Super Castlevania IV

Platform:  Super NES
Developer:  Konami
Released:  1991
Genre:  Platformer

The Game
Dracula has once again risen to plague the land.  Simon, a member of the Belmont clan and sworn to face and defeat the evil vampire, must take up the legendary whip Vampire Killer and meet his destiny in Dracula's castle.

Super Castlevania IV used to occupy a somewhat strange area in the Castlevania series.  It was built to be a remake of the original Castlevania and was considered so over in Japan.  When it was ported over to America, however, Konami's American branch presented it as a sequel to the previous games in the series.  It continued in this dual role for some time, but now it is universally considered to be a remake only.  Which is a good thing, really, because otherwise it would have made an already confusing timeline even more convoluted than necessary.

It still carries the moniker "Super Castlevania IV" here in the English speaking countries despite this clarification.

The Characters
Simon Belmont is our hero, purportedly one of the greatest if not the greatest member of his clan.  If nothing else, he seems to be the most highly revered.  But like most silent action game protagonists, he's got very little in the way of characterization.  About all we know about the guy is that he's plenty determined to plant the tip of his whip right in between Dracula's beady little eyes.

Dracula is Dracula.  You know the drill, surely . . . swanky nobleman type with mysterious powers and an unending streak of evil several miles wide.  He also drinks the blood of the living, leads an army of monstrous minions, and has some prime Gothic real estate.

The Writing
You are Simon.  You gotta kill Dracula.  Doesn't get much simpler than that.  Nor does it get any more complex.  But that's to be expected for this type of game.

The Gameplay
SCIV is notable for upgrading Simon's abilities from the original Castlevania with many of those abilities becoming staples of the series from that point forward.  Instead of just flicking his whip out in one way over and over again, Simon can now attack in almost any direction . . . though whipping downward in any way requires him to be up in the air.  He can also hold the whip out and flick it around lightly (while still able to cause damage) in whatever direction the player presses, one of the innovations that was carried over in several later titles in the series.  He can latch on to fixed points and swing Indy Jones style from platform to platform.  And so on and so forth.

Overall, I was half-impressed and half-disappointed in the gameplay.  Being able to whip in virtually any direction was a most definitely welcome addition, the whip flicking worked well both offensively and defensively, and Simon moves very well.

But!

You can jump onto stairs, you can jump down from them, but you can't jump up from them, causing a bit of frustration.  It doesn't matter how dire the situation is and how helpful it might be for you to jump up to a higher platform from the stairs to get away from congregating enemies, Simon is stubbornly stuck to those steps as if they were all made of glue.  This becomes especially annoying with the stairs that connect right to the edge of a platform.  Several times I found myself trying to jump from that platform to another one, but because I was just a single pixel to far to one side, I would end up flailing helplessly on the jump button while Simon stood there on the top step and looked at me all confused, saying "What?  What?!  I don't know what you're wanting me to do!"

Whenever Simon gets hit, he flies around like the victim of a 10,000 volt current.  I understand that this is supposed to be a hazard and is a common element of both a lot of platformers in general and Castlevania in particular, but in this game, it really does seem like he's been caught in a miniature explosion, throwing him several yards to one side.  The overblown nature of this effect is especially felt in areas where getting hit is both almost entirely unavoidable and invariably results in getting tossed down the nearest pit.  Simon really should have taken his anti-convulsants before going into Dracula's lair.

I was both impressed and disappointed right from the beginning by by dual layered fortress level (1-2).  Though a simple gimmick, I rather liked it and it gave some extra depth (Get it?  Two layers?  Depth?!) to the level, but sadly it was not repeated again in later levels.  I thought it was at one point and was all excited until I realized that there was just stuff hanging down on another, non-playable layer in front of me.  I find it kind of strange that they would not take further advantage of this game mechanic throughout the rest of the game.

Still, overall, it's not too horrible bad.  It all evens out to a pretty standard platform experience.

The Challenge
This game can't seem to make up its mind whether it's trying to be super-easy or super-hard.  The difficulty curve does indeed gradually curve upward overall, but in specific instances it will shoot up and down erratically at breakneck speed.

One of the parts where it seems to be easier than it really should is whenever you die and start the level over.  At the beginning of the game and every time he dies, Simon starts out with a basic leather version of his whip.  It's short and it's not very powerful, but pretty much without fail the very first candle you snuff out will provide you with a whip upgrade.  And then within the next five to ten candles, you get the second and final whip upgrade.  If they're just going to hand out these upgrades like it's Halloween and you're wearing your very best vampire hunter costume, then what's the point of having the upgrades at all?  I think I killed approximately seven monsters in all with anything less than the fully powered up whip.

One of the parts where it seems to be harder than it really should is whenever spikes are involved.  Fuck you, spikes!

End bosses seem to be a mixed bag.  One might be somewhat challenging, the next taken down with a mere flick of your whip in its general direction, and the one after that a nightmare from which you may never wake.

The Graphics
I gotta say, the graphics are pretty nice.  Each area is pretty creepy, the sprites are fairly lively, and there is some good use of the SNES' Mode 7 feature, including one stage that has the background constantly rolling in the background, making it look like you're moving through a massive funhouse tube.  The boss sprites are pretty imaginative and well made . . . I can see why a lot of them were reused in Symphony of the Night.

The Music
I wasn't really paying attention to the music for the most part (oops!), but what I recall of it was pretty good.

The Bottom Line
I'm gonna be up front here . . . the straight platformer Castlevania games aren't my favorite things in the world.  I'm one of those guys who much prefer the Metroidvania style entries that eventually took over the series.  Still, this wasn't half bad.  Good graphics, decent gameplay, and the addition of some of the things that I like about the later Metroidvania games all add up to a pretty good installment.  Points off for being just one of a few remakes of the original Castlevania, but still a pretty good game despite that.  Worth playing.

