Category Archives: Retrograde

Street Fighter Alpha 2 — Issue 52

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Clas­sic Cus­tom Com­bo action

Street Fight­er Alpha 2 still a com­mu­ni­ty fave

Good but not great. That’s what Street Fight­er Alpha 2 rep­re­sents for me. I don’t hate the game these days. After a mature return to the game after many years spent ador­ing Street Fight­er Alpha 3, I can hon­est­ly say the game is a good set­up for the king of the hill that is Alpha 3.

Because Cap­com has advised that Street Fight­er Alpha 2’s sto­ry super­sedes Alpha’s sto­ry, we’re not rehash­ing any­thing here. Just know that every­one is after M. Bison at this point because he’s up to no good as he always is and will be, and Aku­ma enters the chat because he sup­pos­ed­ly killed Ryu and Ken’s mas­ter Gouken. Every­thing that hap­pens in Alpha 2 sets Alpha 3 up in a way that explains why M. Bison is so pow­er­ful by the end of the series and why he’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­er dur­ing Street Fight­er II. It’s com­pelling even if you’re a casu­al fan of Street Fighter.


The graph­ics haven’t made a sig­nif­i­cant leap between Alpha games and yet they some­how look clean­er. They’re chunki­er and larg­er, and you can tell they’re get­ting clos­er to the Alpha 3 stream­lined ver­sion that became the hall­mark of the Street Fight­er expe­ri­ence in the ear­ly to mid-2000s before the advent of Street Fight­er IV.

Thank­ful­ly, while there isn’t a big leap for­ward in the look between games, there is a siz­able improve­ment in the sound­track of Alpha 2. Quite a few tracks stand out and it’s worth hunt­ing down the playlist because there are some gems. It’s still not at the Alpha 3 lev­el but it’s get­ting there if you need reassurance.

What I did­n’t care for in Alpha has improved in Alpha 2: how it plays. The play feel has improved with the intro­duc­tion of Cus­tom Com­bos, and while clunky to exe­cute, it’s a nice change of pace for the series. They’re in their infan­cy here so don’t expect the absolute dom­i­nance of Alpha 3 V‑ISM but they are cool to see and it’s sat­is­fy­ing to get them to work con­sis­tent­ly in play once you know what you’re doing. Watch­ing high-lev­el play shows how Alpha 2 is meant to be played, and it demon­strates Alpha 2’s strengths: Nuanced strat­e­gy and a clean engine.

Alpha 2 does have its quirks, though. Some­times the game just does­n’t feel quite right and by that I mean, I don’t like how it feels some­times. It can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly feel slow and slug­gish but then it course cor­rects and the game plays like a dream. Com­bos work but then some­times, I strug­gle to get things going. I can’t place my fin­ger on it, even years lat­er, but there’s some­thing off about Alpha 2 but I’ve learned to accept it for what it is and over­all just accept Alpha 2. It may be because I did­n’t start the series until Alpha 3, but Alpha 2 does­n’t always feel right. I still pre­fer to play Alpha 3 in every respect, but accep­tance of Alpha 2 is a sign of maturity.

Alpha 2 is the mid­point of the Alpha series and that’s OK. It’s got its grow­ing pains but the growth is there and it’s still regard­ed as a strong fight­ing game. Alpha 2 has val­ue and as the mid­dle child of the series, it’s got a lot to offer and a cer­tain charm that bright­ened by the fact that Cap­com learned its les­son and seem­ing­ly learned to count to three. Alpha 2 is a good bridge to greatness.

Score: 3.5 out of 5

Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams — Issue 52

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Start­ing at the beginning

Street Fight­er Alpha sets the tone for spin­off franchise

I promise I can see the poten­tial in the orig­i­nal Street Fight­er Alpha: War­riors’ Dreams. I can look down from my high perch of love for Alpha 3 and accept that the series came from some­where. After all, every series must have a start. But it’s a long hard stretch to say it’s an all-time great start.

