Tag Archives: Lyndsey Hicks

Chuck Rock — Issue 48

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Mediocre pre­his­toric origins
Dinosaur plat­form­ing mechan­ics does no favors

For what­ev­er rea­son, I used to be enam­ored with Chuck Rock. Maybe it was the col­or­ful graph­ics, or it was the “charm­ing” plat­form­ing. What­ev­er it was, it isn’t here in mod­ern gam­ing and with crit­i­cal hind­sight now, I can safe­ly say it should have rolled back under the rock it slith­ered from.

There isn’t much to the thread­bare bedrock of Chuck Rock. You, Chuck, are a pre­his­toric meat­head who isn’t capa­ble of more than a few words and grunts. You’re tasked with retriev­ing your kid­napped wife, Ophe­lia, from your love rival, Gary. You tra­verse through six stages, gut bump­ing dinosaurs and oth­er crea­tures, lift­ing heavy rocks to solve puz­zles and eat­ing var­i­ous foods to replen­ish your health. Occa­sion­al­ly, you’ll fight a boss who tries to keep you from your beloved and eat you. Just about every­thing is hos­tile and there are many nat­ur­al obsta­cles threat­en­ing you on the journey. 


It seems, how­ev­er, that no one men­tioned that the actu­al game­play was the real threat here. For starters, noth­ing does any­thing well. Chuck is lethar­gic and aim­less with­out a true sense of pur­pose. I get it, he’s a cave­man, but that gim­mick falls flat fair­ly fast. He’s a chore to con­trol in a hop ‘n’ bop that’s aping Super Mario World, and it’s aping the ter­ri­ble parts while try­ing to be cute. 

While the graph­ics are nice, know­ing what’s a haz­ard and what is use­ful isn’t the eas­i­est to dis­cern. Some items blend well, and some ene­mies look like they could be help­ful items. It’s a shame con­sid­er­ing the graph­ics are clean and deeply hued with a com­ic book ink feel. Chuck has a nice sprite and match­es well with the con­cept as do the dinosaurs. How­ev­er, while they look nice, noth­ing nice can be said about the sound­track. It’s monot­o­nous and bor­ing, and there’s noth­ing that stands out. It’s bor­ing and goofy, much like the game­play and the con­cept, which does noth­ing to endear any­one look­ing for a nice sol­id ear­ly Super Nin­ten­do or Gen­e­sis platformer.

What we have here is a fail­ure to cap­i­tal­ize on an estab­lished plat­former. Mario set the stan­dard a year ear­li­er with the excel­lent stan­dard-bear­er Super Mario World. Core should have tak­en a look at that and emu­lat­ed what they saw. They did­n’t, and we’re stuck with some­thing that, while cute, is nigh unplayable in some spots and a chore in oth­ers. Let’s be glad that with a bet­ter dis­cern­ing eye, I learned to leave some games in the Stone Ages.

New Super Mario Bros. DS — Issue 47

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Stomp­ing step stone

New Super Mario Bros. DS a good tri­al run

Now, y’all know I love me some Mario. I’m a Mario girl and have been for a long time. A whole issue devot­ed to him and his exploits aside, there are few main­line Mario games that I haven’t played and enjoyed. As a con­nois­seur on all things Mario, his leap to 3D was not one of my favorite things to expe­ri­ence because of the sur­prise con­di­tion of motion sick­ness. So, imag­ine my hap­pi­ness when the series took the side­step to start pro­duc­ing 2D games again. Nin­ten­do’s first entry, New Super Mario Bros., was a warm-up if not a prac­tice ses­sion for some­thing greater.

The sto­ry starts pleas­ant­ly enough with Bows­er kid­nap­ping Princess Peach for the mil­lionth time. It’s stan­dard fare for Mario games at this point and it’s ser­vice­able enough because that’s what you’re sup­posed to do in Mario games: save the princess. But there’s some­thing dif­fer­ent here: a new­er style of graph­ics and play mechan­ics to whet your appetite for that “new” in the title. The game looks clean­er and brighter as com­pared to the last 2D out­ing — Super Mario World for the SNES — and Mario is more defined. Yes, you’re still in the Mush­room King­dom but it looks new­er. The way you play is also new. Mar­i­o’s get­ting around a lot bet­ter in mod­ern times and it start­ed here with a new butt stomp, wall jump, triple jump and new pow­er-ups in the Mini Mush­room, Mega Mush­room and the Blue Koopa Shell. These pow­er-ups are wel­come addi­tions to the Mario reper­toire and are fun to use.