Flight of the Amazon Queen

Platform:  Computer
Developer:  Interactive Binary Illusions
Released:1995
Genre:  Point and Click Adventure

The Game
A stray bolt of lightning strikes the Amazon Queen, a passenger airplane flying over the Amazonian rain forest, stranding its pilot Joe King (get it?), Skip the mechanic, and famous actress Faye Russel in the middle of the jungle.  While Joe tries to find a way for them to get back to civilization, he gets embroiled in the vile machinations of Dr. Ironstein, a German scientist determined to create an army of dinosaur Amazon warriors in order to take over the world!

FOTAQ is a pastiche of various pulp fiction stories and movie serials popular in the 1940's and 50's, and more specifically it was inspired by Indiana Jones (they even have a crystal skull, more than a decade before Indiana Jones did it!) and the Monkey Island series, and it contains several other George Lucas based references, primarily from Star Wars (including one of the voice actors, who was Porkins in A New Hope!).  One wonders why it wasn't actually published by LucasArts, but I'm sure they enjoyed the free advertisement anyway.

If you, too, wish to play this game but don't want to spend time trying to find or build a really old computer to do so, then you're in luck!  Just head on over to the ScummVM website.  "ScummVM" stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine, and it enables new computers (and other digital devices) to play several point-and-click games from that era.  Including, as the name implies, Maniac Mansion.  "But, Jim!" you wail helplessly.  "I don't have the disks for Amazon Queen!"  Well worry not, whiny peoples of the internet, for FOTAQ is one of a few games that have been offered up for free use with the ScummVM system!  Just head on over to the downloads section of the site and grab it!

The Characters
Our erstwhile hero is Joe King (get it this time?), a rough-and-tumble airplane pilot who somehow manages to get into all sorts of weird adventures, including an ill-defined incident in Borneo.  He's a likable fellah with a jocular wit and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty in order to get himself and his friends out of a scrape.  This isn't to say he'll resort to violence, however . . . at least most of the time.  He does get a couple of good punches in, but for the most part he'd rather use his noggin to solve the many mysteries of the Amazonian jungle.

Along for the ride is Skip, the wide-eyed mechanic with a penchant for Commander Rocket comic books, and Faye Russel, an aggressive film star prima donna who naturally blames Joe for everything and lords over him every chance she gets.  You'd think she'd be the natural love interest in that case, but no, that role goes to Princess Azura, the strong and beautiful leader of the Amazon women.  Because naturally there would be a tribe of strong and beautiful Amazons.

Dr. Ironstein (how about this one, do you get this one?) is your typical mad scientist, using his mad science in an overly convoluted manner as part of an overly convoluted plan for world conquest.  He's got the lab coat, he cackles madly, and he's got an army of German goons - some competent, some not - working for him.  Also working for him is Hans Anderson, a Dutchman who sounds like he's doing a bad Sean Connery impersonation and stands as Joe's rival in the passenger airplane business.

And then there's the ton of minor characters with which Joe must interact to proceed through the game, including but not limited to a tribe of pygmies (even though they aren't pygmies and pygmies are from Africa, but they call themselves that in order to beef up their tourist trade), Trader Bob (an Aussie bloke who runs a convenience store out of the pygmy village), Jimmy and Mary-Lou Cook (missionaries who failed in their attempts to teach the pygmies and are now concentrating on spreading the Word to the monkeys of the jungle), the ferryman (who, as a skeleton dressed in a long black robe, looks suspiciously familiar), and various others.

The absolute best minor character in the game, however, has to be the gorilla.  I won't spoil it . . . you've just got to play the game to meet up with this fine specimen.

The Writing
Point-and-click adventure games tend to rely equally on two things: the quality of the puzzles and the quality of the writing.  And in this case, the writing definitely pulls through and delivers.  The humor of the game ranges all over the place, from silly puns to subtle wit to parody to pop culture references to pure absurdism.  The dialogue is tremendously clever, and it's worth reloading from your last save point just to go through each conversation multiple times just to hear all the different ways they can go.  The voice acting is superb as well, making what might seem like kind of a dud line when you read it instantly funny when it actually comes out of Joe's mouth.

The writers were obviously going for a combination mockery and homage to old pulp movies, and they captured that exact feel perfectly.  They threw in basically everything they could find, including fantasy, science-fiction, action adventure, monster movies, lost world tales, pseudo-Nazis, and a little bit of romance.  The entire experience is just a fun romp through the old tropes and cliches those various genres have to offer.

The Gameplay
It's pretty much your basic point-and-click setup, so there's not really that much to say.  It all works just about as well here as it does in any other adventure game of the time . . . there's a reason that kind of interface is a classic.

Still, there were a couple of very minor points.  Having to scroll through a ton of different items to find just the one I wanted would get a little annoying from time to time.  And while Joe is moving, you can't see the names of anything you scroll the pointer over.  You can still activate it (thank goodness), but if you don't know something's there already, you might miss it unless you wait for Joe to stop walking and then have a look around.

But like I said, very minor.  It doesn't really get in the way of enjoying the game.

The Challenge
FOTAQ does not in any way work on moon logic, for which I am extremely grateful.  Having done several moon logic puzzles in the past, I have learned to hate them with the burning intensity of a thousand suns.  The puzzles here, thankfully, all use a logical progression of thought and the sensible use of your various tools.  It's still challenging to figure out exactly how some certain things go together, but overall it's nicely balanced.  Difficult, but not painfully so.

