one of my favourite video games. It's probably the nostalgia talking, but only a handful of games can really take me back in time and this is one of them. I think, just like with many NES games, with a little practice and patience it's just as playable as most games on the system. It's a bright, colourful, and interesting take on the Turtle Universe and I love it.

But, there's more! In the near future we'll be talking about the sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game!

Stay tuned,
R

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Super Mario Odyssey (2017) - Nintendo Switch

So, where to begin? First off, it's difficult to even write something like this, because the Super Mario series - as a whole - has transcended the concept of review, in a way. I mean, when was the last time you played a bad Super Mario game? Hotel Mario and Mario is Missing aside. Really, all we can do here is talk about how good Super Mario Odyssey is, but I do have some weird feelings about the game, so hopefully there's something of interest here.

To begin, let's talk about how long I've waited for a game like Super Mario Odyssey. Back in 1996, Nintendo published Super Mario 64 on their then flagship system, the Nintendo 64. It was a wild departure from the constant of the series, featuring 3D platforming and navigated with Nintendo's all-new (crazy) controller. Instead of the usual "run to the end of the stage" gameplay everyone had grown to love, the player was given an open world and told to play however they wanted to find secret hidden stars in each of the varying stages found within Peach's Castle.

A new beginning for Mario - Only For Nintendo 64!

This new open gameplay was very refreshing for me and Super Mario 64 stands as one of my favourite Mario games of all time. Nintendo followed the success of Super Mario 64 with Super Mario Sunshine on the Gamecube, which was met with mixed reviews. It continued the newly minted open Mario playstyle, but featured the gimmicky F.L.U.D.D. pack, which resulted in some seriously buggy 3D platforming.

After Sunshine, there were the Super Mario Galaxy games on the Wii, which although they feature the same play of Super Mario 64 - or at least the DNA is there - there is a lot of linearity and the fun of exploration isn't present. This was the same with Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS and Super Mario 3D World on the Wii U. Both are great games, don't get me wrong, and the 3D platforming is on point. It's that exploration and open world experience that's missing here, as these games go back to the "run to the end of the stage" gameplay I mentioned before.

Super Mario 3D Land is one of my favourite 3DS games

So finally after all this time - 21 years to be exact - Nintendo has finally made a Super Mario title with that open world exploration I loved about Super Mario 64 in Super Mario Odyssey. As it has been 20+ years, everything about this game is bigger and better than any Super Mario title before it.

Just look-a how-a happy he is when you-a save-a your game!

The game features an entire world, loaded with completely new lands for Mario to explore, chock-full of all new baddies and power-ups that the player has never experienced.

For power-ups, much like in Super Mario 64, it's all about Mario's hat. In this game, the hat is actually a being from another world on a quest to find his friend, kidnapped by Bowser. The Princess has once again been kidnapped, as well, so Mario and Cappy - the aforementioned hat - set out to stop the villainous King Koopa once again.

This time around, however, there's almost no limit to the power-ups Mario can acquire, as Cappy can turn Mario into anything the plumber throws him at. Want to be a Goomba? Throw your hat at one! A giant T. Rex? No problem! A zipper? Kinda weird, but sure thing!

Mario and Cappy have a long way to travel to find and defeat Bowser this time around, so they need a ride, which comes in the form of an old, battered airship, The Odyssey. With this they can land in each and every world Bowser ransacks in his ultimate goal of marrying Princess Peach and becoming the King of the Mushroom Kingdom!

Mario as a Fire Bro!

As I said, each stage is all-new. They may feature some tried-and-true gameplay, but there are totally fresh enemies intermixed with some of your favourites, like the Hammer Bros. or Bullet Bill. The variety here is astounding. When you think about how much work the programmers had to put into the game, considering Mario can become pretty much any enemy he sees, it blows your mind.

And for all that's new, there's so much fan-favouring and nostalgia here. Occasionally you'll find these fun little challenges where you actually go into an HD 2D form of the original Super Mario Bros. They are all-too brief, however. Every time I discovered a 2D section I found myself wishing they'd make a whole new Super Mario Bros.-style HD game. It was so much fun.

In a way, Super Mario Odyssey is the penultimate Mario game. It's a love letter to fans of the series, while still delivering something fresh and wonderful.

