Tag Archives: Genesis

Altered Beast — Issue 44

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Beast & Co. alter gaming

As a young lad grow­ing up in the era of arcades (AKA the gold­en age of gam­ing) one of the for­mer kings of gam­ing, Sega was the name that had instant recog­ni­tion with me. From titles like After Burn­er, Out­run, Shi­no­bi, and Vir­tu­al Fight­er, Sega has mas­tered the art of sep­a­rat­ing one from their gam­ing tokens with­out fail. Dur­ing my arcade trav­els, I saw a Sega title that turned out to be not only a clas­sic arcade hit, but also was the inspi­ra­tion for the Bloody Roar series: the revered but maligned Altered Beast for the Genesis.

In Altered Beast, you take on the role of an ancient Roman Cen­tu­ri­on war­rior res­ur­rect­ed by Zeus to res­cue his daugh­ter Athena who was kid­napped by the under­world ruler Neff. As this unnamed war­rior, you do have a small-but-pow­er­ful advan­tage over Neff and his armies: the abil­i­ty to pow­er up into var­i­ous beasts that change the tide of the bat­tle. With this abil­i­ty, the Cen­tu­ri­on war­rior sets off on his divine man­date to res­cue Athena and defeat Neff. 

Game­play of Altered Beast is real­ly sim­ple: As some­one who played side-scrolling games, I instant­ly took to the basic punch, kick and jump mechan­ics. As you go through each ene­my, you’ll get a pow­er-up orb that lit­er­al­ly says “Pow­er-up!”; this made me think that Zeus came down and gave com­mands. On the third pow­er-up, you’ll go into your actu­al beast mode, which con­sists of forms such as a drag­on, were­wolf, were­bear, weretiger, and a gold­en were­wolf, each with their own unique pow­ers. At this point, I’m think­ing that this game is the ori­gin for the pop­u­lar phase “Beast Mode.” At the end of each lev­el, you bat­tle Neff in var­i­ous forms. The graph­ics are pret­ty good for a tran­si­tion from arcade to 16-bit con­sole with lit­tle notice­able dif­fer­ence in qual­i­ty for the time period. 

Altered Beast does have a few flaws: When you defeat Neff at the end of each stage, he some­how takes away your pow­er-up forms as a last part­ing shot, which is obnox­ious. Also, the brief inter­mis­sion scenes are grainy, mak­ing it hard to under­stand what’s going on. On the bright side, the replay val­ue is awe­some for those who want to relieve the gold­en days of the Gen­e­sis and those who want side scrolling action with a mix of horror.

Altered Beast is one of Sega’s clas­sic gems that is wor­thy of anoth­er look. There was a mod­ern-day remake released in 2005 for PS2, but it was crit­i­cal­ly panned. For­tu­nate­ly, Sega decid­ed to give Altered Beast anoth­er look, this time plac­ing it among its oth­er well-known prop­er­ties in var­i­ous TV and film projects. Sega altered the side-scrolling land­scape with this epic tale of good ver­sus evil.

Golden Axe — Issue 44

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A gold­en era of gaming

I know I’ve cov­ered a lot of Sega games, but I’m a big fan. I par­tial­ly owned a NES, a Mas­ter Sys­tem and a Gen­e­sis, and while I did not have a lot of games for those sys­tems, I enjoyed the games that I had for them, espe­cial­ly the Gen­e­sis. One of those games has an arcade back­ground shared with Gaunt­let with ele­ments of the Dun­geons and Drag­ons table­top games. If you old­er read­ers know what I’m talk­ing about, respect. For you younger read­ers, lis­ten and learn of the tale of Gold­en Axe.

Inspired also by the Conan the Bar­bar­ian movie series of the 1980s, Gold­en Axe gives you a choice of three war­riors: Ax Bat­tler, who wields a broadsword; Gilius Thun­der­head, a dwarf war­rior with a bat­tle ax; and, an Ama­zon­ian war­rior, Tyris Flare, whose weapon of choice is a longsword. These war­riors were brought togeth­er by twist of fate thanks to an evil enti­ty known as Death Adder, who has cap­tured the king­dom of Yuria along with its king and his daugh­ter. The three heroes have also lost loved ones at Death Adder’s hands and set off on their quest to destroy Death Adder and restore hope and peace to Yuria. 

Game­play is sim­ple with each char­ac­ter have the basic attack, jump and spe­cial attacks you find in reg­u­lar side-scroller games. The one major advan­tage that Ax, Gilius, and Tyris have is their unique abil­i­ty to cast mag­ic spells that does seri­ous dam­age to all ene­mies on screen. How­ev­er, this spe­cial attack comes with two caveats: mag­ic ener­gy has a high cost and pro­tect­ing your nec­es­sary mag­ic potions from thiev­ing elves is a chore. Now, this is the part where you ask, “what’s the pay­off with the char­ac­ter’s mag­ic attacks?” Good ques­tion! Tyris wields fire mag­ic, Ax’s spe­cial­ty is earth spells and my favorite char­ac­ter, Gilius, lit­er­al­ly brings the thun­der with light­ing spells. It’s easy to under­stand the mechan­ics and use every­thing in the heat of battle. 