The real trouble, especially as you get toward the end of the game, is figuring out exactly where you're supposed to go to get or use certain items.  The various areas in the game are pretty big, and Joe isn't exactly in a hurry to get anywhere, so you might end up searching for a very long time for just the right room to use your sticky bat in.  And at one point, I wandered around for what seemed like forever all because I couldn't tell that the darkest section of a dark section in a dark room was a door, so there was an entire pathway I kept missing, no matter how many times I walked around the temple.  What made it worse was that it was just over another door on a lower level, so that when my pointer was saying "walk to door", I thought it was just registering the door I could actually see.

But besides those little upsets, the basic challenge level of the game is just right.  As long as you pay attention to your surroundings and use your noggin when trying out various item combinations, it should be clear sailing.

The Graphics
I'd played this game before, but it still strikes me just how pretty it is.  The character models have a great deal of expression to them and the backgrounds are lush and simply awe-inspiring.  And thank goodness, because spending hours waltzing around from one side of the jungle to the other looking for stuff would get pretty damn boring otherwise.

The characters in the cut scenes are a little creepy looking, but everything else around them looks so good that I'm willing to forgive that.

The Music
At first I was prepared to just say "What music?"  It wasn't until I was about halfway through before I even realized I should be hearing music but wasn't, since there was one puzzle in which Joe specifically comments on the music playing.  After a great deal of searching for answers and fiddling around with the settings, I figured out that the music options need to be set on "AdLib" for some reason in order for the music to play.

Sadly, as soon as I had the music turned on, I kind of wish I'd left it off.  It's not bad, per se, and in fact it's kinda toe tapping in places and I wouldn't mind just listening to it by itself.  The problem is that it's distracting.  I'm trying to listen to the pygmy chief tell me about the mystic crystal skull, and all I can hear is the "piddle pink tink da da da" music playing in the background.  Even after I turned it down a little, my ear still kept getting drawn back into it.  I would have turned it off again, but I needed to suffer through it for the review!

So my verdict is, the music on its own is good, but as a part of the game, it's bad.

The Bottom Line
Hilariously written with challenging yet logical puzzles, great voice acting, and beautiful scenery.  One of the best games I've ever played, and it's free!  You can't beat that!

Comix Zone

Platform:  Sega Genesis
Developer:  Sega Technical Institute
Released:  1995
Genre:  Beat 'em up

The Game
Sketch Turner is just your regular rock musician who decides to try and make a comic book when he's suddenly zapped by lightning, which somehow causes him and the big bad of his story to switch places!  Now trapped within the pages of Comix Zone, Sketch has to make his way to the end of the comic, all the while dodging the obstacles put into his path by the sinister Mortus!

Comix Zone is the brain child of a fellah named Peter Morawiec, who first presented the idea to Sega back in 1992 via a concept video called "Joe Pencil Trapped in the Comix Zone".  You can check it out here, which I highly recommend, 'cause it's pretty damn slick looking.  Oh, and by strange coincidence, the movie Cool World was released that same year.  Hmmm . . .

The Characters
Sketch Turner is a typical 90's rock musician/comic artist, and his wardrobe does everything it can to confirm this fact.  He's even got the ponytail and small, round sunglasses.  I can imagine him touring from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, belting out the sounds of alternative rock in between righteous sessions with his sketch pad.  Seriously, dude.

Roadkill is his pet rat, who is also trapped within the pages of Comix Zone and helps Sketch out by finding hidden items, flipping hard to reach switches, and acting as bait for certain baddies.  He's a pretty cool little dude.  Respect the rat, yo.

Alyssa Cyan is the requisite hot chick of the game.  She is the first of the comic's characters to greet Sketch, ignoring his protests in order to send him out on a dangerous mission to defeat the mutants.  She spends most of the adventure back at the New Earth Empire base, radioing Sketch to give him helpful pointers of how to get past particularly difficult spots.

And finally there's Mortus, the leader of the mutants . . . aliens . . . or whatever they are.  Though Sketch doesn't actually face him until the very end of the game, Mortus' presence is still felt throughout as he uses his unique perspective to draw new enemies and other obstacles in Sketch's path, all in a bid to destroy Sketch, become real, and start wreaking havoc in the real world.  He's a bit of a bastard.

The Writing
The story of Comix Zone is somewhat interesting in that there are actually two stories going on at once.  On the one hand, we've got the main story of Sketch and Mortus switching universes and Sketch's quest to get to the end of the comic and get back out again.  And on the other hand, we've got the story of the comic itself, a tale about the human race mounting a defense against invading monster alien mutants.

But who cares, right?  The story is basically just a prop for the game's gimmick and to push the action along.  Still, for all that, it's a very well constructed and entertaining gimmick/action-pushing prop.

Almost all of the writing in the game is conveyed through the use of caption boxes and word balloons . . . 'cause you're in a comic, get it?  It's a pretty neat conceit, actually, right up until some of the word balloons end up hanging right over the action and you're just swinging blindly, hoping you're hitting that nasty mutant alien monster thing instead of the other way around.

The Gameplay
Combat is quick, intense, and nicely intuitive.  There are a surprisingly wide number of combos you can use that don't take horrifically convoluted sequences of button mashings to execute.  It's all pretty simple, moving everything along lightning fast while also being satisfyingly varied.  A lot of fighting games could probably learn a thing or two from Comix Zone, in my opinion.

The item system is pretty basic, but that's all it really needs to be.  You can pick up three items at a time (with one of the items generally being Roadkill, when you haven't got him out and scampering about and he hasn't run off a cliff somewhere), most of which do some sort of damage to enemies and/or objects.  Usually you won't find more objects than you can carry, so that limitation isn't a very harsh mistress.

Sketch's movements are pretty fluid, but he has a tendency to be a little too broad in his gestures.  One wrong tap of the directional pad can mean the difference between a living Sketch standing five feet away from a landmine and a crispy fried corpse sitting on top of the remains of an exploded landmine.

