A Personal Video Game Retrospective (1986-2015) 1994

I apparently had a lot of say about some of the games in this list. Far as I can tell the more I tend to enjoy a game the more likely I’ll spend some extra time typing a bit more about it. This was the height of my interest in the Genesis with it getting the majority this time. Both the good and the bad side of what a Sega console could do will be displayed here. As for the SNES it meanders around a bit not quite knowing what to do other than releasing another instant classic. Finally we say goodbye to the NES. Every console must end eventually and the NES ends on a somewhat high note. Even if most companies didn’t think it was worth printing very many copies of these games thus making some of them rare.

Let's see what I can infer from this year. Once again video games based on cartoons continue to be a pretty big part of my collection. Sure they’ll get “upgraded” to anime at some point but I’ve never really let them go. I can still enjoy the Lego games today which are pretty much cartoon versions of movies. Plus this seems like another year where I played all the big releases.

Super Game Boy

Putting the guts of a Game Boy into a device made to play on a console will be something Nintendo will continue to do after this. This was the only way to play a GB game in color before the GBC came out in 1998. It was also a great way to play without having to worry about having a light around to see it.

Overlooked Game 1992

I honestly don’t know how I overlooked Super Mario Kart when tallying up all my games a year ago. Ha it might have been in my SNES. As for the origin of Mario Kart it actually has a few nice touches that don’t come up later. With the most notable one being that each character has a unique victory theme. The power of mode 7 also gives each race a unique yet very flat looking visual style. Even the fact that coins were used as a pickup wasn’t something that came up again till the most recent release. Out of all of them this is the one that relies on the player to race well instead of relying on power ups. Since most of the items in this game feel really weak compared to later games.

1994

Another year goes by and a new cartoon series caught my interest so I obviously have to buy the game. I don’t even know what the plot is other than assuming that Max must save the world from some unspeakable evil. Gameplay wise this has an insanely high jump and it even required me to collect random stuff from around a level to compete it. This is actually taken to an extreme by forcing me to collect said item and then drag it around the level with balloons to throw it into a portal that is always in a hard to reach spot. Enemies are also everywhere which is most likely why they decided to start Max off with 9 lives at the beginning of every level.

This is not the version everyone else played. Instead it is the version they made of Aladdin on the Game Gear. The beginning of this game plays a lot like a level based endless runner. Jumping over pits and barrels all while you are autorunning to the end of the level. Once Aladdin goes into the cave of wonders it turns into a normal platformer before starting up another autoscrolling level on the magic carpet. For the device it was on this game does a reasonably good job of following the plot of the movie.

A lot like Lost Vikings Animaniacs expects the player to switch between 3 playable characters to tackle different tasks in the levels. Yakko can push heavy crates. Wacko likes to use his giant hammer to light things on fire and Dot uses the power of love to spellbound anyone to create platforms. Using all of those skills will lead the Animaniacs to their prize at the end of every stage. Once again the developers do a good job of recreating the tone of the show in every cutscene.

Who thought any of this was a good idea? This game has attitude and it is even called Ballz all the kids will love it. I guess that somehow worked on me since I own this game. As a 2 button fighting game the normal hits don’t feel very powerful. At least the grapple moves are fun to watch whenever one comes out randomly. Ugh I just can’t stand playing much of this game. Each round feels so random. I never quite know what I could do to win them.

Boy I don’t think I can handle any other games tonight. How in the world did I convince myself to play through this game? I’m 100% certain I’ve beaten this game in the past. Bubsy does not control well at all with every jump feeling like you’ll lose control at any moment. They don’t even have the decency of showing you how many hits Bubsy has till he dies on screen. I really am at my limit so I’m glad the game decided to kill itself by freezing.

To go along with Duck Tales 2 I also have another rare NES game thanks to it coming out at the end of its life. C&D 2 does everything the first game did with a new set of levels. The main thing they added was a fleshed out storyline. Almost every level has a cutscene after finishing it. The other thing that is unlike the first game is that it doesn’t give the player a ball to throw back at every boss. Instead whichever boss I was facing would give me a item to throw back at it. Basicly Capcom made a tougher game that expects the player to be able to dodge attacks.