I did have some issues with the game, however. To be honest, I'm completely torn. I want to love Odyssey. I really do. And some of the time I spent with it was borderline whimsical. My major problem with the game is a hang-up of my own, really, which is why I made sure to make this counterpoint very carefully.

This game is a collect-a-thon. Much more than any Mario game before. In Super Mario 64, each new world would feature seven Power Stars. The player didn't need to collect them all, just as many as they needed to continue through the game. Only 70 of the stars were needed to face Bowser, but 120 were available to collect in total. Some of these required you to collect 8 red coins in each stage, or 100 regular coins. So, Super Mario 64 definitely had a collect-a-thon aspect to it.

In Super Mario Odyssey, this has been turned up to 11.

To power the Odyssey on their adventure, Mario and Cappy need to collect more and more Power Moons from each new world. You only need so many to power the Odyssey and move on, but in some of the stages you can have up to 70 or 80+ moons to collect and there are a whopping 999 in total. Now, the collect-a-thon hound might see this as a great thing. There's so much game here!

For the crazy completionist, like myself, this was painful and daunting. I usually would force myself to complete all the available moons in a level before moving on to the next, but it was taking forever and I found myself sick of playing the same stage for so long trying to find them all. I literally don't think I could play the Wooded Kingdom if I tried right now.

Hmm, what's this?

Cool, a puzzle for another hidden Power Moon!

I eventually had to overcome my own hangups and just play through the game organically. Sometimes I'd try and collect lots and lots of Power Moons, while other times I'd just get enough to move on. This made the overall experience more enjoyable, but also simultaneously annoyed me.

In Super Mario 64, you were given a general hint to find the next star and you would have to route it out. It made for plenty of exploration, but not too much. In Super Mario Odyssey, some of the Power Moons are right in front of your face and easy to find, but some are hidden diabolically. Couple that with the sheer number and you can find yourself, like myself, completely bored and tired with a level.

Now, with that negativity aside, I still came out enjoying Super Mario Odyssey. Once I decided to just move through the game and worry about the collecting later I had a blast.

The whole experience was amplified by the fact that I played through the game with my son. He was three at the time and this was his first real Super Mario experience. I've played some of the older titles with him, but he kind of lost interest. This game, however, was such a grand adventure he was completely riveted. I actually played the majority of the game with one Joy-Con, because he wanted to hold the other and "play along". It was a bit of a handicap, but completely worth it.

The ending of the game might be one of my favourite gaming moments of all time. I won't spoil what happens, but my son and my wife were both staring in rapt attention, shouting and yelling in excitement as I navigated the final throes of the game. It was legitimately exhilarating and so much fun.

In the end I really enjoyed Super Mario Odyssey, but I wanted to love it. I wanted to feel the way I felt about Super Mario 64 and even though this game has it all on paper, I still find myself enjoying its predecessor more.

I need to spend some more time with Super Mario Odyssey now that the "pressure is off" and I've completed the storyline. There's a whack of end-game content to complete on top of getting all the 999 Power Moons and I know there's a lot of fun there. Altogether I put about 25 hours into the game and I'm certain there's another 45+ waiting for me.

At the end of the day, Super Mario Odyssey is, without a doubt, the most ambitious Mario game to date. It's a true love letter to the fans and a reason, in my opinion, to own a Nintendo Switch. If you're a fan of the series, you owe it to yourself to play it. Just don't be crazy like myself and try to enjoy the experience, instead of grinding your gears worrying about all those Power Moons.

As always, I hope you enjoyed,
R

Friday, July 6, 2018

Nostalgia Bomb! - Topps Nintendo Game Packs



What were they?
Nintendo Game Packs (with Top Secret Tips!) were a series of scratch-off trading cards and sticker packs released by Topps for 25¢ apiece. Inside each wax-wrapped pack you would find three scratch-off cards and two stickers, as well as a stick of bubble gum!

Topps Nintendo Game Packs (1989) - image courtesy of Toys'n'Stuff YouTube Channel

There were 93 cards to collect in all. 60 of those were the scratch-off or "game" cards, which could be broken out into groups of 10 based on 6 different Nintendo games: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario. Bros. 2, The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Double Dragon, and Punch-Out!! The other 33 cards were the stickers, which portrayed character portraits from all sorts of different Nintendo games and had printed tips and tricks on the back, not necessarily related to the actual sticker on the front.