The Challenge
If I had to rate it on a scale of one to ten, I'd place Comix Zone's challenge rating at a definite AW HELL NAW.

I mean come on, guys, I'm pretty sure we were supposed to have left the Nintendo Hard games behind about three or four years before this, right?  I shouldn't be playing a mid-90's game and be wanting to throw my controller and myself out the window!

And what really sucks is how much of the difficulty curve is obviously artificial.  The fact that the bad guys are blocking gods from the very start is bad enough, but the fact that destroying objects - doors, crates, etc., many of which you are absolutely required to destroy in order to continue progressing through the game - causes your life meter to drain . . . well, that definitely takes first prize in the "Cheap Bullshit" competition.

When the developers start throwing in things that you have to do that also hurt you, then you know they've just run out of ways to make their game naturally challenging and just don't care about creating a balanced and enjoyable experience for the player whatsoever.  They might as well just come to my house and slap me in the face personally.  I really don't think it would be any more insulting.

The Graphics
Damn, but this is a pretty game.  It really looks like you're fighting your way through a comic book.  It's not quite as fine looking as the concept movie I linked up above, but I figure that's pretty understandable, and it looks damn fine enough as it is.  Sadly it does have a few minor glitches here and there, but overall every stage is beautiful to behold.

The Music
Man, to be honest, I don't really know.  I was too busy fighting for my life to notice the music very much.  What little I did catch seemed pretty rockin', and having looked up some background stuff on the game, it seems that they developers were proud enough of the soundtrack to release it on CD back when such things weren't as commonplace as they are now.

The Bottom Line
Comix Zone is one of those games that I love to hate and hate to love and all that nonsense.  It's a wonderful idea, beautiful setting, and interesting game mechanic that gets dragged down by it's horrific difficult level and brutal brevity.  It plays much like an arcade game in many ways, like it was designed specifically to eat up the quarters of bratty little kids who have been let loose at the local mall.  But it isn't an arcade game.  It was made specifically for console gaming, and it should have therefore been easier (or at least been given a gentler difficulty curve) and longer.  I'd definitely be willing to play it again, but never to actually beat it again . . . just tooling around in the first couple of stages would be fine for me, leaving my blood pressure more or less unmolested.

Shadowrun (Genesis)

Platform:  Sega Genesis
Developer:  BlueSky Software
Released:  1994
Genre:  Action RPG

The Game
Joshua is not a happy man.  His brother Michael was killed in a failed shadowrun, and he intends to find out who did it and why.  To these ends, he spend the last of his money to buy a ticket to Seattle to visit Michael's last known place of residence, a coffin motel in the Redmond Barrens.  From there, Joshua becomes a shadowrunner himself, traveling back and forth across the Seattle Metroplex and beyond in his tireless quest to avenge Michael's death.

The Genesis version of Shadowrun was released a year after its SNES cousin by a different developer and with a completely different storyline and gameplay.

The Characters
You play as Joshua, a somewhat hot-headed young lad who starts out looking for revenge and ends up on a quest to save the world.  The way he does this is partially determined by the player's choice of archetype at the beginning of the game . . . specifically, he can be a decker (hacker who projects his very consciousness into a virtual construct of the computer system), a street samurai (big, tough fighter skilled in the use of guns, armor, and punching things very hard), or a gator shaman (magician who follows the precepts of his spirit animal, allowing its magical energy to flow through him).

You face a number of different adversaries, but the main ones are Renraku, one of the biggest megacorporations around, and Thon, a free spirit bent on world domination.  These two forces have joined together in a mutual bid for power that naturally degenerates into each side trying to use and then lose the other.  Many of the other baddies you end up facing are working for either one or both of these nasty villains.

Fortunately for Joshua, he's also got a lot of folks on his side, though not all of them work for free.  He meets up with a number of Mr. Johnsons, people who specialize in working as middlemen for corporations and other organizations and do the actual hiring of shadowrunners for their various illegal and quasi-legal activities, who give him jobs and information.  He cultivates a list of contacts who are willing to provide him with info, gear, and various services for the right price.  And there are several fellow shadowrunners hanging about and are willing to team up with Joshua as long as he keeps them paid and alive.

He also eventually meets and teams up with Harlequin and Frosty, two legendary figures in the Shadowrun setting.  So that's pretty neat!

Like its SNES predecessor, the Genesis SR has a lot of characterization floating around.  Virtually every NPC you meet has their own unique personality and mode of speech, with only a few glitches here and there . . . every single hotel owner, for example, bitches about all their towels being stolen, even in the classiest joints.  Though there may just be an epidemic of towel thieves in Seattle, meaning it might have been done that way on purpose!

The Writing
The game's story is even deeper than the characterization, branching in several interesting directions with nicely cinematic reveals of important plot elements.  It really feels like Joshua is moving through a long and complex Shadowrun campaign, and it's great to see how they pull various disparate elements together to make a cohesive whole.

The dialogue between Joshua and the NPCs is extremely well written, and in several parts it and/or the narrative sections are interspersed with what amounts to action scenes, putting you in a short firefight before returning to the discussion at hand.  And while it partakes of the Shadowrun slang from time to time, it doesn't try to beat the player over the head with it and uses it in contexts where it's easy to understand if you're not already familiar with it.

The Gameplay
If nothing else, the gameplay alone in this game makes it worth playing.  It's an overhead game with a sandbox setup, allowing you to go anywhere in the game right off the bat as long as you're willing to pay cab fare and - in one case - for a passport.