Street Fight­er Alpha estab­lish­es the series’ sto­ry: After Ryu wins the first World Fight­ing Tour­na­ment (as depict­ed in Street Fight­er), he returns home to find his mas­ter Gouken mur­dered and sets out to get revenge. At the same time, Chun-Li, Guile and Char­lie — along with oth­er var­i­ous mem­bers of the cast such as new­com­er Rose — work togeth­er to take down M. Bison, who is work­ing to estab­lish his empire and achieve world dom­i­na­tion. Know two things about the sto­ry: One, it’s a sequel to 1987’s Street Fight­er and a pre­quel to Street Fight­er II; and, two, its sto­ry­line is sup­plant­ed by Street Fight­er Alpha 2. Cap­com deployed this strat­e­gy with the Darkstalkers/Vampire series as well, which was coin­ci­den­tal­ly cre­at­ed around the same time as Alpha. And this isn’t the only instance of crossover con­cepts, either.

Alpha plays and feels much like ear­ly Vam­pire as well. The new addi­tions of mul­ti-lev­el super com­bos and air block­ing are here, too, and like Vam­pire, rep­re­sent an upgrade from the days of Super Tur­bo. But, as much as I like the upgrad­ed mechan­ics, I don’t like how Alpha plays. It feels clunky and slow with a molasses edge to the movesets. While the series did even­tu­al­ly improve with time and speed adjust­ments, it’s painful­ly obvi­ous here that it need­ed a speed boost.


Alpha also resem­bles Vam­pire in pre­sen­ta­tion. The graph­ics are nice and big, and the sprites are nice­ly drawn. It’s an ear­ly ver­sion of the Alpha 3 pre­sen­ta­tion that we’ve come to know and love, and it’s pleas­ing to see it here. The music isn’t at the Alpha 3 lev­el yet, but there are a few tracks that might make you tap your toe. 

What I want­ed from the first game in the Alpha series shows up lat­er in the final game, but the start isn’t ter­ri­ble. It need­ed some work and giv­en that Alpha 2 made improve­ments on this sol­id foun­da­tion in Alpha, I think it’s safe to call this the beta of the Alpha series.

Score: 3 out of 5

Dynamite Headdy — Issue 51

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A slight headache

Dyna­mite Head­dy is a jum­bled mess of hit or miss eclec­tic ideas

In the 16-bit era, the Gen­e­sis was the first shot fired in a decade’s war against Nin­ten­do for the atten­tion of teenage gamers and the cold hard cash of gamers’ par­ents. While Sega had Son­ic as a mas­cot to counter Nin­ten­do’s Mario, there were many unique char­ac­ters Sega had in their sta­ble ready to bat­tle with Nin­ten­do if Son­ic need­ed to take a break. One of those char­ac­ters was mem­o­rable for chang­ing the plat­form genre. His name was Head­dy, and his debut game Dyna­mite Head­dy was his big break.

Dyna­mite Head­dy tells the sto­ry of Head­dy, a star pup­pet in the Trea­sure The­atre Show. Head­dy’s loved by every­one except his rival, Trou­ble Bru­in, who believes he should get top billing. In addi­tion to reduc­ing Head­dy’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, Trou­ble is a hench bearcat for the evil Dark Demon whose goal is world dom­i­na­tion by con­vert­ing oth­er pup­pets to his grow­ing army of mind­less min­ions. With inno­cent pup­pets and the future of the the­atre in jeop­ardy, it’s up to Head­dy to stop Dark Demon and Trou­ble’s nefar­i­ous plans. 

I’ll admit the graph­ics are like a chil­dren’s pup­pet show but they are pre­sent­ed in a way that’s col­or­ful and engag­ing. Trea­sure did an excel­lent job with the pre­sen­ta­tion, keep­ing the sto­ry of the game sim­ple. I did, how­ev­er, dis­like how Trea­sure played with pro­mot­ing the game and placed ads for their oth­er prod­ucts front and cen­ter as I played through the first stage. It was super tacky and did­n’t real­ly help the game in any way.
The con­trols are slight­ly sim­ple thanks to the options screen allow­ing you to con­fig­ure a con­trol scheme. How­ev­er, the con­stant switch­ing heads and keep­ing up with what but­ton does what invoked anger with­in me many times. In the­o­ry it looks sim­ple, but the exe­cu­tion is off. It’s a lot to remem­ber once you get going and drags down the platforming.


