Category Archives: Retrograde

Legend of the Mystical Ninja — Issue 50

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Leg­end has it Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja ori­gin is great

The quirky nin­ja series had a rous­ing start on the Super NES

Every­one must start some­where, even video games. Even the most suc­cess­ful video game series have hum­ble begin­nings, where new ideas are brought to the table to estab­lish a hope­ful­ly suc­cess­ful series. So, it goes with one of my favorite series, Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. While it’s not super pop­u­lar here in the West, Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja opened the doors for the series to make an impres­sion on me in the late 1990s. It’s debat­able, though, if it cleared up the mys­tery sur­round­ing the appeal of the series for me.

Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is weird and anachro­nis­tic in every­thing that it does. Set in an alter­nate feu­dal Japan, Goe­mon and Ebisumaru (Dr. Yang and Kid Ying renamed in game) real­ize there are some strange hap­pen­ings going on in Oedo. After some inves­ti­ga­tion, they dis­cov­er that Princess Yuki has been kid­napped and they set out to res­cue her. Along the way, they meet up with an ally in fel­low nin­ja Yae, fight future ally Sasuke and trav­el to dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate loca­tions in Japan. This should sound famil­iar because it’s basi­cal­ly the plot of the excel­lent GI favorite Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. Swap some ele­ments and char­ac­ter names and you’ve got the basics of that game. 

But what sets it apart from some of the lat­er entries is the pre­sen­ta­tion. Leg­end, unlike Star­ring Goe­mon, is a side-scrolling affair. The health meter and the pur­chase of dam­age-negat­ing items are the same, but instead of being an over-the-shoul­der 3D romp, this plays more like The Leg­end of Zel­da: A Link to the Past. And that works well in its favor. The game looks nice and has charm. It’s bright and col­or­ful with big sprites and inter­est­ing ani­ma­tions. For an ear­ly Super Nin­ten­do title, you can’t go wrong with look­ing like a nice hop ‘n’ bop. The sound­track is suit­ably nice as well. It’s no Star­ring Goe­mon but it has a few decent tracks that will remind you of the sound the lat­er games are known for.


Because it’s like Link to the Past in looks, it’s a lot like that game in playstyle as well. The con­trols work well with the SNES lay­out, and it’s easy to get things going when you want to move around the play­field. My only gripe is that it’s a lit­tle hard to remem­ber which but­ton con­trols spe­cial moves. Oth­er­wise, it’s a stan­dard action plat­former for the SNES, which means it’s going to play clean­ly and make no fuss about its mechanics.
Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja is a decent West­ern begin­ning for the Goe­mon fran­chise. It has a lot of charm, it looks good, plays well and does­n’t for­get its roots. As the intro­duc­tion to the series in North Amer­i­ca, it made a good first impres­sion with its quirky sen­si­bil­i­ties and gave birth to a legend. 

Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master — Issue 50

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Shi­no­bi III a fine sendoff

I recent­ly delved into a game star­ring one of the GOATS in video game his­to­ry, Joe Musashi, with Shad­ow Dancer: The Secret of Shi­no­bi. Sega’s own mas­ter nin­ja is one of video game’s great­est pro­tag­o­nists who has earned his bones fight­ing crime and the low-lev­el hench­men belong to his great­est ene­my, the Neo Zeed orga­ni­za­tion. I will give Neo Zeed cred­it: Every time Joe beats the liv­ing day­lights out of them, they always come back want­i­ng all the nin­ja smoke and hands that they can eat, repeat­ing defeat after defeat. The noto­ri­ous crime syn­di­cate has returned with a strong sec­ond wind and a sin­is­ter plan to obtain their great revenge in Shi­no­bi III: Return of the Nin­ja Master.