Combat is as easy as cycling through targets and shooting/punching/magicking them until they stop moving, but the mechanics behind it are very deep.  You have a sizable list of attributes which can be advanced through gaining and applying karma, there is a wide selection of different types of guns and spells, you can buy various cyberware upgrades to enhance your stats and abilities, and you have two different life meters, one for physical damage and another for stun damage.

Your attributes also include a number of non-combat stats, including but not limited to Negotiation (influences buying and selling as well as the pay for shadowrunning jobs and for hiring other runners), Electronics (allowing you to pick maglocks and hack security systems), and Reputation (allowing you access to certain buildings, reducing the costs of entering certain clubs, and getting the attention of certain high-class contacts), adding even further depth to other areas of gameplay.

When speaking with NPCs, Joshua can pick from up to three different dialogue options (one each for the A, B, and C buttons on the Genesis controller), making chats with other people a decently interactive experience.

The menu screen overall is incredibly in-depth, storing tons of information about your character and the mission he's on.

Running the Matrix - the cyberspace construct of the city's computer grid - can get a bit repetitive at times, but there's so many options of what you can do that the player can mix things up a little if they start getting bored of the same old "continuous Deception/Attack" routine.

While there are many other games that were made since that have this kind of depth or more, this was one of the few console games of the time that went to such lengths to give the player such an immersive experience, and in my opinion all that hard work was worth it.

The Challenge
The game remains fairly challenging throughout - unless you go on a shadowrun binge and simply upgrade everything to insane levels - but is especially so at the very beginning, mostly because your stats start off so low as to be almost non-existent.  Joshua is a very weak character to start off with, and it takes a great deal of time grinding shadowruns before things start equalizing.

This is one of my few gripes with the game.  There is a nice variety of runs you can go on, but by the time you get to where you really need tons of cash and karma to get where you need to be to advance the storyline, your options have been whittled down to only two real choices:  Matrix runs or breaking into corporate buildings to retrieve a package/person.  The challenge at this point is to merely keep up the grind without getting burnt out.  I realize, however, that the limitations of the Genesis were probably what kept the developers from introducing even more variety in the run types . . . but it can still wear the player down after a while.

The Graphics
Overall the graphics were very well designed.  The opening screen itself with the Shadowrun logo looks absolutely beautiful, and all of the different areas of the city look like they should.  There's a lot of great detail all over the place - from litter and debris lining the streets in the barrens to the futuristic looking high-tech gadgetry on the desks in the office buildings - but some of it is marred by a strange sort of pixellation effect.  Some of the streets and sidewalks, for instance, look like they're only about half there, as there's a grid of black spots laying across them.  I think it may have been an attempt to give them a more textured look, but I'd say it failed if that's the case.

Another small but sometimes annoying problem is a slight warping of the image from time to time.  Most noticeable in office buildings and out in the woods, a horizontal section of the screen will sometimes become raggedy.  It doesn't obscure the image any, but it is a bit distracting at times.  I've played this game both as a cartridge and as a ROM and this ghost warping occurs in both, so it's definitely a problem with the programming of the game itself, though I can't personally imagine the exact mechanics behind it.

A lot of the NPCs that wander around outside are clones of each other with no real individualization, and there's only about five different types at most.  Meh.

These are all just minor issues, however.  The game as a whole looks great.  Especially cyberspace . . . even though they use a very basic topography (in the pencil and paper RPG, the virtual construct of a computer system can look like virtually anything the programmers want it to look like), it's very pretty and utilizes a pretty snazzy mock 3D setup.

The Music
Shadowrun is one of the few games I'd consider buying the soundtrack from.  Where it's SNES predecessor was kind of "rock noir", the Genesis version is much more techno with an occasional hint of grunge underlying it.  Each specific musical snatchet is completely appropriate for the area it plays in as well, adding to the atmosphere without taking it over.

Only problem is that when you load your game while you're already playing, the music glitches and starts playing the Redmond Barrens theme no matter where you had saved last.  Fortunately it fixes itself once you leave the area.

The Bottom Line
I absolutely adore this game.  Though it has its moments where it's a bit of a grind, the excellent gameplay keeps even doing the same thing over and over again interesting.  I love that it's very tightly based on the Second Edition Shadowrun rules, making it feel even more like Shadowrun than just the setting alone could do.  Great story, great graphics, great music . . . overall, this is just a great game and I highly recommend it.

Shadowrun (SNES)

Platform:  Super Nintendo
Developer:  Beam Software
Released:  1993
Genre:  Action RPG

The Game
Jake Armitage is having a bad day.  But most days in which you die and wake up in the morgue aren't going to be your best, and that's just the situation in which Jake has found himself.  Unable to remember exactly what happened to him, he has to follow a thin trail of clues in order to figure it all out.  As he makes his way around the Seattle Metroplex in the year 2050 he has to dodge all of the people trying to kill him a second time, find help wherever he can get it, learn the path of a shamanic magician, and take down a couple of megacorporations to bring a conclusion to his adventure.  Just another day in the life of a shadowrunner.

Shadowrun is based on the popular pencil and paper RPG system of the same name.  Set in the only somewhat distant future, corporations more or less rule the parts of the world that the remnants of the sovereign nations no longer hold (and some of those chunks as well) and magic has returned to the world.  Shadowrunners are mercenaries willing to do virtually any job for the right price, finding profit by slipping through the cracks of civilization and doing the jobs the corporations aren't willing or able to dirty their own hands with directly.

The Characters
You can hire on other shadowrunners throughout the course of the game, but the only main protagonist is Jake himself, and he only speaks a few times, making any determinations concerning his character fairly difficult.  At the very least he seems prepared to finish the job he's been given and do the right thing when it comes down to it.

