Tag Archives: SNES

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein — Issue 54

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Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein (SNES)
Bits Stu­dios, 1994

A Crea­ture this piti­ful should have shuf­fled off the mor­tal coil

Mary Shel­ley, in her gild­ed cof­fin of prose and man and mad­ness, must have rolled over in her grave when this abom­i­na­tion based on her great­est work was released. As if the ’90s did­n’t have enough ter­ri­ble movie-to-game ties, along sham­bles the vit­ri­olic cash grab that is Mary Shel­ley’s Frankenstein.

The plot is tied direct­ly to the 1994 movie direct­ed by the inim­itable Ken­neth Branaugh and star­ring the leg­endary Robert De Niro. Vic­tor Franken­stein, a med­ical stu­dent, brings his cre­ation to life through sci­ence. The Crea­ture, which is sound­ly reject­ed as an abom­i­na­tion by soci­ety, wan­ders the Earth attempt­ing to find Vic­tor and exact revenge. 
The orig­i­nal sto­ry is com­pelling. The video game ver­sion is not. As some­one who read Franken­stein, Or the Mod­ern Prometheus pre­vi­ous­ly, I have expo­sure to the sto­ry and the char­ac­ters. The game does noth­ing to tie the movie or the sto­ry to the game. You start the game as a being with no expla­na­tion of who you are or what you’re sup­posed to be doing. The strug­gle is imme­di­ate­ly and painful­ly obvi­ous once you’re dropped on the scene of a tired brown vil­lage. As I lat­er learned, I start as the Crea­ture, and I’m sup­posed to be flee­ing the vil­lage. The vil­lagers assume the Crea­ture is a demon and are try­ing to kill him while he’s on the way to find and kill Vic­tor. That’s the gist of the sto­ry, but I had to piece that togeth­er while watch­ing oth­er playthroughs. That was atro­cious in 1994 and is still atro­cious today.


Equal­ly ter­ri­ble are the game­play and graph­ics, which go hand in hand. There is noth­ing redeem­ing about play­ing as the Crea­ture. He ani­mates ter­ri­bly and plays just as ter­ri­bly. He moves slow­ly through every motion and looks hor­ri­ble while doing so. His shuf­fling gait stark­ly con­trasts with his spry yet stale jump­ing, and his abil­i­ties to swing a weapon are sub­par at best. Of spe­cial note, the plat­form­ing ele­ments are absolute­ly garbage. Egre­gious­ly, there is no map to indi­cate pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed areas or loca­tions of inter­est. That’s nec­es­sary if you’re ask­ing me to back­track and solve hid­den item puz­zles in a large play­field. In an age where Super Metroid had been recent­ly released, there is no excuse for this type of ludi­crous over­sight. Sure, this is a quick movie tie-in, but the least you can do as a devel­op­er is take notes from a mas­ter of the craft and at least halfway attempt to steal basic con­cepts such as a map. 

And about the only redeem­ing fac­tor is the music. The tracks are repet­i­tive but they’re 1990s house music and goth­ic mean­der­ings so it’s tol­er­a­ble. But that can’t save the oth­er­wise mediocre prod­uct that groaned out of Mary Shel­ley’s mas­ter­piece novel.
The obvi­ous draw of Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein is, in fact, the Crea­ture but you would­n’t know it from the way this plays over­all. There is noth­ing here, except for the sound­track, that is worth both­er­ing with and even then, that’s ques­tion­able. Much like De Niro’s choice to play the Crea­ture, the biggest ques­tion of this whole trav­es­ty is why?

Bram Stoker’s Dracula — Issue 54

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Bram Stok­er’s Dracula
Psyg­no­sis, 1993

Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la shows fangs with lazy underbite

What do Drac­u­la, Sony and gam­ing con­soles have in com­mon? In 1993, Sony was one of the few multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies that had own­er­ship of well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dios. Sony owned Tri-Star Pic­tures, which released the 1992 film Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, based on the leg­endary hor­ror sto­ry. Sony, known as Sony Image­soft at the time, had a strict hold on their movie busi­ness, which allowed them to devel­op games based off their releas­es on the box office front. Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la is one of those exam­ples that snuck onto the SNES.