After his lat­est bat­tle against the nefar­i­ous cult known as Union Lizard, Musashi aka “the Shad­ow Mas­ter” returned to Japan to recov­er and sharp­en his supe­ri­or tech­niques. While our hero trains in the moun­tains to acquire new skills, Neo Zeed has near­ly recov­ered near its pre­vi­ous lev­el. They’ve obtained more nefar­i­ous war­riors who are moti­vat­ed by penal­ty of death via the most bru­tal lead­ers of the group or rich­es and pow­er beyond com­pre­hen­sion via vic­to­ry over Musashi. With the world in per­il once more, our hero­ic nin­ja heads out to fight Neo Zeed hop­ing that this lat­est encounter will be the last with this crim­i­nal can­cer that threat­ens the world’s peace.


The graph­ics in Shi­no­bi III fol­low the pre­vi­ous design of oth­er games in the series. They have a bal­ance of nat­ur­al, rugged ter­rain with ele­ments of cur­rent indus­tri­al set­tings and futur­is­tic con­cepts in some stages. Bat­tles hap­pen in var­i­ous forests and caves through­out Japan in fight­ing with var­i­ous nin­jas and mer­ce­nar­ies to reach the lev­el boss. These stage range from dim-light­ed caves to open fields, a secret weapon fac­to­ry, a secret bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry, a lab devel­op­ing Gun­dam-type mecha with a trap-laden canyon lead­ing to a mas­sive air fortress (a first for a Shi­no­bi game). My only prob­lem is that while Sega was going for a fresh take on stage design, they used the same tem­plate with the excep­tion to the biol­o­gy lab and passed it off as arcade quality. 

The con­trols are sim­ple to use, but you will need to take time to mas­ter Joe’s new skills such as the Death Kick and Nin­ja Death Strike, which allows you to strike an ene­my out of range and deliv­er a fin­ish­ing blow with a sword. Though Joe has a myr­i­ad of oth­er attacks, they are all easy to use in the heat of bat­tle. Shi­no­bi, as a series, shows seri­ous growth in the con­trols as an action-adven­ture title. 

As much as I love the game, I have some dis­likes as well. Sega went with new­com­er com­posers Hiro­fu­mi Murasa­ki, Mori­hiko Akiya­ma and Masayu­ki Nagao to han­dle the game’s music. While accept­able, Yuzo Koshi­ro should have been used since he has the most expe­ri­ence devel­op­ing music that’s wor­thy of the Shi­no­bi name. The music was chop­py in some areas but still suit­able for the game. Anoth­er prob­lem I have is the sup­ply of shuriken that you must con­serve. By pay­ing so much atten­tion to main­tain­ing your sup­ply, you might miss oth­er cru­cial ele­ments and expose your­self to ene­mies unnec­es­sar­i­ly. Joe should have end­less shuriken to fight evil.

Shi­no­bi III: Return of the Nin­ja Mas­ter is a 16-bit swan song for nin­ja leg­end Joe Musashi. Although Sega has con­tin­ued the har­row­ing adven­tures of Joe and his descen­dants through games on numer­ous next-gen­er­a­tion con­soles, the Nin­ja Mas­ter is expect­ed to return some­time this year in var­i­ous projects. Though he’s not around promi­nent­ly right now, do not count on him stay­ing van­ished for long.

Goemon’s Great Adventure — Issue 50

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Lat­est, great­est adventure

Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture has always had the unfor­tu­nate posi­tion in gam­ing of com­ing after the excel­lent Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It can’t help but fol­low in the shad­ow of the game as its direct sequel, and it’s nev­er going to stand up to make itself the pre­mier entry in the series. What it does have going for it though are two things: Rar­i­ty and some improve­ments in areas where the oth­er entries struggled.

Based on real-life fig­ure Goe­mon Ishikawa, the tit­u­lar hero stays sav­ing the day in an alter­nate Edo with his allies Ebisumaru, Yae and Sasuke. In this tale, the gang wit­ness­es an Ebisumaru looka­like steal the Old Wise Man’s new dead-res­ur­rect­ing device and wreak hav­oc on the land. It’s a cute set­up and it does­n’t take much to get into the sto­ry of the two zany nin­jas. Where this entry excels is the much-improved inter­face. Though it seems less per­son­al and plot­ted out like Super Mario World with a world map, it’s a wel­come relief from the some­times-con­fus­ing lay­out of Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It’s nice to just choose a loca­tion on the map and go there with­out hav­ing to remem­ber how to get there.