A sticker card featuing Abobo from Double Dragon - image courtesy of TPsRockin.com

When were they available?
They were released in 1989. Topps would release a yearly series of sports cards, which would include the usual culprits of baseball, football, and hockey. They would also release non-sports sets each year that would be based on different movie and cartoon franchises, which included the Nintendo set. '89 would also see sets for Back to the Future Part II, Batman (1989), Batman (1966), Ghostbusters II, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ('89 cartoon show), and Stupid Smile Stickers, which were essentially parody cards making fun of the popular "smiley face" stickers at that time.

A full box of Topps Nintendo Game Packs

What about today?

Although Nintendo would go on to have different trading card sets over the years based on many of their popular franchises, like The Legend of Zelda and most recently amiibo trading cards for the Animal Crossing series, this was the only Topps set they would ever release.

It is worth noting that Topps also released a set of Nintendo Tattoos around the same time. They are considered much more rare than the Game Packs and I can honestly say I don't recall ever seeing them when I was a kid.

Topps Nintendo Tattoos, also circa 1989

Why do I remember them?

I was a big card collector back when I was a kid. It was completely hooked in 1990 on the first Marvel Universe trading card series by Impel (later Skybox), but I cut my teeth on these Nintendo Game Packs.

Although I have all of my old Marvel cards I unfortunately don't have any of my old Nintendo cards left today. I think it was because they were made somewhat disposable. Each of the scratch-off cards were a game and once they were scratched I considered them used up and the sticker cards would make their way into a sticker binder I kept (which is long since gone). It wasn't until the next year I'd clue in on collecting cards.

A Zelda scratch-off game card - image courtesy of TPsRockin.com

You see them a lot these days, though. They're typically easy to find on eBay or in different niche stores. You'll also find a lot of videos on YouTube of people either displaying their collections or showing off opening old packs that are still sealed.

I haven't gone so far in my enjoyment of these cards to get the set myself. I have checked out the prices on eBay now and then, but I never pull the trigger. It's fun to queue up YouTube now and again, however, and watch some videos on Topps Nintendo Game Packs and reminisce.

I hope you enjoyed,
R

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Yars' Revenge (1982) - Atari 2600 and Atari: Game Over (2014)

I'm going to be honest with you here. I was born in the early-1980s. Although my parents did own an Intellivision I had no contact with that system until the '90s and well after I'd received my first video game console, the Nintendo Entertainment System. As far as the Atari 2600, I can't even recall when I saw one for the first time, but as a result of never playing one when I was a kid I just never got into the system at all.

The Atari 2600 in all its wood-grained glory
I always understood the love for that Atari 2600, but it was just before my time. And because of the video game crash in '83 they were quickly off the market and almost a distant memory by the I got my NES in '89. I had one cousin who had an Atari 2600, but it was rarely played when I visited in lieu of playing whatever NES games he had available instead.

All this to say that - although I understand why people love the Atari 2600 - I have zero nostalgia for it, and frankly, never really cared for it. Compared to what I got to play on the NES, 2600 games just seemed a little too primitive. In my mind they were mostly poorly ported arcade titles and I was never really into those particular games to begin with. I appreciated playing shooter games like Galaxian in the arcade itself, but when I saw the home port on the 2600 it never really wowed me.

A few years ago my wife got me an Atari Flashback 6 for Christmas and I suddenly had a bevy of 2600 games at my fingertips to try. Again, I found myself not so interested in the shooter games, but I discovered a new appreciation for titles like Adventure and the 2600 port of Frogger. Still, I didn't spend too much time with it, but it is permanently hooked up to what I affectionately call my "retro corner" in my home office, which consists of a flat-screen CRT, a VCR, a DVD player/recorder, and my Atari Flashback. Whenever I want to hook up another older console I hook it up to this TV, but they don't fit in the stand. The Flashback, however, fits in there nicely, so it's basically always hooked up.

The other night I was going through Netflix looking for something to watch and I realized that although I'd added it to "My List" I had never gotten around to watching Zak Penn's Atari: Game Over. The documentary takes a look at the meteoric rise of Atari in the late-70s/early-80s, the programmers producing their money-making cartridges, and the downfall of the company, seemingly signaled by the infamous E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial 2600 game release at Christmas of '82.