Based on the movie, you play as Jonathan Hark­er who must res­cue his fiancé Mina Mur­ray from Drac­u­la’s clutch­es. Good old Drac­u­la believes that Mina is a mod­ern rein­car­na­tion of his pre­vi­ous love Elis­a­be­ta who was dri­ven to sui­cide by Drac­u­la’s ene­mies while he fought against the Ottoman empire in 1462. Deter­mined to have Mina by any means nec­es­sary, Drac­u­la begins his bat­tle against Hark­er with VERY high stakes involved. The graph­ics of the game are stan­dard 16-bit, but Sony gets cred­it for pair­ing details for each lev­el with rec­og­niz­able scenes from the film. Although the graph­ics made the game pre­sen­ta­tion campy, I thought the graph­ics stayed on task and did a ser­vice­able job. 

Con­trols to get Hark­er around are the usu­al fare for side scrollers on the SNES. An ambi­tious but under­ex­plained mechan­ic is Hark­er’s abil­i­ty to use var­i­ous weapons that he can pick up along the way from Dr. Van Hels­ing, who shows up to help. The con­trols, while stan­dard, aren’t the best; they need some work. Pre­ci­sion jump­ing and slash­ing is hit or miss when I least need it to be. 

The game music is OK, but the prob­lem is it’s repet­i­tive. If Sony owns the stu­dio that released the movie and its music was per­fect, why not use that same sound team to work its mag­ic for the game? This is not an imme­di­ate rea­son to avoid play­ing it, but Sony Image­soft could have done more for the game, espe­cial­ly if it is based off a box office hit. My griev­ances for this game are small but even the small details in its devel­op­ment can deter­mine its suc­cess or fail­ure. Sony did not give prop­er sup­port in cru­cial areas of the game’s development. 

Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, despite lack of atten­tion to detail in some areas, is a good game that pays trib­ute to the orig­i­nal work. The con­trols could use some work, and the sound­track could be bet­ter, but the game works as a decent tie-in to the movie adap­ta­tion. It’s some­thing you may be able to sink your teeth into.

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. 

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.

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.

Demon’s Crest — Issue 46

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Fire­brand reigns supreme in ghoul­ish, ghost­ly, fiendish romp

Cap­com is known for its glob­al­ly renowned ros­ter of video game char­ac­ters. From Mega Man to Neme­sis, these char­ac­ters have cement­ed their lega­cy. Fire­brand, the red demon of death that is on that renowned ros­ter, made his bones and shows up to show out in Cap­com’s Demon’s Crest (no, not the dev­il’s toothpaste).

In Demon’s Crest, you take the role of the fire-breath­ing, head-butting hero Fire­brand through six stages as he tries to recov­er mag­i­cal crests, which are arti­facts with con­trol of the ele­ments and time. Accord­ing to Demon’s Crest leg­end, when these items fell into the demon world, a civ­il war erupt­ed with Fire­brand as the vic­tor claim­ing the crests of Earth, Fire, Wind, Water and Time. Fire­brand fought anoth­er demon named Somu­lo, who held the crest of Heav­en, and secured a vic­to­ry over the rival demon. How­ev­er, anoth­er demon named Pha­lanx attacked Fire­brand while he had low health, tak­ing pos­ses­sion of all the crests. This allowed Pha­lanx to sum­mon anoth­er crest that con­trols infin­i­ty. While Fire­brand recov­ered, he was impris­oned in an are­na guard­ed by the revived Somu­lo. After defeat­ing Somu­lo, Fire­brand begins his quest for vengeance and recov­ery of his well-earned spoils of war. 

Game­play is a com­bi­na­tion of plat­form­ing and Japan­ese RPGs mixed with ele­ments from Castl­e­va­nia and Metroid. Fire­brand has the usu­al plat­form­ing moves such as run­ning, and jump­ing, but can climb walls, tem­porar­i­ly float, and launch pro­jec­tile attacks with the help of the Fire crest. Fire­brand can pick up var­i­ous powerups from fall­en ene­mies to increase health and attacks in addi­tion to col­lect­ing coins to pur­chase for var­i­ous items found in shops through­out the demon realm. I also love that Fire­brand has some allies: Phora­pa, a demon who sell potions with var­i­ous abil­i­ties; Mal­wous, a demon that tells Fire­brand the secrets of tal­is­mans found from the human realm; and, Morack, who sells mag­ic spells to boost Fire­brand’s arsenal. 

The con­trols are sim­ple, yet require some nuance to remem­ber all of Fire­brand’s abil­i­ties. The fact that Cap­com decid­ed to take a fresh approach on the plat­form­ing instead of mak­ing anoth­er Ghosts n’ Ghosts was a wise choice to make here. The music fits the theme of each stage and main­tains the theme of the stage well. And much like the music, the graph­ics also won me over for the col­ors and artistry, espe­cial­ly when played on a mod­ern television. 