Also improved are the mechan­ics. The biggest change in the game is arguably the switch from over-the-shoul­der view la Mario 64 back to a side-scroller in the vein of Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. Despite how jar­ring it may have seemed at first, even­tu­al­ly I came to love the fact that it’s slight­ly eas­i­er to move around and get a feel for the char­ac­ters than it was in Star­ring Goe­mon. Move­ment seems more sub­stan­tial and there’s no more fight­ing with the wonky cam­era that won’t cooperate. 

The way it looks is bet­ter also in Great Adven­ture. Every­thing is cleaned up and less polyg­o­nal, though some char­ac­ters retain that blocky look no mat­ter what. How­ev­er, the glow up is most notice­able in the envi­ron­ment. Edo looks fan­tas­tic, with the beau­ti­ful recre­ation of feu­dal Japan­ese archi­tec­ture stand­ing out the most. I was always impressed with the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja series in what it tried to do graph­i­cal­ly, and this is a sol­id-look­ing entry.

Just as good as the graph­ics is the sound. Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja, as a series, is known for its sub­lime sound­track and Great Adven­ture does­n’t dis­ap­point. We’ve cov­ered this in our review of the game’s tracks (Edi­tor’s Note: See Issue 39) for Beat.Trip.Game, and it’s so good it’s worth men­tion­ing mul­ti­ple times. 

Though it’s an improve­ment in most areas, there are some spots where it could be pol­ished a lit­tle more. Some of the trans­la­tion is rough and there are fre­quent gram­mar errors in the text. For a game that relies on text to get the point across, that’s too jar­ring and takes me out of the expe­ri­ence. Anoth­er gripe is that, while most of the mechan­ics are improved, some of the new mechan­ics — such as the pole vault — need some work. It’s not hard to do — once you fig­ure it out. The prob­lem is that it takes much too long to fig­ure out. If I have to watch a playthrough video to get the con­cept, it’s doing too much.
Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound and com­pe­tent entry in a much-loved series. Despite my ini­tial annoy­ance with it 25 years ago, it’s grown on me with anoth­er replay. While it’s not as great as the stel­lar Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon, it’s defin­i­tive­ly a wel­come entry in the series. One thing we’re going to do is let Goe­mon be great, and he achieves it with this sol­id entry in the franchise.

Samurai Shodown — Issue 50

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Samu­rai Shodown has mag­nif­i­cent origin

The leg­endary fight­ing game series has impres­sive start with SNES adaptation

Fight­ing games were built a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly back in the day. They were expect­ed to be an exact copy of the arcade ver­sion they were borne from, they need­ed to play just as well as their arcade par­ents, and they need­ed to set up the next arcade ver­sion. The Samu­rai Shodown series was no stranger to these expec­ta­tions. And it could rea­son­ably meet them with the Neo Geo arcade sys­tem. But the debut 16-bit ver­sion of the beloved Sam Sho is a dif­fer­ent tale of the tape.

Samu­rai Shodown tells the sto­ry of revenge wrought by the res­ur­rect­ed Amakusa in 1787 and 1788 as he sought to avenge his exe­cu­tion by the Shogu­nate in 1638. Amakusa made a deal with the demon lord Ambrosia and drew oth­er fight­ers to him. Now-famil­iar faces dot the cast: Naoko­ru­ru and Haohmaru (from Cap­com vs. SNK fame), Gal­ford, Char­lotte, Earth­quake, and Jubei. It’s a fight­ing game with an inter­est­ing cast and sto­ry based on a few real fig­ures in his­to­ry, so it’s bound to draw interest. 