The Atari: Game Over poster displaying the co-ordinates of the infamous dumping site
It runs at around an hour and is a really great watch. I am a self-professed video game aficionado and like to believe I know a lot about the industry, but I learned a great deal about Atari and the effect the 2600 had on the home computing enterprise by watching this film.

The film delves into the long-lived rumour that the release of E.T. for the Atari was so bad and so poorly received that the company drove all the extra copies of the game, of which they had printed millions, and buried them in the desert in Alamogordo, NM. This story had become video game legend and had cemented the idea the E.T. is the worst video game ever made and almost single-handedly destroyed Atari.

An ad for E.T. on the 2600
Atari: Game Over focuses on three main individuals: Joe Lewandowski, the man who researched and believed he found the site of the Atari game burial, Howard Scott Warshaw, the programmer who created the E.T. cartridge, and Ernie Cline, writer and video game enthusiast. There are plenty of interviews from the people in charge of Atari at the time of the crash, as well as many other filmmakers and video game developers.

With such a short run-time, the film has a bit of a narrow scope. It's a fun watch and I liked that it focused on Howard Scott Warshaw and the effect E.T. and Atari had on his life, which was a really cool perspective and story I'd never heard before. If you're looking to understand the entirety of Atari's downfall and the video game crash, however, this film isn't going to get you there. It will whet your appetite for more information, and I think is ultimately worth the watch, but you'll need to go elsewhere for the full story.

How does this all get back to Yars' Revenge, which you see in the title of this post? Well, like I said, I was captivated by Howard Scott Warshaw's story in the film. He was brought in as one of Atari's "rockstar programmers" at the height of the 2600's popularity and - before he became synonymous with E.T. - programmed the most profitable original game for the Atari 2600 - Yars' Revenge.

Yars' Revenge box-art
Yars' Revenge started out as another Atari 2600 arcade port - the kind I mentioned I had little interest in - of Star Castle. Warshaw quickly told his superiors that he couldn't properly port that game to the home console hardware, but had come up with his own game that used a similar mechanic. He was greenlighted to then program his game, which went on to sell one million copies.

Warshaw really wanted to blend storytelling with video games, something that wasn't really being done at the time, so he came up with a whole backstory to Yars' Revenge, which was adapted into a comic and packaged with the game. It tells the story of the Yars - a race of super-advanced houseflies - that had originated on Earth, but had been mutated in space, developed their own society and culture, and inhabited several planets in another solar system. An unknown race called the Quotile attacked and destroyed one of the Yars' planets, Razak IV, and now it is up to the warriors of Yars to defend their people against the Quotile using their newly developed Zorlon Cannon. It's a fun little comic and you can check it out here.

Warshaw coding E.T. The Extraterrestrial in his home in 1982
The game is pretty simplistic. The player pilots the Yar, a flying bug-like creature, against the Quotile. The enemy is encased in a shield, which the Yar needs to either blast or munch to destroy. The Quotile has two attacks - a missile that slowly chases the Yar at all times on screen, and the "Swirl", in which the Quotile itself spins and shoots across the screen at the Yar. There is a neutral zone in the middle of the screen that the Yar can enter and becomes impervious to the missile, but also loses the ability to shoot. The neutral zone does not, however, protect from the Swirl, which can destroy the Yar at all times.

The Yar has to destroy the barrier around the Quotile and attempt to fire the Zorlon Cannon. The only way to fire it, however, is to either touch the Quotile or nibble at the shield. When the cannon becomes available you'll see it appear on the opposite side of the screen. Once fired, the cannon blast will fire directly at the Yar, so you have to pilot away from the blast after it is fired and try to bypass the barrier and hit the Quotile to progress to the next stage.

There are two screens in the game (that I saw), one with a domed barrier, and another with a strange rectangular barrier, which constantly shifts. The further you get in the game, the barrier will change colour and the enemies will become more and more difficult. For instance, in the earlier stages the Swirl is pretty easy to see coming and dodge, but later there is little warning that the Quotile is going to unleash this blast, so you have to be on your toes to dodge it.

Yar's Revenge
Directly after I finished Atari: Game Over, I found myself wanting to play... E.T.: The Extraerrestrial. I have a weird relationship with that movie (maybe some day I'll write about it) and all the talk about the video game made me want to try it out. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, and doesn't grace the Atari Flashback 6. However, it did have Yars' Revenge, so I decided to boot it up. I found myself playing it for hours! I have never played an Atari for that long in my life and I really enjoyed it.