My main gripe comes from the new mechan­ics, how­ev­er. While I love that Mario moves well, some­times he moves almost too well. I had the same issue here as I did with the lat­er Wii ver­sion: Mario slides around entire­ly too much. I have to keep in the back of my mind to under­com­pen­sate and over­cor­rect with run­ning and jump­ing move­ments con­stant­ly, and it’s a bit much to keep up with while try­ing to play well. When I want Mario to stop run­ning, it should be instant­ly. There should­n’t be extra frames of stop­ping. Also, some of the jumps don’t feel as clean as they should if we’re bas­ing it on the known Mario stan­dard. It’s all a lit­tle too loosey-goosey for my lik­ing and makes clean play a lit­tle bit more of a chore than I’d care to do. Lat­er entries have cleaned this up, but it’s obvi­ous here and I can cut it some slack because it has been fixed. Just know that it’s part of the “new” experience.

New Super Mario Bros. has the Mario charm the series is known for as well. It’s fun to play and dis­cov­er new secrets and see the new con­cepts work out in a series that puts in the work to inno­vate and stay rel­e­vant. This first game was the step­ping stone for the phe­nom­e­nal New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and you can clear­ly see where it’s going in terms of the total pack­age. It’s not an insult to say this was the prac­tice run and that prac­tice makes per­fect, espe­cial­ly if you’re New Super Mario Bros., and you’re com­pared to oth­er main­line Mario games, and you sell 30 mil­lion copies as the best-sell­ing DS game of all-time. Clear­ly, this is a mega Mario hit and good start­ing point for the 2D throw­back of the franchise.

Bust-A-Move 2 — Issue 47

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Bub­ble Bob­ble Part Deux

Bust-A-Move gets down again in sequel

Long ago, bub­ble pop­ping took hold of my inter­est, right about the time I start­ed get­ting hair on my chest and some sense acquired when it came to good qual­i­ty video games. And would­n’t you know it, my late great mama — the dear­ly depart­ed GI Mama — also divined that she was a fan of the bub­ble-pop­ping non­sense that I’d brought home for my Super Nin­ten­do. Alas, my tastes had to grow so we looked for more bub­ble-pop­ping non­sense and found there was a sequel or two to the mad­ness. What apro­pos popped up was Bust-A-Move 2.

Now, let’s not get it twist­ed: This is the same old Bust-A-Move you’re used to play­ing if bust­ing bub­bles is your thing. Noth­ing is dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than the for­mu­la estab­lished in the orig­i­nal game: You pop clus­ters of like-col­ored bub­bles in an effort to clear estab­lished puz­zles. This basic premise was set up in the first game for the SNES and it has­n’t changed, no mat­ter the iter­a­tion. But what has changed some­what is the pre­sen­ta­tion. In this ver­sion, there is an illu­mi­nat­ed map puz­zle path that your char­ac­ter can choose, and deci­sions have to be made to get to the end puz­zle. The deci­sion to include a vis­i­ble path struc­ture is a nice step for­ward, but still needs some pay­off to be a gamechanger. 

Slight­ly dif­fer­ent yet famil­iar are the graph­ics. Bust-A-Move 2 has­n’t real­ly changed all that much in the looks depart­ment. There are some new graph­ics for the back­grounds dur­ing puz­zles, the char­ac­ters are more defined and the bub­bles them­selves are more crisp and deep­er hued to pop but that’s about it. It looks OK for an N64 puz­zle game, but there are oth­ers out there doing a lot more with the same con­sole resources, such as Mag­i­cal Tetris Challenge.

The sound­track is a lit­tle more bub­bly than the orig­i­nal but has a lit­tle less charm than the first game. The songs are slight­ly catchy, but not near­ly as mem­o­rable as the first game’s 16-bit organ-inspired schtick. How­ev­er, what you’ll real­ly notice that’s dif­fer­ent is the addi­tion of voic­es. Now, your char­ac­ter and the oppo­nents make a lit­tle noise when they achieve a com­bo. It’s cute, even with the shrill squawk­ing that shows up in the menu.

But let’s be hon­est, what you came here for was to learn if the puz­zle game­play is up to the stan­dard estab­lished by the first game. Yes, it is, and here’s why: Not much changed. No crazy weird mechan­ics shoe­horned in, no mis­steps in how the bub­bles bank or strange con­cepts cob­bled togeth­er (aside from the sticky plat­forms that inex­plic­a­bly start show­ing up halfway through the sto­ry mode) make appear­ances here. You can be rest assured that it’s the Bust-A-Move that we all know and love.