What, Blizzard made this sidescrolling beat em up starring Superman? Didn’t expect to see that logo when I booted this game up. Following the same arc in the comics where Superman appears to die after fighting Doomsday. After his apparent death a bunch of superheroes appear to take this title. Other than looking different and having unique throws every playable character is a reskin. Basic attacks will be aided with a ranged stun move that’ll let the player get in closer without having to worry about getting hit. The super attack will destroy everything on screen but at best the player will have 3 of these and they rarely get refilled. Between each level the game also has comic style cutscenes which is a nice touch.

If you knew nothing going into this version of Donkey Kong on the GB you might assume it is just a port of the NES game. The first 4 levels all point to that being true but that is when it flips the script and DK captures Pauline again. Mario follows and along the way it becomes more of a puzzle platformer with new items like the bridge block. As you might assume it allows the player to create a temporary bridge for Mario to run along. Even later stages add in switches that will flip platforms and do other things help and hinder progress.

Gameplay wise Mario controls just like he did in the original release yet now he has a handstand. It looks like doing a handstand jump will let him get a bit higher than a normal one. Could be something they expect the player to use a lot later on in the game. Every 4 levels DK comes back to stop mario from continuing. The mid point levels just task Mario with making it to the top of the level by dodging attacks. Yet the boss sections may task him will throwing items at DK to obtain victory.

Earthworm Jim really didn’t want to start. After cleaning the contacts a bunch it didn’t seem like they were dirty but it eventually started up. Ecco may have been weird but the level of bizarreness this game goes to is another whole level of crazy. Starring an earthworm named Jim who found a power suit that allows him to take on a rogues gallery of space animals. The game starts off with a bang by flinging a cow off into space for no real reason other than setting the tone pretty quickly. As a side scrolling shooter the game does a good job of using Jim’s different skills to beat different bosses. Instead of just shooting everything they require the player to knock crates into the first boss and the 2nd one required some dodging skills. The mini game racing Psycrow wasn’t as hard as my memories told me it would be.To make up for that the insanely long underwater bubble section is still annnoying hard.

Once again I’ll state that the Ecco series is such a strange and hard set of games to play through. After the last game Ecco saved all his friends and defeated the race of aliens. Now he has time to travel through atlantean rings that allow him to get to a faraway part of the ocean quickly. At this point I don’t know why he is doing that but it quickly tells me that the aliens are still up to their old tricks. The game quickly corrects the mistake of letting Ecco keep the ability of infinite air from the last game by dropping a rock on his head. Early on the main gameplay loop appears to be about collecting crystals to unlock the next area. I did like how they decided to ease the player into crystal collecting by letting another dolphin tell Ecco to “DO IT.” Took me a bit to figure out that he wanted me to rhythmically echo the crystal to dislodge it.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but LJN actually made a good game? I’m talking about the NES version first which is a platformer. It still has a few annoying points like a power up that makes you go super fast which just ends up running one of the dummies into a enemy. Plus if you ever literally lose you head the controls get reversed till you end up picking up a power up. Yet the rest of the game is more than fair and the platforming feels good. The stun attacks you can do allow the player to run past enemies whenever you don’t have any oil to attack them. I assume this came out at the same time as the Crash Dummies CGI short they released with a bunch of merchandise As for the Game Gear game it is just a assortment of boring mini games that quickly repeat. Most of them don’t control that well and they don’t last very long.

Knowing how to deal with every enemy is the only way anyone will be able to beat any mission in Jurassic Park Part 2. Raptors that constantly jump at you or the perfectly placed flamethrower units will easily decrease your life bar. Quick reaction time will also be needed to make unexpected jumps in chase sequences. Really I think they may have spent all their money on the intro to this game. It has some smooth animation along with voice acting. As for the gameplay it feels like a 8 way shooter although you can choose between nonlethal and lethal weapons. Because killing to many dinosaurs would obviously go against what the crew of Jurassic Park is all about. By the way one of the missions is to blow up a volcano that has a ton of Raptor eggs in it.