The music in the game is OK, hav­ing its ener­getic and for­bear­ing doom moments but it’s gener­ic enough to get by. I did feel though, some­times with Dyna­mite Head­dy, that the com­posers were pres­sured to out­do Super Mario World to see which game could have the cutest game music instead of keep­ing focus on how the music could be paired prop­er­ly with each stage. 

One of the more non­sen­si­cal and cringe-wor­thy moments that stuck out to me was nam­ing each stage after well-known movies and pop cul­ture series. Toyz in the Hood, Stair Wars, Far Trek and Ter­mi­nate Her Too were named after the movies Boyz in the Hood, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Ter­mi­na­tor 2. Don’t get me wrong, I under­stood that Trea­sure was try­ing to seize the moment but should have found oth­er ways to accom­plish the task because it came off as goofy and grat­ing, not cute.

Dyna­mite Head­dy is an inter­est­ing and high­ly orig­i­nal game that takes chances and some­times suc­ceeds and some­times falls flat. The orig­i­nal­i­ty was obvi­ous­ly a sell­ing point because Dyna­mite Head­dy’s lega­cy endures on main con­soles and Steam. There are some neat con­cepts here, but some­times it needs to get out of its own head.

Chakan: The Forever Man — Issue 51

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A for­ev­er mediocre mess

Mix of RPG and mag­ic can’t save Chakan from ter­ri­ble fate

As Sega and Nin­ten­do fought for more ter­ri­to­ry in the final arc of the 16-bit era, Sega tried to stick with new orig­i­nal prop­er­ties in unre­al­ized gen­res. I recent­ly was rein­tro­duced to Chakan: The For­ev­er Man, a game with a cool orig­i­nal theme that did­n’t grow to the poten­tial that devel­op­er Extend­ed Play Pro­duc­tions envi­sioned. I would even dare say that with its dark theme, it could have been the Gen­e­sis’ answer to Castl­e­va­nia, which lat­er appeared on Gen­e­sis. How­ev­er, dark and spooky does­n’t equal great.

Based on Robert Kraus’ com­ic book series, Chakan is what hap­pens when the super­nat­ur­al meets a leg­endary swords­man. You take on the role of Chakan, a leg­endary swords­man with blade and spell skills who boasts he can defeat Death with­out any prob­lems. As a result, Death chal­lenges Chakan to a duel to the death stat­ing if Chakan wins, death will grant him eter­nal life. The bat­tle end­ed with Chakan vic­to­ri­ous and Death, keep­ing his promise with a sin­is­ter twist: While Chakan won eter­nal life, he is now tasked with elim­i­nat­ing all evils of the under­world. With the heavy bur­den of ever­last­ing life upon him, Chakan must embark on a right­eous requiem to earn eter­nal rest. 


The graph­ics in Chakan are the usu­al fan­fare for 16-bit sys­tems. The theme of super­nat­ur­al bat­tle would be a mean­ing­ful change for a Gen­e­sis game that could have been expand­ed on, but the graph­ics placed the game at an unfair dis­ad­van­tage because they are so bland and bor­ing. Despite the hand­i­cap placed on the graph­ics, the music sticks to the game’s theme of fight­ing demons and per­fect­ly pairs the music to each stage.

Con­trol­ling Chakan is easy but can be cus­tomized. Chakan has a spe­cial spin attack like Son­ic the Hedge­hog and can use fire and oth­er ele­men­tal attacks using alche­my potions. My prob­lem with the con­trols is obvi­ous­ly imme­di­ate­ly: the Gen­e­sis con­troller has too many func­tions. Every­thing from move­ment to weapons and alche­my is time-con­sum­ing and a test of my patience.

While it’s a neat con­cept game, Chakan isn’t great at all. The many prob­lems real­ly start with the lack of hind­sight to hire Kraus to con­sult on game devel­op­ment. This would have allowed more insight into the char­ac­ter. It’s also frus­trat­ing that Chakan’s time lim­it pre­vent­ed me from locat­ing his spe­cial weapons. Also, the var­i­ous sym­bols rep­re­sent­ing alche­my were con­fus­ing. Try­ing to deter­mine which sym­bol matched the ele­ment Chakan would need to fight mul­ti­ple ene­mies was a chore. 