My beloved late GI Mama once declared Bust-A-Move a cheat­ing game while I was mol­ly whop­ping her in a ver­sus mode run. She said she’d see me in the sequel. Well, the sequel here is just enough jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to wait for that rematch in heav­en when my time comes. It’s noth­ing new but then again, some­times stick­ing with the estab­lish­ment is the best idea when it comes to bub­bles part deux.

Capcom Fighting Collection — Issue 47

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Give this col­lec­tion a fight­ing chance

Cap­com tends to tread a lot of the same ground these days. Whether it’s “get­ting back to their roots” with Street Fight­er’s mod­ern ver­sions or return­ing to the past with a lot of upgrad­ed col­lec­tions, Cap­com sure has a way of remind­ing you that, yes, they made Street Fight­er and a bunch of oth­er fight­ing games. The ques­tion is do we care? Yes and no, if this cur­rent col­lec­tion is to be judged.

I will admit that, despite being a strict Mor­tal Kom­bat old head, I am inclined to speak up about my favorite genre in fight­ing games and how it relates to Cap­com. This col­lec­tion, filled to the brim with noth­ing but Cap­com fight­ers, aims to show that Cap­com had some hits and mem­o­rable prop­er­ties. Fight­ing Col­lec­tion fea­tures 10 entries: Vampire/Darkstalkers 1–3, Vam­pire Hunter 2, Vam­pire Sav­ior 2, Cyber­bots: Full Met­al Mad­ness, WarZard/Red Earth, Hyper Street Fight­er II: The Anniver­sary Edi­tion, Super Gem Fight­er Mini Mix/Pocket Fight­er and Super Puz­zle Fight­er II Tur­bo, with the North Amer­i­can or Japan­ese ver­sions avail­able for play. In all cas­es, these are arcade rom ver­sions gath­ered togeth­er in one spot and you can freely switch between them on free play. Col­lec­tion-wise, this is a top-tier pack­age for those who love fight­ing games made by Cap­com. Main­stream mon­ey mak­er that’s still around today? That’s Hyper Street Fight­er II. Obscure weird fight­er that no one even knows that Cap­com made it? Take your pick from Cyber­bots and WarZard. Cutesy, chibi fight­er that unabashed­ly mocks its mak­er? Puz­zle Fight­er and Pock­et Fight­er have that on lock. Defunct series that should still be a thing, but Cap­com does­n’t pay atten­tion? All of the Vam­pire you can pos­si­bly shake a stick at sat­is­fies that require­ment. There is lit­er­al­ly some­thing for every­one here. But the ques­tion is, do you want it, espe­cial­ly now that you know what’s avail­able here? As ear­li­er, yes and no.

While the pre­sen­ta­tion is top-notch, the actu­al assort­ment of the games involved is a mixed bag. Gen­tle read­ers, I just com­piled and cre­at­ed an entire issue devot­ed to Vam­pire (Edi­tor’s note: That’d be Issue 46. Go down­load it now if you haven’t.) and its inner work­ings and the his­to­ry behind the series. Know­ing that, please explain to me why I have Vam­pire burnout and why I had it before I did that issue because of this col­lec­tion. Cap­com does this song and dance every sin­gle time Vam­pire is whis­pered some­where by some unsus­pect­ing gamer who loves the series and wants to see it once more have its day in the sun. I wrote an entire col­umn in that pre­vi­ous issue dis­cussing the need for a Vam­pire revival — a new game, not an old rehash — and how we were nev­er going to get that because Cap­com does the series dirty constantly. 

Well, would­n’t you know it, Cap­com pulled a skunk out of their hat by includ­ing all of the Vam­pire games here. It’s like they said, “Well, you asked for more Vam­pire. Here, be sat­is­fied that we released all of them final­ly in North Amer­i­ca and shut up.” You know, I’m slight­ly hap­py but I’m more offend­ed than any­thing else. Because, as you should have read by now gen­tle read­er, Cap­com is nev­er going to give us a new Vam­pire game with­out there being some weird­ness attached. And because this col­lec­tion sold “OK,” — not great, just OK — you know we aren’t get­ting a new game. Because it did­n’t set the world on fire in sales does­n’t mean the demand isn’t there. But I digress. Every­thing else in this col­lec­tion has been released in some way, shape or form in either region, so it was­n’t nec­es­sary for their inclu­sion, either. 