Just what I didn’t want to see another game with my least favorite gameplay mechanic.Mowgli can’t just finish a level the normal way nooo. He must collect 10 random diamonds that are spread throughout the level. After collecting them all I just couldn’t will myself to continue onward. The gameplay is fine and the 8bit musical versions of some of the songs from the movie is great.

The first game to impress me on the graphic style alone. Being able to recreate the hand drawn style of the movie so well isn’t something you’ll see much of on the SNES. Too bad I can’t seem to get past the 2nd level. I don’t think that is because they made it hard I just wasn’t able to figure the correct timing on the jump during the autoscrolling parts. When I was playing the normal platforming level it felt really good. To bad I didn’t get deeper in since I know the stampede level was really impressive when I first played this game.

The only basketball game I’ve ever enjoyed playing. Which isn’t too surprising since it is the only one I’ve ever played. Simulating the real sport doesn’t interest me much. The over the top crazy version of everyday sports is more my style. Who cares about rules when it is possible to push players and dunk the basketball while being on fire. The constant struggle to stay on top may be artificially created sometimes but it does make a much more compelling match overall.

So I do think this game taught me some basic history lessons when I first played it. It has a few neat facts per time period Mario goes to. Why is Mario traveling through time you ask? Well Bowser has captured Yoshi in his art museum. He has given up capturing princesses and instead wishes to torture Mario by making him go to random time periods and replace the missing item he took.

The game itself is an odd amalgamation of different Mario mechanics throughout the years. At one point the player will need to hit bricks like you're back in the arcades playing Mario Bros and then a few seconds later you’ll be using a spin jump similar to Super Mario World. The sometimes vague nature of the items Mario gets can make it tough figure out which time period he must go to. For example the torch may make you think about the statue of liberty but the real answer is the first Olympics.

LJN didn’t even try to tell a cohesive story. The intro just begins with Carnage breaking out of jail and randomly teaming up with a few other villains for no real reason. Spider-Man then beats up a bunch of street punks till he gets overwhelmed and gets saved by Cloak n Dagger. I assume this is following the plot of a arc in a comic book but the cutscenes are so short it doesn’t work very well. Action wise it is a okay beat em up that has a few odd hitboxes like the one on Doppleganger. If you get far enough Venom gets unlocked as a playable character but he feels weaker than SM thanks to how slow his moves come out.

I had to check to make sure but MMV on Game Boy was a unique game with it’s own set of new robot masters. So my memory was not faulty. A new alien race of robots named Stardroids have decided to destroy earth. It is up to Mega Man with his new Mega Punch and his new robot cat Tango to take down this new threat and save the world one more time.

As a Mega Man game this has all the usual mechanics with a heavy dose of spikes and pits scattered throughout each level. They do mix up how E tanks work with the additional element of collecting little cans that eventually form one can. P chips are also scattered around each level to allow Mega Man to collect them and then use them to buy power ups. I always liked how the bosses in this one were named after planets. They seem like a tougher threat thanks to the fact that the mega buster didn’t work on them. Yet I really don’t understand how shooting a arm is tougher than a plasma blast.

Who needs real Soccer when you’ve got a version with Mega Man in it. Although the back and forth battle with no real goal for a very long time can still happen even with the additional element of the power shot. But since it is possible to blast the goalie out of the way with a electric charged ball you can have a game with a ton of points as well. Other than being a well done Soccer game it still has a few nice touches like including a boss selection menu in the tournament mode. Also I love how this game actually has a story. Dr Light decides to turn Megaman into a better Soccer player after it was apparent that Dr Wily's latest plan was to make his robot masters blow up stadiums.