The bad guys - primarily taking the form of Drake, a dragon in charge of his own little corporate empire - are usually distant and cranky, but they're undeniably evil because . . . well, I guess they just are, dammit.  It's really a black and grey morality at work here.  The best baddie is undeniably the Jester Spirit, however, with his sadistically amusing dialogue and interesting character arc.

While characterization in this game isn't exactly deep, it's still there.  Virtually every NPC and PC you meet has their own distinct voice, all speaking with different accents, turns of phrase, and attitude.  Some of them - like Norbert, my favorite little maniac dwarf shadowrunner - are actually pretty damn entertaining at times.

The Writing
The story is a mildly complex plot that holds up pretty well, even if specific motivations are rarely called into question.  There are a few good revelations and a couple of decent twists . . . nothing great, but enough to keep a player interested and entertained.  In the end and despite a few oddities here and there, it definitely gives the feel of a typical Shadowrun adventure.

The dialogue is where the writing really shines, however.  As mentioned before, each character has their own particular way of talking, meaning you won't get bored chatting up four or five people with identical speech patterns.  The writing also has a good bit of clever wit about it . . . one of the runners you can hire on is a shaman named Dances With Clams, and he makes ocean references from time to time.

One thumb up.

The Gameplay
The game works on a point and click interface that would have been more at home on a PC than on the SNES.  Examining, manipulating, and picking up things isn't really so bad, but having to hit a button, move the cursor over, and then start spamming the button some more whenever one wants to initiate combat is a little bothersome, especially since no one else - including any runners you may have hired - aren't bound by any such restriction.  You also can't move Jake around while any of the cursors (manipulate, attack, magic) are active, meaning that while your enemies are free to go wherever they want while they're filling Jake with lead, Jake has to stand rooted to one spot while he returns fire.

Also unfortunate is the dialogue window.  While talking to people, you receive certain words and phrases that you can repeat to them for more information or tell to other people to get more info or advance the story in some way.  The unfortunate part is that after a while you collect an exorbitant number of keywords, and unless you already know exactly which ones will and won't get a response, you have to go down through the entire list, one word at a time, until you find just the right one or two that will make things proceed.  And if you forget or miss that one little word somehow, you might go nuts trying to figure out what you did wrong and end up starting the whole process all over again.  I remember that the first time I played this game, I was stuck in the first section for what seemed like hours all because I somehow missed saying "Lone Star" to this one guy tucked off the back office of a building.

Still, it's not too horrible.  The system is, overall, workable.  The karma system is okay.  Basic, not too deep, but it does its job.

The Challenge
I've played and beaten this game several times before, but even knowing exactly where I needed to go and exactly what I needed to do when I got there, it was still fairly challenging for me.  I'd like to take this as a hallmark of a well-balanced game, that it can be challenging (if not as challenging) for veteran players and newbie players alike.  It helps keep one from getting bored with it too easily.

The Graphics
For the most part, the graphics are beautiful, showing off worn-down slums and shiny, glittering office buildings alike with wonderful style.  The overall map of the game is pretty small compared to most SNES games, but it makes up for it by making each section of that map unique, a collection of greatly varied environments from a car-lined junkyard to a Gothic cemetery to high-rise offices to underground computer labs, with almost no cloning of rooms whatsoever.

Where the graphics fail is regarding small clickable objects, a common problem with a lot of early point and click adventure games.  One of the first items you're supposed to pick up is a scalpel from the morgue Jake wakes up in.  Unfortunately, the scalpel is only about three pixels long, so it takes a little trial and error to even discover that it's something you're supposed to take unless you already know what you're looking for.

The Music
I love the music in this game.  It's got a kind of "rock noir" sound to it a lot of the time, and I found myself quite often singing along with the catchy background tunes.

The Bottom Line
I'm an avid fan of the Shadowrun setting, having been playing and GMing it off and on since high school.  I can't say I'm horribly impressed with this particular outing . . . I'm not particularly fluent in the first edition version that this game is apparently based on, but I'm still fairly certain that a lot was cut out or changed in the transition.  Prickly little things like a very shallow stats system and having a character use magic and cyberware without any sort of detriment.

Still, I don't hate it, either.  It plays pretty well and is a decent diversion for a slow afternoon.  Let's just call it middle of the road and leave it at that.

Goof Troop

Platform:  Super NES
Developer:  Capcom
Released:  1993
Genre:  Puzzle-based Action Adventure

The Game
While out on a relaxing fishing trip, Pete and PJ get kidnapped by dastardly pirates and carted off to the nearby island of Spoonerville.  Goofy and Max give chase, determined to save their neighbors.  To do so, they have to work their way across the island, solving puzzles and whacking pirates across the noggins with barrels, potted plants, or anything else they can get their grubby mitts on.

Goof Troop the game, for the uninitiated, is based on Goof Troop the cartoon series, which was part of the 90's Disney heyday, back when both their TV shows and animated movies didn't suck major balls.  It was part of the same great lineup of Disney TV toons as Darkwing Duck, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin, the last two of which (in my own personal opinion) managed to equal or even outshine the movies they spun off from.  How the big D's TV branch went from creating top notch entertainment like this to making crap like Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (originally the pilot for a TV series which got nixed, bumping it to direct-to-DVD) is beyond me.

The Characters
Goofy is . . . well, Goofy.  I think we all know Goofy.

Max, Goofy's son, is thankfully here the younger, fun-loving TV version and not the whiny emo teenager brat from A Goofy Movie.

Pete is Goofy's greedy, sour neighbor and (often backstabbing) sometimes friend.  When it turns out that the pirates kidnapped him because they mistook him for their long lost captain, he milks it for all its worth, ordering the pirates about and generally living it up.

PJ is Pete's kid and Max's best friend . . . and about the only thing he does in this game besides get kidnapped and then later saved is worry briefly what's going to happen to him and his dad if the pirates figure things out.