What I would have pre­ferred to see are Rival Schools, Project Jus­tice, Star Glad­i­a­tor and Plas­ma Sword. These are defunct Cap­com series that they also like to act like they did­n’t cre­ate. Rival Schools and Project Jus­tice are espe­cial­ly egre­gious because while they’ve been port­ed to PlaySta­tion Net­work, we haven’t got­ten a full, unal­tered port of either game. A mod­ern trans­la­tion of the board game and sim­u­la­tion mode in both games is not that hard, but I digress again because we know we are nev­er get­ting it. It’s a shame because this col­lec­tion as pulled togeth­er in 2022 could have used some bet­ter curation.

While I love Cap­com fight­ing games, I’m OK about this col­lec­tion. It’s nice to have these in a mod­ern pack­age for mod­ern con­soles but I’m not enthused about the behind-the-scenes fool­ish­ness that could have been avoid­ed with bet­ter curat­ing on Cap­com’s part. There are some heavy hit­ters that could have been includ­ed imme­di­ate­ly that would have made it a bet­ter pack­age, and the extras includ­ed could have been bet­ter also. How­ev­er, it’s not a ter­ri­ble pack­age and is infi­nite­ly use­ful and valu­able to the fight­ing game pop­u­la­tion so it’s not a total wash. Cap­com could col­lect bet­ter, though.

Pokemon Puzzle League — Issue 46

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Poké­mon Puz­zle League catch­es the best traits of Tetris Attack

The zenith of Poké­mon came rather star­tling and ear­ly, some­where in the heady days of 2000. After all, by then, Poké­mon was in the zeit­geist as a video game and cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. You could stick your arms out in any direc­tion and hit Poké­mon prod­ucts. So, it goes then, that the video game sphere received its share of the wealth after the ini­tial fer­vor wound down. At this point, how­ev­er, the Nin­ten­do 64 was on its last legs and received a few games bear­ing the Pock­et Mon­ster license. Out of that smoke arose Poké­mon Puz­zle League.

Poké­mon Puz­zle League isn’t a ter­ri­ble use of the license. Sure, it’s gra­tu­itous Poké­mon every­where, but it’s not a bad puz­zling game in gen­er­al. The premise is sim­ple: Take what you already know about Tetris Attack and slap Poké­mon on it. That’s all Poké­mon Puz­zle League is, and since Tetris Attack isn’t ter­ri­ble either, Puz­zle League ben­e­fits from a sol­id foun­da­tion. The mechan­ics remain the same except there’s Poké­mon involved, and the Poké­mon don’t real­ly affect any­thing beyond aesthetics. 

Poké­mon Puz­zle League feels like a Tetris Attack clone ought to feel. The puz­zling mechan­ics are tight and quick move­ment is clean and pre­cise, even with the wonky N64 con­troller. This is one of the first Tetris Attack clones pro­duced, but it car­ries on the tra­di­tion of tight, good puz­zling game­play well. There is a boun­ty of modes to play, includ­ing stan­dard 2D and 3D line clear­ing, a 1P sta­di­um mode and ver­sus. The vari­ety makes for a good rol­lick­ing time and fills up play­time with qual­i­ty offer­ings. And, I’d be remiss if I did­n’t say some­thing about the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el. If you’re not pre­pared and don’t under­stand the mechan­ics of Tetris Attack, you will get wrecked even on the easy lev­el. The AI does not play around and while it’s part of the charm of Puz­zle League, it can be daunt­ing to have to replay lev­els mul­ti­ple times on Nor­mal or even Easy dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el because the AI caught a lucky break.

But what you came here for, let’s be hon­est, is the Poké­mon pre­sen­ta­tion. Thank­ful­ly, this is the draw. It’s a buf­fet of Poké­mon-dom, with all of the ani­me favorite char­ac­ters thrown in as well as the main gym lead­ers and Elite Four from the games at high­er dif­fi­cul­ty lev­els. The Poké­mon rep­re­sent­ed here are all using the 4Kids voice­work and the ani­me art­style, so hope­ful­ly you like the ani­me enough that you don’t mind that it’s based on the Poké­mon Orig­i­nal Series gen­er­a­tions. The sound­track is appro­pri­ate­ly Poké­mon, which means the music is good. There are a few bangers on the sound­track that make it a must down­load, includ­ing most of the Team Rock­et themes, Lorelei’s theme, and Pro­fes­sor Oak’s theme. Despite this being car­tridge-based, Puz­zle League does­n’t skimp on the sound quality. 