How­ev­er, what should real­ly send you is the pre­sen­ta­tion. Samu­rai Shodown — as not­ed in our review of the 2019 remake (Edi­tor’s note: See Issue 39 for the review) — is one of the most beau­ti­ful fight­ing game series ever cre­at­ed. And while we ini­tial­ly heaped that praise on the mod­ern ver­sion, it also extends to the retro ver­sion as well. Begin­ning with the intro­duc­to­ry screen, Samu­rai Shodown does not dis­ap­point in the visu­als. The lush, beau­ti­ful graph­ics go a long way in set­ting the scene of the vio­lence and beau­ty of the Edo peri­od of Japan­ese his­to­ry. Sim­i­lar­ly, the sound­track does­n’t dis­ap­point, either. Every­thing about the pre­sen­ta­tion is invit­ing if you’re into this sort of thing; spoil­er alert, I am, which should be obvi­ous by now with­in the con­text of Gam­ing Insur­rec­tion. It’s just that there is so much gor­geous to go around, and it should be praised because this is game graph­ics at its best, even in the 16-bit era.


Slight­ly less praise­wor­thy are the con­trols. Retro Samu­rai Shodown is noto­ri­ous­ly hard to nav­i­gate, and that’s on full dis­play here. Some­times I could get moves off clean­ly; some­times I strug­gled just to get a com­mon pro­jec­tile motion to work. It’s easy to pick up, but there is strug­gle, and it’s worth con­sid­er­ing if you can tol­er­ate that enough to con­tin­ue through the game. Also, real­ize now that in Arcade Mode, you’re going to fight every­one in the cast. There is no “let’s select six to eight oppo­nents from this very full cast;” no, you’re fight­ing every­one before you even sniff Amakusa so you will get lots of prac­tice with those hard movesets. How­ev­er, it is bro­ken up with pro­gres­sive­ly hard­er mini games, so this isn’t unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry. The Count­down Mode, a sort of ear­ly sur­vival mode, is a decent chal­lenge that also gets pro­gres­sive­ly hard­er. There is replay val­ue there, so that adds to the charm of an oth­er­wise bare­bones game.

If you can move past the so hard it’s a good hurt men­tal­i­ty of the orig­i­nal Samu­rai Shodown, there is a crown jew­el wait­ing to be played and dis­sect­ed. The death poem that is the dif­fi­cul­ty and con­trols in con­cert may be a detrac­tion but know that it remains beau­ti­ful lat­er down the fight­ing game road with improve­ments. It must start some­where, and this is a good start.

Knockout Kings 2000 — Issue 48

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Not tech­ni­cal­ly a knockout
Knock­out Kings packs a punch for PSOne

Ah, Elec­tron­ic Arts aka Crunch Time World Head­quar­ters, how gamers love thee (sar­casm insert­ed). Begin­ning in 1995, there was­n’t a sports game, col­le­giate or pro­fes­sion­al, that was not giv­en EA’s sports label “the game amongst sports games.” When you saw offi­cial­ly licensed sport game com­mer­cials in the late ’90s to ear­ly 2000s, nine times out of 10 they would be from EA Sports. I have played some titles in EA’s Mad­den series but my main expe­ri­ence with EA Sports came dur­ing my junior year in col­lege when I played an EA game that fea­tured the best of pro­fes­sion­al box­ing to deter­mine who was tru­ly the undis­put­ed best amongst them. Knock­out Kings 2000 stepped into the ring and put on a show.

In Knock­out Kings 2000, you get to play as one of 25 leg­endary pro­fes­sion­al box­ers such as Mar­velous Mar­vin Hagler, “Smokin” Joe Fra­zier, Son­ny Lis­ton, and my favorite, the “Great­est of all Time” Muham­mad Ali. In addi­tion to these clas­sic box­ers, you can cre­ate your own box­er like I did with box­ers named “Bus­ta­jawzs” or “Crush­er Bear”. Depend­ing on which option you choose, you’ll be fight­ing at well-known sport venues such as Cae­sar’s Palace and Great West­ern Col­i­se­um in either the Cham­pi­onship, Slugfest or Train­ing modes. 

Despite EA’s attempt to faith­ful­ly ren­der each pro­fes­sion­al box­er’s and venue, the graph­ics are of PSOne qual­i­ty. It can be dif­fi­cult to see box­ers unless you have excel­lent mas­tery over the game’s cam­era sys­tem, which brings out the scenes in bet­ter quality. 