And finally there's Keelhaul Pete, the real captain and the final boss of the game, who's mighty unhappy with the impostor who's shown up in his absence.

Oh, there's also a bunch of pirates, who are trying to stop Goofy and Max, as well as the peaceful villagers of Spoonerville island, who . . . man, I dunno.  I figured they were there to give hints and clues and advice or whatever, but mostly they just spout needless exposition.

The Writing
Very simple, very basic, but surprisingly true and authentic to the show.  The only dialogue and narration is in short cutscenes at the beginning and end of the game as well as between each stage, but I can see what little there is being used if they'd actually had an episode of Goof Troop about pirates kidnapping Pete and PJ.  The characters are in character the whole way, and that's pretty cool.

The Gameplay
Pretty damn good, I must say!  And not just for a licensed product, but just as a general game!  I'm as shocked as anyone might be!  That's why I keep using these exclamation points!  Wow!

The game is primarily puzzle based, trying to figure out what combination of tools (wooden planks to close up small gaps, bells to make the pirates follow you, grappling hooks to grab things, stun pirates, close up large gaps, etc.) you need to get past an area, or what order you need to kick blocks around into the holes so that doors will open.  There's some minor inventory management puzzles, as you can only carry two items at a time, which are surprisingly not annoying and are relegated mostly toward the end of the game, where they add a little more challenge.

There is action involved, what with the pirates that are coming after you, but oftentimes said action is part of the puzzle as well.  Some doors won't open until you've defeated all the enemies in the room, and the game will force you into coming up with inventive ways of dealing with the pirates instead of just straightforward bashing their skulls in.

All in all, big thumbs up!

The Challenge
There were a few puzzles that had me scratching my head for a few moments, but for the most part everything - both action and puzzles - was easy and quite simple.  This is unsurprising and perfectly understandable, however, as the game was almost certainly created primarily for younger children, for whom it would provide a good deal more challenge.  And even though I zipped through the game with little to no problems, I was having more than enough fun that the low difficulty was entirely forgivable.

The only point where I actually did find myself sitting up and taking notice was the final battle against Keelhaul Pete.  It still wasn't all that hard, but he's a mean old bastard, that's for sure.

The Graphics
The design of the characters and rooms was great, marred only by spotty textures.  Being a game based on a cartoon, I think that it would have benefited much more from having mostly flat colors, similar to the visuals in The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past.  The pseudo-realistic feel that they seemed to be trying for didn't really work out so well.

Still, it wasn't an eyesore or anything.  I probably only noticed because, y'know, I was trying to pay attention to that kind of stuff for the review.

The Music
Catchy, pleasant, and inoffensive.

Y'know . . . Disney music.

The Bottom Line
Wow.

I really didn't expect to like this game, but I do.  I really really do.  Looking it up on Wikipedia after beating Keelhaul Pete revealed that it has a cult following, and I can see why.  It's simple, fun, and potentially addictive.  It doesn't fall into the same trap as most other licensed games, as well, that being to just make a crappy little half-made game and slap an already existing property onto it.  Capcom could definitely have made this game with original characters and no one would have known the difference, but the fact is that both the Goof Troop setting and the mechanics of this game work rather well with each other, making it where two things that are perfectly good separately have been combined to make something great together.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Platform:  Game Boy Advance
Developer:  Konami
Released:  2003
Genre:  Metroidvania (Action Adventure)

The Game
During an eclipse in the year 2035, Soma Cruz and Mina Hark- er, Hakuba get sucked into Dracula's castle.  Finding themselves trapped, Mina stays by the entrance while Soma explores the building, trying to find a way out.  He meets several people tied to the mystery of the castle along the way, begins to display powers he never knew he had, and gets inexorably drawn into a dark destiny that's been waiting for him his whole life.

Aria of Sorrow is the second GBA Castlevania made by the folks who created Symphony of the Night, and it is the third and last Castlevania game made for the GBA overall.  It has a sequel, Dawn of Sorrow, which was made for the DS.

The Characters
Soma Cruz is our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen.  He's your typical white-haired Japanese pretty boy type, but he still manages to be a pretty interesting character for all that.  He's got the powers, the destiny, and the dark secret that even he doesn't know, which all gives him some pretty decent inner and outer conflicts.

Mina Harkne- dangit, did it again, I mean Mina Hakuba is his childhood friend (there seem to be a lot of those in Castlevania) and one of the keepers of the shrine from which the two of them get transported to the castle.  She spends most of her time giving hints (provided by one of the other characters) and healing Soma when he stops by to see her at the castle's entrance.  Basic two-dimensional support character.

Graham Jones is the primary antagonist for most of the game.  He tries to buddy up with Soma at first, but once he realizes that the younger man is absorbing the powers of the castle's monsters, he gets ticked.  Why?  Because he was born on the day that Dracula was last defeated (supposedly forever) back in 1999, and he intends to be the one to absorb all those powers, as well as the very essence of Dracula in the hopes of becoming Dracula himself.  He's kind of a jerk for the rest of the game, but even then he's pretty affable, since he believes his ascension is inevitable and that Soma is a minor speed bump at most on the path to his destiny.

Then there are a few minor characters wandering around . . .

Yoko Belnades is a member of the church who meets up with Soma a few times to encourage him and help keep him focused.  Genya Arikado is a dapper man in a suit who provides Soma with information about the castle, mostly by passing along hints through Mina.  He's also Alucard, Dracula's son.  I'm not really spoiling anything there . . . very early in the game, Yoko (I think it was Yoko, anyway) nearly calls him Alucard before correcting herself.  The shortly named J is an amnesiac wandering around the castle.  The only thing he's certain of is that he has some connection with what's going on, and he's right.