If there was one neg­a­tive thing that I found about Gold­en Axe, it’s that it’s too short on game­play. The first stage is set on a giant sea tur­tle that moves across the sea in the sec­ond stage. You move to a sleep­ing giant eagle in the third stage and are trans­port­ed to the fourth and final stage by said eagle. That’s entire­ly too short of an adven­ture. Eas­i­ly there could have been a few more stages to flesh out the story.

The music has a strong com­bi­na­tion of hero­ic and fairy­tale beats that are not too shab­by but is a per­fect fit for the game. The replay val­ue is pret­ty good for a 16-bit game that has a short lev­el of game­play. Over­all, this is a valiant effort by Sega to be cre­ative with a game that has poten­tial sad­ly but lacks creativity.

While it can be fun to play, the game need­ed some pol­ish and a lit­tle bit more finesse to real­ly shine. You’ll pull some hair at the length and some ele­ments, but over­all, it’s a decent hack ‘n slash. Just exer­cise calm and steadi­ness in this promis­ing yet cru­el venture.

Strider — Issue 42

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The ulti­mate nin­ja warrior

Strid­er Hiryu. Best known for his appear­ances in the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series, he has been con­sid­ered a top-tier char­ac­ter by play­ers and is con­sis­tent­ly pop­u­lar. Strid­er also appeared in a stand­alone game in 2014 for var­i­ous con­soles at the time. How­ev­er, Strid­er was already estab­lished, start­ing in 1989 with his orig­i­nal arcade release that was port­ed to the NES and to the Gen­e­sis in 1990 via Sega. It was titled, yep, you guessed it, “Strid­er.”
In the year 1998, after a series of dis­as­ters fell upon Earth, peo­ple across the globe real­ized their sit­u­a­tion and began to work togeth­er to rebuild. Four years lat­er, in an East­ern Euro­pean nation called Kaza­fu sev­er­al red dots appeared as the advance guard of the evil space being Meio. They caused imme­di­ate destruc­tion of Kafazu, Europe, and North and South Amer­i­ca, result­ing in 80 per­cent of Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion being wiped out. How­ev­er, on a small South Seas Island called Mora­los, a secret orga­ni­za­tion known as “Strid­ers” began to move to stop Meio’s reign of ter­ror. They sent their best agent, Hiryu, for­ward with the task of stop­ping Meio and his plans for world domination. 
Con­trol of Hiryu is sim­ple, allow­ing him to attack in either direc­tion, duck when fight­ing, and climb to reach high­er areas. Hiryu also has use of his plas­ma sword, Fal­chion, to assist in remov­ing ene­mies from any direc­tion on the screen. I also found that Hiryu has two reli­able tech­niques that are game-chang­ers: a slid­ing move that gets him in tight areas, and a cart­wheel move that allows you to glide from sur­face to sur­face while in a spin­ning wheel, mak­ing Hiryu unpre­dictable when he lands. Hiryu also can per­form a ver­ti­cal jump, hang­ing and squat­ting attacks with Fal­chion. Hiryu will also get some mis­sion sup­port from three bat­tle robots: Dipo­dal Saucer, which fires light­ing bolts wher­ev­er Hiryu swings Fal­chion; RoboPan­ther, which cov­ers Hiryu from frontal attacks; and, Robot Hawk, which assists Hiryu by severe­ly attack­ing air­borne ene­mies. Apart from the usu­al powerups in hack-and-slash games, there’s also a powerup that increas­es Fal­chion’s power.
The music is accept­able for each stage, match­ing its theme with a few stand­out tracks for the levels. 
As much as I love Strid­er, there are a few flaws. The chal­lenge is on full dis­play from the moment you hit start. In the options screen, you can add up to five lives for Hiryu, but you must frus­trat­ing­ly hunt down extra lives and score points to acquire the rest. You also have an obnox­ious time lim­it for each stage; if you don’t clear a lev­el in time, you’ll lose a life. I also found it frus­trat­ing that Hiryu can gain up to five life bars, but if he has a sup­port part­ner, that can be tak­en away if he suf­fers too much dam­age. That makes his mis­sion much more dif­fi­cult unnec­es­sar­i­ly at times. 
Strid­er is per­fect for any­one who wants to act out their post-dystopi­an hero fan­tasies with­out fear of pos­si­ble legal ret­ri­bu­tion. It’s an endur­ing clas­sic that has tran­scend­ed the hack-and-slash genre and made a name for itself in the fight­ing game com­mu­ni­ty via the MvC series. If there was ever a time that I wish that Strid­er Hiryu was real and ready to kick a cer­tain vil­lain­ous coun­try’s ass, that time is now. Hail, Hiryu-sama.