The con­trols in Knock­out Kings 2000 are sim­ple and do not require com­pli­cat­ed move­ments unlike oth­er fight­ing games. The super punch is very easy to per­form, which is a bless­ing since I’m a but­ton mash­er at heart. I can say with con­fi­dence that after a few bouts, I became a new world heavy­weight cham­pi­on going straight to train­ing to main­tain my com­pet­i­tive edge. 

EA did excel­lent in the music depart­ment with each mode hav­ing a unique theme for train­ing and var­i­ous music styles for the Cham­pi­onship and Slugfest modes. I espe­cial­ly like the ’50s-like gui­tar entrance theme and a hip-hop hor­ror mix that brought fear to my oppo­nents’ hearts when I used my “Crush­er Bear” char­ac­ter. The sound was top qual­i­ty, and EA gave upcom­ing artists such as Androyd, Alien Fash­ion Show and my per­son­al favorite rap­per, O, a place to shine. O pro­vid­ed the main theme “In the Game” as well as a music video with cameos by Hagler, Roy Jones Jr., and Floyd May­weath­er Jr., which was a nice touch.

I like a lot about Knock­out Kings 2000 but there are some prob­lems. The cam­era needs adjust­ment so the fight­ers can be seen prop­er­ly but even worse the mod­el­ing of each fight­er looks like EA rushed its pro­gram­mers. The fight­ers are unrec­og­niz­able, which is dis­ap­point­ing. Anoth­er issue that I had was in the train­ing ses­sion where I want­ed to learn com­bo tech­niques. The train­ing want­ed to rush my learn­ing, result­ing in lit­tle train­ing val­ue for my box­er. My final prob­lem was announc­ing calls. While I appre­ci­ate that respect­ed box­ing com­men­ta­tors Al Albert and Sean O’Grady called the action, their tim­ing was off some­times on mak­ing cru­cial com­men­tary, or they were not made at all. 
Knock­out Kings 2000 is a great sports game for the PSOne. While EA is known for cash grabs, and low-qual­i­ty work on their games, I believe that they found the mag­ic for­mu­la for suc­cess with this.

Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi — Issue 48

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A secret leg­end in the making
Shi­no­bi sequel barks up the right tree with new canine companion

Before Son­ic the Hedge­hog and Yakuza, Sega had estab­lished game fran­chis­es and mas­cots for the arcade and home con­sole mar­ket. One of those mas­cots was very pop­u­lar and came out on the scene at a time when Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles were blow­ing up across the coun­try. His name was Joe Musashi, and his adven­tures were detailed in the game series “Shi­no­bi.” Ever since its 1987 release, Joe fought a one-nin­ja war on crime against the evil Zeed orga­ni­za­tion, which plot­ted glob­al dom­i­nance with their style of nin­ja arts. Time after time, through var­i­ous Sega games, Joe defeat­ed Zeed and kept the world at peace. How­ev­er, in Shad­ow Dancer: The Secret of Shi­no­bi, Joe would once again take up his sword against evil.

Shad­ow Dancer takes place one year after Joe’s most recent bat­tle with Zeed. In 1997, New York City comes under attack by a cult orga­ni­za­tion called Union Lizard. NYC is laid to waste with sur­vivors cap­tured as UL hostages. One of Joe’s stu­dents, Kaito, hears about UL’s assaults on a neigh­bor­hood and sets out to free its res­i­dents. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Kaito falls in bat­tle. Enraged, Joe heads to NYC to bat­tle, accom­pa­nied by Yam­a­to, Kaito’s canine com­pan­ion. With a new ally, Joe enters this lat­est con­flict deter­mined to free NYC from UL clutch­es and avenge his stu­den­t’s death. 


Shad­ow Dancer’s con­trols are sim­ple. While I was impressed with the game-ready default set­up, I also appre­ci­at­ed that there are oth­er con­fig­u­ra­tions. You also have the option of using nor­mal or non-shuriken mode, which takes away the abil­i­ty to throw shuriken from a dis­tance. I also appre­ci­at­ed that Joe can also call upon three types of nin­jut­su in the forms of fire, tor­na­do, and mete­orites. The most vital weapon that Joe has in his lat­est bat­tle is Yam­a­to, who can be used to attack on-screen ene­mies with­out hes­i­ta­tion, tru­ly giv­ing cred­it to the phrase “take a bite out of crime.” Every time I unleashed Yam­a­to aka Kuma-pup­py TM, I loved see­ing the bad guys cry in pain as they thought that noth­ing could stop them. Jokes on them that a nin­ja dog brings them instant terror. 