While I love most parts of Demon’s Crest, there are some not-so-good nit­picks to make. Cer­tain stages where per­fect tim­ing is need­ed to land on float­ing plat­forms across killer obsta­cles are annoy­ing. The pre­ci­sion isn’t there and it’s frus­trat­ing to attempt it mul­ti­ple times. Anoth­er strike comes when you play the bonus game. You must time your head-butting attack against demon skulls in a Whack-a-Mole-style game with a time lim­it. Con­sid­er­ing that if you lose, you also lose mon­ey, this is a prob­lem with the in-game econ­o­my. It makes you not want to play the mini-game at all. I also had issues with the Mode 7 view in Demon’s Crest. Although awe­some most of the time you use it in nav­i­gat­ing the demon realm, it weird­ly affects your vision if you fly around for a pro­longed time. 

Demon’s Crest comes from Cap­com’s attempt to do some­thing new and excit­ing. Ush­er­ing in a new era of plat­form­ing and hop ‘n bop action was Cap­com’s agen­da and it paid off. In the case of Demon’s Crest, they under­stood the assign­ment and passed.

Harvest Moon (SNES) — Issue 45

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Farm­ing life begins with
SNES sim­u­la­tor classic

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

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse — Issue 44

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Hop ‘n bop Dis­ney style

Hop ‘n bops are the lifeblood of the old­er con­soles. You did­n’t have a decent con­sole if it did­n’t have one romp with a mas­cot-like char­ac­ter at the helm. Even the ter­ri­ble con­soles had at least one. So, it should be no sur­prise that a great sys­tem such as the Super Nin­ten­do was chock full of great bops. While a bit on the easy side and slight­ly deriv­a­tive, Mag­i­cal Quest Star­ring Mick­ey Mouse is in the pan­theon of good plat­form­ers for the SNES.

The game starts out with cutesy lore: Mick­ey and his friends Goofy and Don­ald are play­ing a game of catch with Plu­to at the park. The ball gets thrown too far and Plu­to runs off. Goofy and Don­ald chase Plu­to and even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear, leav­ing Mick­ey to search for them. Mick­ey tum­bles down a cliff and finds him­self in a strange mag­i­cal land. After a bit of search­ing, a wiz­ard appears to inform Mick­ey that Pete is a tyrant over the land and has cap­tured Plu­to. With that infor­ma­tion, it’s now up to Mick­ey to save his canine com­pan­ion and reunite with his friends.

While search­ing for Plu­to isn’t hard, some of the mechan­ics are lit­tle cum­ber­some. The spin-and-throw mechan­ic is weird at first, but even­tu­al­ly it becomes sec­ond nature. It’s a lit­tle too off some­times, mak­ing clean hits more miss than suc­cess. There are cos­tume changes for Mick­ey that serve to high­light the mag­ic usage of the game, and each has a way to be use­ful. The prob­lem is, it’s not always clear what you should be using the suits for indi­vid­u­al­ly. And upgrad­ing them is some­times a chore. How­ev­er, the over­all basic hop ‘n bop mechan­ics are excel­lent and feel tight. Mick­ey is easy to con­trol, and bop­ping through the beau­ti­ful scenery is an easy affair.

While the sto­ry isn’t any­thing to real­ly get excit­ed about, the graph­ics are. They’re super lush and beau­ti­ful, with detailed sprites and abun­dant col­ors to bright­en even the dark­est of realms. The music is also appro­pri­ate­ly bright, with a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties to the lat­er excel­lent Aladdin sound­track. It’s a Cap­com music show so the sound­track is at worst decent. The tracks do add a lit­tle some­thing to the romp through loca­tions, so the music is serviceable.

This is the very def­i­n­i­tion of hop ‘n bop in the ear­ly days of 16-bit plat­form­ers. It’s got a decent sto­ry, beau­ti­ful graph­ics and a decent sound­track with excel­lent plat­form­ing and a vari­ety of mechan­ics to learn. If it had a save fea­ture, that might have pushed it to the upper ech­e­lon of SNES plat­form­ing. But, that bit of miss­ing mag­ic along with some quirky con­trol issues keep it from being an epic Mick­ey quest.