And then . . . there's Hammer.

Hammer is quite possibly one of the worst human beings in existence.  He's an American Army guy that was ordered to go to Mina's shrine, but once he gets trapped in Dracula's castle, he almost immediately abandons his ill-defined mission and decides to start selling crap that he's found to Soma for a profit.  So to start off with, he's a greedy wuss.  And he's also something of a stingy greedy wuss, since everything he sells is swords and spears and the like.  You're an army guy, dude!  Where's your machine gun?!  Your grenades?!  I'll buy 'em all!  Sure, I might need some sort of magic sword when I'm fighting Dracula Jones or whatever, but when I use the single Handgun in the game, it seems to perforate the regular monsters just fine!  Hell, the Zombie Soldiers throw grenades!  What, you couldn't find any extra grenades to sell me?!

And to cap off his being a useless greedy wuss, he's also got rape face.  I'm gonna show you a picture to prove it, but don't look too long or he might steal your soul . . .

There is absolutely nothing about that expression that doesn't say "YOU GOAN GET RAPED".  And yes, I know that might be profiling or whatever, but after Yoko gets injured and has to sit out the rest of the game unconscious at the main gate where Hammer's set up his shop, he asks Soma about her and says that she's his "type".  Yes, Hammer.  I'm quite sure that the unconscious woman who has a nasty knife wound is definitely your type, you sick fuck.

Sweet Jebus.

The Writing
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and say the story is good.  Betrayal, dark destinies, good vs. evil, some enemies become friends and some friends become enemies, blah blah blah.  But it all seems to move so fast.  It might be a translation thing, I dunno and I'm quite willing to believe that's all there is to it, but a lot of the characters just seem to jump to certain (correct) conclusions pretty damn quick.  At one point, one of the characters asks Soma if he knows anything about "the predictions".  Exactly that.  Absolutely no clue as to exactly which predictions out of the millions or billions that have been made in the past, or even which of the lesser but still substantial numbers of very famous predictions made.  But Soma automatically divines that they mean the future insights of Nostradamus and is told "Exactly!".

And this sort of thing happens several times throughout the game, to the point where I started to believe that everyone in the castle had somehow gained either telepathic or precognitive powers.  A minor thing, but annoying nonetheless.

The Gameplay
Soma is sloooooooow, ohmigaw he is slow.  Not so slow that it's frustrating or annoying, really, but still slow enough that I noticed it almost constantly.  He doesn't get a proper dash maneuver until almost the very end of the game, so most of the time I was walking every damn where.  Fortunately, there are portals spaced somewhat evenly throughout the castle, allowing quick and easy transport from one area to another.  Also fortunately, his lack of speed doesn't adversely affect the combat for the most part.

I like the weapons system of Aria.  The Vampire Killer whip is cool, don't get me wrong.  But after playing around with nothing but that whip in Harmony of Dissonance, it felt good to get a nice variety of weapons to choose from.  Soma gets to choose from hammers (powerful but slow), spears (swung from underneath), and two kinds of swords (stabbing straight out and swinging down from above), as well as a nice selection of specialty weapons that work in various ways, such as the Whip Sword (acts like a whip, natch) and the Handgun (which shoots things from a distance, also natch).  The spears and hammers annoyed the hell out of me, so I stuck mostly to the swords which, thankfully, were the most plentiful weapon type in the game.

While I liked the weapons and most other aspects of the game's combat, I'm kind of on the fence about the soul system.  Much of Soma's abilities come from absorbing the randomly dropped souls of the monsters he kills.  There are three types, those being Red (one-shot attack abilities, activated like subweapons in other Castlevanias), Blue (sustained abilities, with a mixed bag of results covering attacks, defense, and movement), and Yellow (support abilities).  While I certainly like the depth of the system, allowing you to have a wide variety of power combination, I don't like that circumstances in the game often force you to change these abilities on the fly.  I don't know about anyone else, but I feel that if you end up spending as much or even more time in your menu screen switching out abilities as you do fighting monsters and, y'know, actually playing the game, there might be a small problem with the way the system is set up.

The Challenge
Aria of Sorrow sits right on the good side of frustratingly difficult for me.  There were a few times when I started to get truly annoyed at the cheap shit that kept getting thrown at me (the Disc Armors, green Medusa Heads, and most of the flying enemies were especially nasty about this), but overall I found the game to be decently challenging, especially after the slaughterously easy Harmony of Dissonance.  I found myself having to actually come up with different sets of tactics for each new monster I faced . . . hell, the fact that I had to come up with tactics to take any of the monsters out is in itself pretty cool, and points to good AI programming.  They weren't just buffing up monsters later in the game with more HP and MP, they were actually giving them unique abilities and behaviors that I had to take into account in order to get ahead.

So kudos on that!

The Graphics
It may be just me, but it looks like this game took a step back from Harmony in the graphics department, especially in the lighting effects of the lamps, candelabras, and the like.  There's also a few odd bits here and there that I noticed, such as the wavy fog cutting off oddly at walls.  As a trade-off, the character models - which was one of the few things I faulted Harmony on in the graphics department - have been much improved.  Soma isn't surrounded by a neon blue aura, his walk cycles make it look like he's moving with a goldurn purpose, and everyone actually appears like they belong in a Game Boy Advance game.  I really think-

GAH!  Jeez, okay, that's one graphic I definitely could have done without.

The Music
I decided to actually try and pay attention to the music for this game, and I found it very easy to do here, 'cause I like it!  If I was the type to buy soundtracks to things, I might possibly someday perhaps consider maybe buying the AoS soundtrack.

The Bottom Line
Yah, I complained about a few things, but they were mostly minor.  Overall I feel that this is a good and definitely very solid game.  Played once, would play again.