Poké­mon Puz­zle League is a joy to learn and get seri­ous about even if you remote­ly like Tetris Attack. It’s got the Poké­mon aes­thet­ic from the suc­cess­ful ani­me and hand­held games, a nice Poké­mon-cen­tric sound­track and a fun, chal­leng­ing puz­zle mechan­ic that’s beg­ging to be explored. If you love Poké­mon and puz­zle games, cast your Mas­ter ball out to catch this one.

Darkstalkers Resurrection — Issue 46

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Dark­stalk­ers com­bo a fun,
fright­ful fight

Duo of Vam­pire Hunter, Sav­ior offered in package

At this point, we know what Dark­stalk­ers is and isn’t. My wor­ried brow of con­cern isn’t with get­ting a new one but more with the re-releas­es of the tril­o­gy of games and the two sup­ple­men­tal games released as upgrades. We know what to expect when it comes to Dark­stalk­ers, but as occa­sion­al com­pi­la­tions are released, we have to take a crit­i­cal look at whether it’s worth your time and cur­ren­cy to engage in Cap­com’s release the Krak­en in the form of remakes strategy.

Dark­stalk­ers Res­ur­rec­tion aims to do what Cap­com’s pre­vi­ous release in Mar­vel Origins

Vam­pire Sav­ior: Mor­ri­g­an vs. Jedah

did: Release two games in the series as start­ing points to get you to explore more. Res­ur­rec­tion con­sists of two games: Night War­riors: Dark­stalk­ers’ Revenge and Dark­stalk­ers 3. Both games are includ­ed in their entire­ty as Amer­i­can arcade ports emu­lat­ed on disc with extras added for the home release. Much as with Mar­vel Ori­gins, there’s online play and gallery unlocks from chal­lenges added. Every­thing has been giv­en a fresh coat of paint with new­er art and visu­als, which means a lot con­sid­er­ing Dark­stalk­ers 3 was released in 1997. All of this results in a nice-look­ing, souped-up package. 

Vam­pire Hunter: Dono­van vs. Jon Talbain

The game­play is as clean as it ever was, and because it’s emu­lat­ed from the arcade ports, it’s bet­ter than any oth­er release that came before it with the excep­tion of the PlaySta­tion 2 Vam­pire Col­lec­tion. Every­thing works the way it should in terms of com­bos and Dark­stalk­ers’ noto­ri­ous­ly hard-to-do moveset. The moves land the way you want and there’s no lag. Not­ing that this is an accept­able port for high-lev­el com­pe­ti­tion, Res­ur­rec­tion hits the right spot in terms of playa­bil­i­ty. If you want­ed to know how Dark­stalk­ers played in the arcade with­out try­ing to emu­late it with MAME or Fight­cade, Res­ur­rec­tion is your answer.

There real­ly isn’t any­thing wrong with Res­ur­rec­tion, either. The only annoy­ing thing about the game is the fact that it did­n’t sell well. That isn’t the game’s fault, though. This is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound port of two fan­tas­tic fight­ing games that play well and work well in what they’re being asked to do: Be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a long-dead fight­ing fran­chise to intro­duce new­er folks to the Vampire/Darkstalkers scene. It’s done its job admirably with strong mechan­ics and gor­geous updat­ed visu­als. You can’t ask for more from a retro fight­ing game. This fan­tas­tic fight­ing fright fest deserves more respect for its abil­i­ty to shine 25 years after its last release and should scare up a spot in your fight­ing game collection.

TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge — Issue 46

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Shred­der’s Revenge served hot in sequel

As a con­nois­seur of most things relat­ed to the Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles, I find that the first two movies, the comics and the first ani­mat­ed show are worth my time. In addi­tion to those men­tioned, cer­tain games are accept­able uses of my hard-earned scril­la. I am a dis­cern­ing fan, and my dol­lars and time are pre­cious. So, it is with great joy and ela­tion that I spread the word that TMNT games have recov­ered slight­ly from the Dimen­sion X por­tal that the fran­chise fell into and the lat­est game, Shred­der’s Revenge, is proof of this return to glory.

Con­ceived as a trib­ute game of sorts, Shred­der’s Revenge takes every­thing we found awe­some about TMNT II: The Arcade Game and TMNT IV: Tur­tles in Time and ramps up the awe­some lev­el. The sto­ry con­tin­ues Tur­tles in Time, which was a wise choice. The Tur­tles find Rock­steady and Bebop and their adja­cent vil­lain asso­ciates guard­ing Krang’s exoskele­ton head in var­i­ous loca­tions includ­ing Man­hat­tan and Dimen­sion X. Appar­ent­ly, Shred­der is alive and kick­ing again after being top­pled on top of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty in 1992. In 2022, he wants revenge for the Tur­tles stop­ping this par­tic­u­lar plot of may­hem of using Lady Lib­er­ty to take over the world. Because they’re used to Shred­der’s fool­ish­ness — bear in mind this is 1986 car­toon Shred­der, not com­ic book Shred­der who was­n’t a major vil­lain — the Tur­tles and their friends and fam­i­ly band togeth­er to stop the revenge plot once and for all.