Ken Griffey Jr.‘s Winning Run — Issue 40

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The Kid’s SNES fol­low-up a guar­an­teed home run

There are a few things Rare, the bas­tion of all that is unholy in retro gam­ing, has done cor­rect­ly. One was Gold­en­Eye 007 for the Nin­ten­do 64. And anoth­er is the Ken Grif­fey Jr. MLB series.
Ken Grif­fey Jr., for the unini­ti­at­ed, is one of the best major league play­ers to have ever picked up a bat and glove. There was once a time that folks believed that Grif­fey would beat Hank Aaron’s home run record in the ’90s. Alas, once Grif­fey left the Seat­tle Mariners after the 1995 sea­son, he was nev­er the same thanks to numer­ous injuries. He’s still “that guy,” though, and it remains that his game series is one of the best in arcade base­ball. The first game was good, but the sequel — Ken Grif­fey Jr.’s Win­ning Run — is absolute fire.
Let’s start with the premise, because there actu­al­ly is some­thing of a sto­ry here. The open­ing cin­e­mat­ics show Grif­fey Jr. at the plate doing what he does best: Smack the ball. Already beloved by fans and team­mates, his hero­ics in the bot­tom of the 11th inning of the 1995 Amer­i­can League Divi­sion Series’ final game that year cement­ed the city’s love for “The Kid” and led to the birth of this sequel title. He was so beloved that when Grif­fey Jr. start­ed think­ing about retire­ment, Seat­tle active­ly cam­paigned for the Hall of Famer to sim­ply “come home” and reclaim his title of King of the King­dome. This set­up is lov­ing­ly craft­ed in just the intro, and the rest of the game is favor­able because of it. 
So, what’s inside the pack­age with a slick out­side? A lot, for a SNES game. There are sev­er­al ways to play, depend­ing on if you want a quick game or if you want to make a full 162-game sea­son of things. The MLB League mode is a great­ly appre­ci­at­ed fea­ture. In it, you can choose to play three types of sea­sons: A short 26-game sea­son, a medi­um 52-game sea­son and a full 162-game sea­son. There’s also an option to play an exhi­bi­tion game in the MLB Chal­lenge mode. I like the abil­i­ty to choose between those options, because maybe I don’t want to sit through an entire sea­son. I can’t do that in real life, so I know I don’t want to do that in a video game ver­sion. There’s even a mode to resume a pre­vi­ous­ly start­ed game. 
If you’re not so inclined to be a play­er, there’s a decent man­ag­er mode includ­ed. Ever the non-tra­di­tion­al­ist, if you’re like me and you want to skip to the end, you can run through a World Series mode where you play out the Series to crown your cham­pi­on. There’s also an All-Star mode where you can play through the tit­u­lar game and par­tic­i­pate in the Home Run Derby. 
With the wealth of options in how to play, it’s easy to actu­al­ly play. Win­ning Run doesn’t rein­vent the wheel of base­ball video game mechan­ics, which is a good thing. That means that even if you’re not a sports nut, you could prob­a­bly pick up the game and learn how to play base­ball. Base run­ning, field­ing, pitch­ing and bat­ting are easy to under­stand here, and the mechan­ics all come naturally. 
While Win­ning Run doesn’t have the MLB player’s license — nei­ther did the orig­i­nal game, either — it does have a fla­vor that com­pet­ing games at the time didn’t have: Charm and charis­ma in every detail. The graph­ics are clean, crisp and out­right beau­ti­ful. They are so well done that even 26 years lat­er, as a SNES game, they hold up. Even the menu graph­ics look great. Rare was killing it in the late por­tion of the SNES’ lifes­pan, and Win­ning Run is a stun­ning example.
And, for a moment, let’s talk about the sound­track. This is one of the few sports sound­tracks that I own. Rare’s sound team con­tin­u­ous­ly makes up for the sur­round­ing mess with qual­i­ty sound, and this is one of the best from their cat­a­logue. The main theme was fan­tas­tic, and the menu theme is out­stand­ing as well. Both themes add to the over­all pack­age and get things start­ed off right. The in-game ambi­ence is nice as is the play announc­er. Every­thing ulti­mate­ly cre­ates a good arcade base­ball feel, which you’re going to need if you’re going to slog through an entire pennant.
Tech­ni­cal­ly, aside from the lack of the MLB player’s license, there’s noth­ing wrong with Win­ning Run. The lack of play­er names and like­ness­es is a bum­mer, but it doesn’t real­ly take away from the core strengths of Win­ning Run. 
Excel­lent options, easy-to-under­stand mechan­ics and a fan­tas­tic sound­track make run­ning the bases fun in Win­ning Run. The Kid’s sequel effort paid off and bats high in the order of great sports games.