The basic design of this game seems to be made as an introduction to fighting games. For the age range that the Power Rangers were aimed at that makes sense. As for the game it only has two attack buttons. A light and fierce attack along with about 3 special moves per ranger/megazord. I didn’t expect to see any changed moves in this fighter but it does have a few. Story wise this game doesn’t do much. Rita just sends a selection of monsters from the show at the power rangers till you win. Overall it seems to be a competent basic fighting game.

So Namco had to follow up one of the best arcade games of all time by turning it into a adventure game. At the time I rather enjoyed this game. Visually it was impressive with a lot of color. But I didn’t enjoy it enough to actually finish it. Seeing all the ways Pac Man fails when walking down the street is rather amusing. The way the player interacts with him is via a slingshot. Is Pac Man doing something stupid? Then just mack him in the head. To much abuse will make him mad which makes him more likely to harm himself. At least I can say this is a very unique way to bring back Pac Man.

Reboots even happened during the SNES area. Activision tried to bring Pitfall back with very little success. In this game you will play as Pitfall Harry Jr who must rescue his Dad from some some hidden evil within the Mayan jungle. They call back to Pitfall a few times with different enemies and the fact that Jr’s heath bar is a alligator. The gameplay feels fine other than when fighting the jaguar boss.If you go in trying to dodge every attack it just ends up taking way too many hits. Then they follow that up with two at once.

Like before this is the board game now with a few extra animations during battle. The only variation this time is that during arcade battle it is left up to the player to fire accurately instead of leaving it up to rolling the dice. Which lets the player who has more skill at hitting targets get the win instead of random luck. Either way you decide how to play the goal remains the same. Conquer the world!

The only way to play Sonic 3 is to have S&K locked on to it. After all they were one big game at one point till Sega decided to split them into two. The obvious benefit that locking both games together is that you get a new playable character Knuckles. He even has alternate paths that he must go down thus giving the player new areas to explore along with new bosses. The story continues into S&K once the player reaches the end of the Launch Base zone.

As for me revisiting these games I realized that my old skills have returned and that I’ve actually improved. Sections that I once thought were hard are now easy. For example I can actually collect most of the chaos emeralds without breaking a sweat. Playing a ton of old games in a roll is paying off.

I have a lot of memories of playing Sonic 3 but almost all of them end around the carnival night zone. Not having access to the internet meant that I was stuck on the silly cylinder puzzle. Even during this revisit I forgot that I didn’t need to jump. Sonic & Knuckles had the opposite effect on me. The first few levels just seemed uninspired and slow so I never got too far into it. I kinda feel the same now. The pace of the first few levels seems a lot slower than the intro to S3.

Huh I just realized that every early bomberman plot can be summed up in one sentence. A evil group of Bombermen/women come to take over planet Bomber and it is up to Bomberman to save the day. Not that it matters since multiplayer has always been the reason to play any of these games. I noticed that the frame rate during boss battles goes down a lot making Bomberman feel like he is really slow. They must have put all the time into multiplayer because it runs insanely good compared to the single player missions.

Man a turn based Godzilla game turned out to be a much more enjoyable game than I could have imagined. The EDF forces have been able to control Godzilla to take down other monsters. Right after fighting King Ghidorah a new alien menace appears and sends a selection of Toho monsters to stop Godzilla. This game is split into two parts. The first is a top down view of Godzilla stomping around town. At this point the player needs to move around enemy placements and stomp on them. Along with collecting power ups to deal with the boss of each area. Random battles against spacecraft do happen but they don’t last very long to get annoying.

Once Godzilla gets to the monster it turns into a back and forth battle with each monster using different special moves like you're playing a JRPG. Godzilla has to punch the enemy to get the prompt to appear. Which just rotates depending on how much he backs up. The more he backs up the better the attack skill might be. If only the enemy monster had to do this as well. Instead of a punch all they have to do is a instant dash attack that can make it rather unfair. Picking up items and knowing when to retreat is the key to winning.