Adding April O’Neil, Casey Jones and Splin­ter along­side the Tur­tles was a smart move. It’s almost incon­ceiv­able now that we were nev­er able to play as those three sup­port­ing char­ac­ters in a Tur­tles beat-’em-up before, and it has to be allowed in future games. Once you get going with a char­ac­ter cho­sen, the lev­el-up sys­tem is quick and easy to learn. And learn you will because there are so many ways to dis­patch Foot Clan sol­diers and oth­er ene­mies for points that work with­in the sys­tem. It’s almost too much to keep up with, espe­cial­ly in the heat of bat­tle where know­ing the cor­rect way to dis­patch a boss is impor­tant. Hav­ing some pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of Tur­tles in Time helps tremen­dous­ly, and there are in-game instruc­tions and a tuto­r­i­al, but it’s nigh over­whelm­ing. Though, to be fair, I’d rather have too much than too lit­tle. The game is giv­ing me a feast and thank­ful­ly, the con­trols are easy to grasp and clean as you romp through 16 gor­geous levels.

The game looks just as fan­tas­tic as well as it con­trols. The art imme­di­ate­ly dips into the nos­tal­gia of the orig­i­nal after­school show and had me hum­ming the super ’80s theme song. This is the area where that trib­ute comes into play. If you’re a fan of the show, you will love every­thing about how the game looks, feels, and sounds. Well, almost. 
While the sound­track is also fan­tas­tic, we can’t not men­tion the atro­cious remake of the theme song. Of all of the music cho­sen to remake, the theme show is the one track that you don’t mess with. It is a rev­er­ent piece of pop cul­ture his­to­ry and is sacred to most Tur­tle fans, includ­ing myself. My 42-year-old adult self knows the words by heart and has it in dig­i­tal form; it’s on that lev­el for me. So, hear­ing the theme butchered as it were in Shred­der’s Revenge had me tak­en aback. I was griev­ous­ly wound­ed but the soul still burns in this old Tur­tle girl. Because the rest of the sound­track is great ’80s cen­tric pop, tunes snatched direct­ly from the ear­ly sea­sons of the TV show, and beau­ti­ful voice­work from the orig­i­nal ani­mat­ed cast, I can let the remake theme slide, but it bet­ter not be in the sequel.

My only oth­er gripe here is the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el. Even on the eas­i­est dif­fi­cul­ty, there were a lot of arcade rip-off ten­den­cies going on. Tac­tics like ene­my AI gang­ing up on char­ac­ters with already low health, not-so-clean hits from off-screen ene­mies that you can’t see and los­ing health rather quick­ly ran as ram­pant as those Stone Sol­diers that Krang employed. Any lev­els involv­ing vehi­cles and fly­ing are impos­si­bly hard and feel designed to be annoy­ing­ly frus­trat­ing. Boss fights, I’m fine with; they’re sup­posed to be hard. But reg­u­lar lev­els beyond the first stage were like this on easy dif­fi­cul­ty, which is obnox­ious. It was like try­ing to play TMNT II: The Arcade Game all over again and watch­ing the cab­i­net steal my mon­ey out of my pock­et. It feels unfair and set up to be against the play­er, which is unfor­tu­nate. Know­ing that going into the expe­ri­ence now makes it a lit­tle eas­i­er to nav­i­gate but is a detraction. 

Despite a try-hard col­li­sion sys­tem that keeps it from obtain­ing leg­endary sta­tus, Shred­der’s Revenge is a nice love let­ter to old­er TMNT fans who were around for the orig­i­nal craze. The quirks are notice­able, but Shred­der’s Revenge tries real­ly hard in every oth­er area, and it suc­ceeds well. Let’s call it a Cow­abun­ga for now.