The Punisher — Issue 40

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The Pun­ish­er makes good in dig­i­tal crime cleanup

Before Mar­vel vs. Cap­com became a rel­e­vant name to gamers, the com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rat­ed on oth­er games. Those games became essen­tial clas­sics to devel­op gamers who spe­cial­ized in sin­gle-com­bat titles. In 1994, Cap­com and Mar­vel brought a Final Fight-style game to the Gen­e­sis that starred comics’ most infa­mous anti-hero: Frank Cas­tle aka The Punisher.
The game fol­lows the sto­ry­line of the clas­sic Mar­vel comics series. Frank Cas­tle, a dec­o­rat­ed vet­er­an Marine, was enjoy­ing a day in the park with his fam­i­ly when they unwit­ting­ly became wit­ness­es to a mob shoot­ing. As a result, Cas­tle and his fam­i­ly were mas­sa­cred, him being the only sur­vivor. Cas­tle became deter­mined to get pay­back by any means nec­es­sary. With fel­low war­rior Nick Fury (of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Cas­tle begins his war on crime against mob boss Wil­son Fisk aka King­pin, who caused the death of his fam­i­ly and many oth­er innocents. 
The game plays sim­i­lar­ly to “Final Fight” and “Cap­tain Com­man­do.” You can choose to play as either Cas­tle or Fury and can team up in mul­ti­play­er. You start off with the basics, pro­gress­ing to com­bos and var­i­ous weapons such as hand­guns, auto­mat­ic rifles and katanas. There was lib­er­al food and oth­er pow­er-ups such as cash, gold bars and dia­monds that increased my score and restored health since the amount of ene­mies com­ing at me was nonstop. 
The graph­ics were pleas­ant enough, although they attempt­ed to copy arcade cab­i­net-qual­i­ty with lit­tle suc­cess. I will give Cap­com cred­it for mak­ing the graph­ics comic­book-like. it was like read­ing an actu­al issue of the comics includ­ing cap­tions “BLAM!” “KRAK” and “BOOM!” instead of play­ing a rushed paint job of a pop­u­lar com­ic series video game. The music of each stage was also decent as Capcom’s sound team deliv­ered, keep­ing things close to what the Pun­ish­er feels like. 
With the work Cap­com put in, the atten­tion to detail made me want to pick it up to play as a return­ing com­ic book fan who knew about Cas­tle and Fury but want­ed to learn more about the King­pin and oth­er Mar­vel vil­lains such as Bush­whack­er and Bonebreaker. 
The Pun­ish­er is the first suc­cess­ful par­ing of Capcom’s know-how with Marvel’s leg­endary vig­i­lante who wastes no time dis­pens­ing his brand of jus­tice on crim­i­nals. Play­ing through this isn’t exact­ly punishment.

NBA Jam — 3Q2014 issue

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Pho­to cour­tesy of Gamefaqs.com

The old king of the court

NBA Jam was — and still is — an expe­ri­ence. No, that’s not some pre­pos­ter­ous fluff dreamed up by an Nation­al Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion maven like yours tru­ly. It was tru­ly an expe­ri­ence because if you were around at the time that Jam hit the streets, you’d remem­ber the sheer amount of hype that sur­round­ed the arcade release. You’d also remem­ber the hype that came home with it. Was it jus­ti­fied hype? Yes and no.

You see, Jam rep­re­sent­ed the start of the exag­ger­at­ed sports game era, the type of game where the play­er ani­ma­tions were over the top and the action just as extreme. Throw in a pletho­ra of secrets — like play­ing as Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton — and the hype went into over­drive. The game isn’t bad and it most­ly lived up to its billing. The sim­ple set­up of two-on-two bas­ket­ball and fast-break bas­ket­ball helped cer­tain­ly, and the ani­ma­tion isn’t bad at all. The play­er inter­ac­tion is where it most­ly suc­ceeds, actu­al­ly. At the time,

Pho­to cour­tesy of NIntendolife.com

there was no oth­er place to get the kind of play that Jam offers: Crazy dunks, the abil­i­ty to be on fire from great shoot­ing and street ball-type rules. It’s that offer­ing that made it a phe­nom­e­nal success.

Jam does­n’t stum­ble in its race to be an in-your-face baller expe­ri­ence. That street ball play­er inter­ac­tion means you don’t have to learn much about the game to suc­ceed and play well. The con­trol is sim­ple yet has a lay­er of depth that means any­one can do well at any skill lev­el. The atmos­phere could be a lit­tle bet­ter with a bet­ter sound­track, but what will make you take notice is the announc­er. If there’s any­thing you will remem­ber about the game, it’s Tim Kitzrow shout­ing to the top of his lungs that a man is “on fire” or “BOOMSHAKALAKA.”

The graph­ics, like the sound­track, are noth­ing to get excit­ed about. There’s a sta­t­ic crowd except for the court­side folk, and then there’s the play­ers. Jam pop­u­lar­ized the over-exag­ger­at­ed look for play­ers, and it cer­tain­ly had its uses. It’s not out of place for Jam, and it brings a cer­tain atmos­phere to the action that Jam ben­e­fits from.

If there’s ever a rea­son to play NBA Jam, find it in the car­toon­ish action, sound and look. That’s where the fun is, and the main rea­sons why the game suc­ceed­ed in liv­ing up to the hype (most­ly) that broke back­boards in the old­en days of 1993.