The graph­ics were pret­ty decent as if Sega pulled the game from the actu­al arcade cab­i­net. The music is ’90s genre fit­ting for Sega games and will make you feel a spe­cial fond­ness for the nos­tal­gic days of arcades. I also like that with each stage the music blend­ed with the scenery, espe­cial­ly at the Stat­ue of Liberty. 

While I do love Shad­ow Dancer, I have a few gripes. The abil­i­ty to con­trol Yam­a­to is deter­mined by hav­ing no ene­mies on screen; if Yam­a­to or oth­er ene­mies are on dif­fer­ent lev­els of stages or when an ene­my can avoid him by jump­ing up or down out of his reach, it can get frus­trat­ing. I also don’t care for the imposed time lim­it that makes you rush to the end of the stage. My final griev­ance with Shad­ow Dancer is that at the end of each stage, there is a bonus stage where you must hit as many ene­my nin­jas as you can with shuriken. I threw a ton of shuriken at nin­ja but got low scores for my efforts. It’s a lot of work for lit­tle reward and seems like a waste of time, honestly.

Shad­ow Dancer: The Secret of Shi­no­bi is a game that helped cement Sega’s lega­cy in the video game indus­try. Sega is rein­tro­duc­ing clas­sic games in var­i­ous forms for a new gen­er­a­tion of gamers. Sega would be wise to rein­tro­duce Joe Musashi as the undis­put­ed mem­ber of video game roy­al­ty and leg­end in video game hero his­to­ry that he is.

DanceDance Revolution Konamix — Issue 48

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Dev­il­ish danc­ing demon
There’s blood on the dance floor with Konamix

As a devout Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion fan, I’ve made it clear that qual­i­ty DDR is non-nego­tiable. And what I mean by that is, a mix has to be good. It has to have DDR orig­i­nals, maybe a few qual­i­ty licens­es and the inter­face has to be work­able. DDR Kon­amix, a North Amer­i­can port of DDR 4th Mix, is a semi-decent solu­tion to a real problem.

Kon­amix plays like every oth­er ear­ly pre-Super­No­va ver­sion of DDR. Step­ping on arrows in time to a song is refined by this point, so it’s noth­ing new, and scor­ing also remains the same as DDR 1st Mix through 3rd Mix. So, real­ly the most impor­tant aspect of this mix is the songlist, and there are some gems here. Some of our favorites appeared here for the first time in a North Amer­i­can release, such as PARA­NOiA Rebirth and SUPER STAR. The 52 songs in the track­list are all Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals, hence the name, and that’s a boon because that imme­di­ate­ly makes the list worth play­ing and makes up for a few weird issues.


But how does it play? In terms of DDR mix playa­bil­i­ty, it’s not user friend­ly like lat­er mix­es. The tim­ing is high­ly sus­pect, and adjust­ing that fea­ture in the options is stil­luse­less. Because of the dif­fer­ences in frame rates and mod­ern tele­vi­sions, try­ing to play this is a fool’s errand because it’s almost so off that you’re nev­er going to do well. The weird tim­ing issues mean a lot of Goods, Greats and Boos. Also, the inter­face is obnox­ious until you choose to use All Music. With every­thing unlocked, the All Music option makes the game tolerable. 

With a lot of flawed options and playa­bil­i­ty issues, DDR Kon­amix isn’t exact­ly a must-have. How­ev­er, only because of the Kon­a­mi orig­i­nals should you buy this; some of these beau­ties are rare enough that you’d need to import Japan­ese mix­es to see them again. While I have a nos­tal­gic fond­ness for Kon­amix because it was my first expo­sure to mod­ern DDR, I would only con­sid­er this mix if you want to be called a DDR master.

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.