Harvest Moon (SNES) — Issue 45

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Farm­ing life begins with
SNES sim­u­la­tor classic

Leav­ing every­thing behind and tak­ing up the life of a farmer does­n’t seem to be half bad. Sure, it’s back-break­ing daunt­ing work with a large reser­voir of poten­tial fail­ure. But it’s hon­est work and high­ly sat­is­fy­ing. Or, at least that’s what Har­vest Moon wants you to believe. In a tale as old as video game time, the orig­i­nal farm­ing sim­u­la­tor wants you to live that life and suc­ceed, no mat­ter the cost.
Har­vest Moon’s orig­i­nal entry is the stark­est of all in the series. You, the name­less farmer, are tasked with rebuild­ing the fam­i­ly farm and prop­er­ty. There are ani­mals to raise, crops to nur­ture and sell, and — if you play your cards cor­rect­ly — a fam­i­ly to start. You have rough­ly a year to do this before your par­ents come back and judge your efforts. If you’ve suc­ceed­ed most­ly, you’re in the clear. If not, well, you’ve failed and it’s game over. This is the basis for the series that you see today in Har­vest Moon and Stardew Val­ley, and though most­ly unchanged in basis, it’s sim­ple and effective.
The depth comes in learn­ing the game sys­tem. Crop nur­tur­ing and ani­mal hus­bandry are not easy, but once you’ve got the nuance it’s a whole new world of prof­its. The con­trols are sim­ple to pick up and once you’ve built your­self up sta­mi­na-wise, the fruits of your labor are obvi­ous. There’s some­thing super sat­is­fy­ing about work­ing the land, plant­i­ng crops and car­ing for your ani­mals in a day’s work and then reap­ing the ben­e­fits. There is plan­ning involved also, which adds an extra lay­er of depth. Know­ing how to spend your day wise­ly — whether it be tend­ing to the farm or social­iz­ing in town — is impor­tant, and adds to the over­all experience. 
Part of that expe­ri­ence is the pre­sen­ta­tion, and it’s not bad for a SNES game. Giv­en that this is 16-bit, the sprites are bright and pop with the gor­geous SNES palette. Some areas are a lit­tle too brown but over­all, it’s a pret­ty game. The music is slight­ly monot­o­nous but it’s a lit­tle catchy so it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly grate the way you’d think hear­ing the same tune would for more than 20 min­utes of farm work and socializing.
Because this is the entry point to the mod­ern series, Har­vest Moon has work to do. Time — though not explic­it­ly shown on screen — runs too quick­ly. Also, the start­ing hand­i­cap of low sta­mi­na and mediocre tools is not fun. This does become eas­i­er in lat­er entries, but this frus­trat­ing mechan­ic began here and does not enhance the series in any way. 
Despite some frus­tra­tions with the game, it’s a nice, relax­ing start to a fun, quirky series. Mod­ern fea­tures may be a draw for the lat­er games, but don’t let the orig­i­nal fool you. There’s a won­der­ful life to be had even in the 16-bit starter.

Beetle Adventure Racing — Issue 45

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Adven­ture of a life­time races on the scene

Smooth with no chas­er. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is like a fine cognac: No filler, no BS. It’s just a fine rac­ing game fea­tur­ing the pop­u­lar-in-1999 redesigned Volk­swa­gen New Bee­tle. Like that cognac, it’s what you want in an expe­ri­ence, but you wish there was more at the end of the glass.
Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing, while short on sto­ry, is a rac­ing dream. There isn’t much to the sto­ry oth­er than you’re rac­ing against oth­er Bee­tle dri­vers on six var­ied tracks. There are sev­er­al modes includ­ing a time tri­al, cham­pi­onship and two-play­er duel, but that’s about it. You’re also rac­ing with only Bee­tles, though they vary in col­or with dif­fer­ent stats. There are two unlock­able Bee­tles, but that’s pret­ty much all there is in terms of rewards. The depth real­ly lies in the tracks and their nooks and cran­nies. There are a ton of secrets and short­cuts that help in the point-gath­er­ing modes or to shave time in the time tri­als, and that sort of makes up for the lack of every­thing else. Sort of.
While the rewards are sparse, the pre­sen­ta­tion is not. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing looks and plays won­der­ful­ly. The envi­ron­ments look great for a Nin­ten­do 64 game and real­ly make the game pop over­all. And it also plays well. The rac­ing is smooth and lithe, mak­ing for a sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence when tak­ing curves or final­ly land­ing a short­cut path.
Of spe­cial note is the sound­track. It’s only six tracks plus a few oth­er menu tunes, but this is a fan­tas­tic sound­track. The tracks work well with the rac­ing locales, and almost all of them are bangers. Our long­time favorite is Mount May­hem, the snow lodge moun­tain track. We’ve been bump­ing that as long as the game has been out in var­i­ous for­mats, and 24 years lat­er we con­tin­ue to do so. It’s that good and comes with high praise.
Our only caveat with Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is that the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el is slight­ly out of bal­ance. It could use some tweak­ing so that you see the lat­er rac­ing tracks a lit­tle more often. Giv­en that it’s hard to find some of the point box­es on the tracks and you need them in order to earn con­tin­ues, it should be eas­i­er to obtain for the lat­ter por­tions of the game.
Aside from the pun­ish­ing dif­fi­cul­ty, the game is prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect. There isn’t much to feast on, but when you can feast it’s among if not the best rac­ing game on the N64. It’s a heck of an adven­ture whether you’re a Bee­tle enthu­si­ast or not. V dub or bust.

