Tag 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.

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.

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.