With only two stages it seems like the game would be very limited, but the difficulty ramps up quite well and I found myself really challenged by the game. And what's funny is all that backstory that Warshaw wanted attached to the game really helped! My imagination combined with the comic book helped me really feel like I was a flying Yar warrior defending my race against the evil Quotile and made the game that much more enjoyable.

I can't remember my high score, but it wasn't great. I died a lot! But the main thing was that I had fun and I still want to play more! Finally, I "got" what people enjoyed about the Atari 2600. Yars' Revenge is a really fun game and not like any other flying shooter I've ever played before.

So my final verdict is that you should check out Atari: Game Over and pair it with Yars' Revenge. The film and the game both gave me a new appreciation for the Atari 2600 and they might do the same for you, too!

Hope you enjoyed,
R

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Kamiko (2017) - Nintendo Switch

As a palette cleanser between The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, I decided I wanted to play something quick and simple on my Nintendo Switch. After a little searching around the web I came across Kamiko, which was just what I was looking for.

At $6.99 CAD ($4.99 USD), Kamiko is a perfectly priced, bite-sized adventure that is ideal for killing a few hours and having some fun.

You play as one of three priestesses (known as Kamiko), who have been bestowed weapons from the gods in order to smite an evil that has befallen the land. In each of the four stages, you will have to activate several Torii gates in order to open the final door and face the boss. Each stage plays out like a bit of a puzzle. There are different switches, obstacles, etc. that you have to solve in order to find your way to the Torii gates.

Yamato squaring off against one of Kamiko's devilish bosses

The game plays similar to the original Legend of Zelda games, with a top-down view of your character. There are several enemy types you'll face along the way, including long-range attackers, and enemies that just try to run into you. The bosses are almost like something from a bullet hell shooter with multiple blasts and patterns you'll have to learn and dodge.

Each of the three priestesses change the way you play the game distinctly. In a way its like having a difficulty level setting. The first Kamiko - Yamato - is given a basic sword, which slashes in an arc in front of the her making this character the easiest to use. It's pretty difficult to miss an enemy with this weapon.

The second is Uzume, who has a bow and arrow, which is slightly more difficult to use and get used to. If you fire three shots in succession, Uzume will actually fire multiple arrows for each shot which fan out in front of her, giving you a larger area of attack. It's a little tricky to alter your brain into firing at your emeny after you've completed the game as Yamato, which adds a little bit of welcome challenge.

Uzume is preparing to find the Torii gates in another stage

The third is Hinome, who has a short sword and shield. This is sort of like a medium difficulty. You don't use the shield for defence, but rather you throw it in front of you. It's quick to release so it's easier to fire than Uzume's bow, but it doesn't reach across the entire screen. It does, however, return to you so there's some added playability there using the return arc of the shield to your advantage. Also, when the shield is released you can continue to attack enemies with a stab of your short sword. This causes Himome to briefly jet forward. The combination of these weapons is destructive. I think I may have enjoyed playing as her more than Yamato and Uzume.

The gameplay is pretty straight-forward and dead simple for Kamiko. Once you've played through the game once the challenge of the puzzles is diminished, because you'll remember all the item locations making finding the Torii gates easier and easier through each run. The change of the characters weapons and play-styles adds a slight challenge, but you'll probably get used to them in the first stage. This doesn't diminish the fun, however. The game is still a great arcade action title which you'll enjoy playing with each of the priestesses.

Hinome with her short sword and shield

The game features a beautiful, bright pseudo 8-bit aesthetic, which is very eye-catching. The images are crisp and look great in both handheld and TV mode. The colours are very vibrant and everything is easy to distinguish on-screen.

One of the best parts of Kamiko is the music. It has a very small, but well-crafted soundtrack. I found some of the stages soothing and others exciting. It's all presented in a chip-tune style that perfectly suits the pseudo 8-bit look and feel of the game, pulling the whole package together.

Once you get used to the stages each run through of Kamiko can be quick, but satisfying
Kamiko is a quick hit game that you can play in a couple of hours and is well-worth the small price to play. For me, it was a nice break after the many months I spent playing Breath of the Wild, before I buckled down to complete Super Mario Odyssey. I highly recommend you give Kamiko a try.

Hope you enjoyed,
R