Jet Grind Radio — Issue 45

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Jet Grind Radio sets cool standard

Bom­bas­tic yet cool. This is the dichoto­my you encounter in the atmos­phere of Jet Grind Radio. There’s noth­ing quite like it — except its sequel — and that’s a bless­ing because I don’t think the world could han­dle any­thing else. It’s quirky, futur­is­tic, stun­ning, and unde­ni­ably cool when you get down to it: Jet Grind Radio is the future.
Set in a futur­is­tic Tokyo, Jet Grind Radio fea­tures a wide cast of rollerblad­ing graf­fi­ti gangs vying for suprema­cy and strug­gling against an ego­ma­ni­a­cal mad­man and his con­glom­er­ate, which are attempt­ing to take over the world. The sto­ry­line serves its pur­pose but it’s the char­ac­ters that are the draw here. Each char­ac­ter — includ­ing the unlock­able — has an inter­est­ing look and sto­ry going on. They are the lifeblood, and it’s fun to learn about them and their motivations. 
While we’re lov­ing the char­ac­ters, let’s also give love to the art style that brings them to life. The art style is gor­geous and still holds up after 23 years. The graf­fi­ti cel-shad­ed look has aged well; graf­fi­ti nev­er fails to be awe­some and impact­ful, and Jet Grind Radio looks phe­nom­e­nal. It’s the first game to use this tech­nique, and it set the stan­dard in 2000 in terms of pre­sen­ta­tion. The back­grounds are also well done and inspire runs through the game. It’s clear­ly an ear­ly 2000s game, but that only por­tends good things about the Dream­cast and what it was capa­ble of.
And as good as the game looks, the graph­ics almost don’t hold a can­dle to the sound­track. This is one of the best sound­tracks ever done, and it will have you bop­ping while you’re run­ning around on inline skates. This is one of those sound­tracks that you put on while work­ing and you get some of your best work done. Funky and pop-cen­tric, the sound­track has so much going on the­mat­i­cal­ly that there’s bound to be some­thing for everyone. 
And in terms of appeal­ing to mass con­sump­tion, the con­trols are a com­mon denom­i­na­tor kind of sen­si­bil­i­ty. The imme­di­ate com­par­i­son here is Tony Hawk, which isn’t sur­pris­ing since the Hawk­man had just released his first game — Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater — a year ear­li­er to crit­i­cal acclaim. Jet Grind Radio does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly grind on Hawk’s coat­tails, but you’re bound to say to your­self at least once, “These con­trols sure feel famil­iar.” And you would­n’t be wrong. That’s a good thing, because it plays like ear­ly Tony Hawk, you know when it was good.
While every­thing is great in terms of pre­sen­ta­tion and con­trol, I’d be remiss in men­tion­ing that there is one both­er­some flaw with Jet Grind Radio. While the con­trols are eas­i­ly anal­o­gous to ear­ly Tony Hawk games, it was­n’t easy to pick up the game and know what’s going on imme­di­ate­ly. It’s a lit­tle too inac­ces­si­ble at first, like it’s ask­ing you to have some in-depth knowl­edge ahead of play­ing for the first time. You may not be famil­iar with the con­cepts the game is throw­ing at you, and it’s the game’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to ease you into the fray. Thank­ful­ly, the sur­round­ing game is so good that you’ll come back to get more in-depth with the trap­pings of Tokyo-to.
The Jet Grind series has last­ed into the mod­ern era with re-releas­es and a rumored reboot, and the orig­i­nal game details exact­ly why. Easy con­trols, var­ied modes, an engag­ing cast (love Pots, Piran­ha and Beat!) and pop­ping sound­track make for an imme­di­ate­ly unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence. Get in-line to get down with the fan­tas­tic Jet Grind Radio.