Chakan: The For­ev­er Man is sad­ly a game with a great con­cept that was decades ahead of its time. While I give Extend­ed Play Pro­duc­tions cred­it for try­ing to intro­duce a dif­fer­ent con­cept, the pres­sure to help Sega defeat their com­peti­tor blind­ed Chakan’s poten­tial. More time should have been used toward the game’s devel­op­ment and intro­duc­tion of Chakan as an anti-hero. Kraus will con­tin­ue Chakan’s quest for a peace­ful death but, for now, he deserves a well-earned rest.

The Death and Return of Superman — Issue 51

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Mid­dling return spells dooms­day for Man of Steel

Death and Return of Super­man arc dropped in 1994

Super­man has nev­er been among my favorite super­heroes. First, I’m a Mar­vel girl at heart and I gen­er­al­ly don’t care for most DC char­ac­ters. Sec­ond, if there was a DC super­hero that I love, it’s going to be Bat­man. No prep time and by him­self. So, it stands to rea­son that I don’t care for most DC games out­side of Bat­man prop­er­ties. And so, it con­tin­ues with The Death and Return of Superman.


Death and Return of Super­man fol­lows the plot of the comics well. Super­man fights his ulti­mate neme­sis in Dooms­day, and he dies in the bat­tle. Short­ly after, four oth­er Super­men (Super­boy, Cyborg Super­man, Erad­i­ca­tor and Steel) show up to claim their right­ful place as the Man of Steel. The prob­lem is, how­ev­er, these guys are not Super­man, and it shows. Coast City is anni­hi­lat­ed, and it turns out that Cyborg Super­man is respon­si­ble for the car­nage. The oth­er Super­men, includ­ing the real Super­man him­self, return to stop the cyborg men­ace. If you’re famil­iar with the comics arc, this is basi­cal­ly what hap­pened there. It’s noth­ing super com­pli­cat­ed and there are no addi­tions or changes for the game. I appre­ci­at­ed it as some­one who does­n’t fol­low Super­man that close­ly because it allowed me to learn some­thing new about a well-known super­hero and encour­aged me to learn about the comics’ ver­sion of the sto­ry simultaneously.

Ram­pag­ing through the streets of Metrop­o­lis to stop crime and Cyborg Super­man is a no-frills affair as well. There is absolute­ly noth­ing note­wor­thy or spe­cial about the envi­ron­ments and the pre­sen­ta­tion. Noth­ing stands out, though the char­ac­ter mod­els and designs look nice. The sprites are nice­ly drawn and rather large, so they will catch your eye. How­ev­er, noth­ing else will. The back­grounds are just there, sta­t­ic and unchang­ing, and noth­ing looks par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. The music is the same. The intro theme is kind of a toe-tap­per but noth­ing about this is going to make you search it out online to add to the collection.

The con­trols aren’t any­thing spe­cial, either. They’re just stan­dard beat-’em-up con­trols. There are your stan­dard attacks, a throw, a fire­ball some­times, and an ulti­mate screen-clear­ing attack that requires ener­gy. While the pay­off is the same for all the Super­men, the attack ani­ma­tion is dif­fer­ent. It’s kind of cool to see what each char­ac­ter is capa­ble of but it’s by no means any­thing excit­ing. And, as is the prob­lem with most beat-’em-ups like this one, you’re going to run into quar­ter-munch­er syn­drome. The hits are always unfair, espe­cial­ly with mul­ti­ple ene­mies on the screen, and health isn’t exact­ly plen­ti­ful. The boss­es par­tic­u­lar­ly are bad about this, and it’s infu­ri­at­ing to no end that you can’t get clean hits against them with­out tak­ing a bru­tal beating.

At the end of the day, Death and Return of Super­man goes about as well as you’d expect: You fight Dooms­day, you play as pre­tenders to the throne, and you res­ur­rect to stop a greater threat. It’s not ter­ri­ble but it isn’t great, either. Giv­en that we know how this end­ed in the comics, is there real­ly a need to play through a mid­dling game that does­n’t do any­thing spe­cial with the Super­man name? No. Let this death cycle play out and remain in its grave, respectfully.

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.