Super Metroid is the game I always think of whenever speed running comes up. This is the game that refined the Metroid formula to something that was a lot more playable and fun. All they had to do was add a map to make a confusing mess into an explorer's paradise. Being able to aim in every direction easily with the L R buttons was also a nice addition. Collecting a bunch of items is still the main goal and the main delight I get from this game. Along with using the many items to beat down bosses and maneuver around the world. Overall it holds up well thanks to it having the tools to make it a timeless game. Even the music fits the visuals of this game so well.

The first half of SROTJ can be summed up by Chewie spinning to blow up every boss. He is invincible when doing his special spin move and it does a sizeable amount of damage before it runs out. Out of the 3 Super Star Wars games this one that really doesn’t try to follow the movie sometimes. Like the first Wicket stage on Endor has him fighting the torture droid from Jabba's palace for no real reason. The level of difficulty is similar to Super Star Wars so it is fairly easy to beat if you’ve beaten that game before. Although the final battle with the emperor will test your luck stat more than if you dodged his attacks. Plus the Death Star 2 escape goes on for way too long. Yet overall THQ managed to create a fun trilogy of video games.

For a game that seems to be all about Taz escaping from mars that only takes about 5 minutes. Taz’s main skill is spinning but a pickup will allow him to spit out iron balls. Early on they use his spin in a few unique ways like a wall jump or the ability to dig through dirt. Along with just being able to spin all the around the room which is put to good use in the first boss fight. To bad the difficulty spikes early on in 2-2 with a giant tunneler chasing Taz through the entire level. They must have known it was annoying since they give the player an extra life at the start of the level.

I don’t understand why they didn’t call this Tom and Jerry The Movie like the Game Gear game from last year. This tries to follow the plot of the movie a lot more. With the second level of the game being set in the building that gets demonished similar to how it gets destroyed in the movie. As a platformer it does its job adequately. Yet they overdid it with the amount of items that will try to kill Tom. Every few seconds something new will pop up to try to deal damage. It left me feeling overwhelmed so I didn’t get too far into it.

I’ve never seen the movie this game is based on. Going by the health meter I would think it stars a time traveling cyborg wizard who must defeat an evil Warlock. LJN must have known most players wouldn’t get very far on one life so once you get past the first level and use a password they give the player 3 full restores. Gameplay wise you get access to a orb that can be sent around the screen to defeat enemies along with the ability to cast magic missile. The level designs and the amount of hits each level could take once again left me unimpressed.

If you need a good character platformer in the 80/90’s you could always count on Capcom. They’ve made so many at this point it must have been secondhand nature for them to create this one. It even has 5 playable characters although they aren’t super complicated. Each one has a melee and a special attack. Each level makes use of their special ability to compete it as well. Wolverine can climb up walls with his claws or in the case of Cyclops he can blast flying enemies out of the sky with his optic blast. Unlike most of Capcom’s NES output you will need to get really good at beating up foes without getting hit to much. Health refills are a rarity and you’ll most likely need most of it to beat the boss.

One last hurrah for the NES with this sequel to Star Tropics. The name must not mean much since if you just glanced at the box art you might think this is just called Zoda’s Revenge. This game picks up shortly after the end of the last game where Mike blew up Zoda’s space ship and saved Mica. Now a mysterious book takes Mike throughout time to collect Tetris pieces and must face off with a alternate timeline Zoda.

The best way to describe the game play is that it is a lot like Zelda but you can jump. Mike likes to jump a lot since he must jump into the next screen every time. His jump will always travel 1 square so unless you miss time it you’ll never have to worry about the many instant death pits that await you throughout this game. Each new time period will have a few new areas and dungeons to explore. The overall narrative has a comical tone as well.

What can I glean from this year? Well liking arcade sports games is most likely a notable point. Up till NBA Jam sports game were mostly something I rarely played for more than a few minutes. To bad that becomes quite localized to just what Midway was doing at this time other than a few baseball games. Come back next time to see the introduction of a new competitor and to travel to the small town of Onett.

In case you missed my last post check out last week's retrospective via this link. VGR 1993.