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| Josh's Retro Reviews; Random games from random years reviewed | |
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| Topic Started: Nov 5 2007, 11:13 PM (1,294 Views) | |
| josh TX | Nov 5 2007, 11:13 PM Post #1 |
Monsterland Hall Of Famer
  ![]](http://209.85.117.197/static/1/pip_r.png)
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On this thread, I'm going to, at random, play and then review video game titles from my vast collection. I'll give a little history on the game if any is known, summarize the story (If one exists) then leave my impressions on the game. Members may feel free to chime in at any time with their own ideas, thoughts, or comments, or you may make a request for me to review a title of your asking, and I will do it if the game is available to me. The only thing I ask is to please keep this thread pretty-much on topic. Look for these reviews to appear roughly weekly, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. Remember, feel free to chime in with your own thoughts. Enjoy. |
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| josh TX | Nov 6 2007, 10:13 AM Post #2 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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Review: Double Dragon (Arcade, 1987) During the late 80's arcade heyday, when people still loved to drop coin after coin into their favorite machines, Technos Japan brought us the first "good" side scrolling co-op beat em up in the form of Billy and Jimmy Lee as the Double Dragons. This title could be considered the Grandfather of this style of game, as many future successes would all take cues from this title, including Streets of Rage, Final Fight, and TMNT. Double Dragon followed a simple premise of two brothers skilled in the fictional martial arts style of Sousetsuken, hunting down and taking revenge upon a local street gang, the Shadow Warriors, after the Shadow boss himself kidnaps Billy's girlfriend Marian and takes her back to his hideout. As the Lee brothers, players proceeded through 4 side scrolling stages of 2d combat at it's best, punching and kicking their way to the Shadow Warrior headquarters for the final showdown with the M-16 toting shadow boss himself. Double Dragon had a wide variety of moves and weapons for 1987, and what really made the game so enjoyable was the act of performing these moves themselves, which include headbutts, elbow smashes, cyclone kicks, and a wicked headlock that would allow players the choice of knee thrusting their enemy to death or tossing him over their shoulder like a rag doll. Plenty of street certified weapons could be found along the way as well, like whips, bats, dynamite, oil drums, and daggers. The action was fluid, the animation was done well, and the characters controlled like a dream. This was one guilty pleasure no one had a problem dropping another quarter into. Characters in the Shadow gang deserve a mention here too, as over time they have become icons in the video game world. No one forgot the muscle bound "Abobo" after they witnessed him smash through a brick wall, or Linda, the whip toting, high heel wearing female of the gang with the decidely 80's haircut eager to kick a hole in gamer's asses. Billy and Jimmy themselves, with their pallete swapped hair and vests, were the epidemy of 80's "cool". Everything was brought to life very well here, and despite the cookie cutter plot, gamers still found themselves commited to playing through till the end. Double Dragon's success in the arcade led to home version ports to almost every popular system, including the NES, Sega Master System and various computer formats. Though none of these machines had the processing power of the arcade board, they brought a slice of Double dragon home and sold millions of copies, solidifying Double dragon's presence for years to come through various sequels and remakes. A live-action film starring Mark Dacascos was even produced, though I dont reccomend watching it. cheeky sick smiley Double Dragon was a success and still is a great game because it pushed the fighting-action genre to new limits. Between co-op play with a friend, the ability to move up and down vertically across the screen, and the ability to pickup enemy weapons, this game gave players a sense of freedom and ability not found before in this style of game. Combine that with a smooth framerate, highly detailed stages and characters, and a wide repertoire of martial arts abilities, and you have a certified quarter muncher. My score: 8.5/10 thumbs up  Famous Abobo scene  Marian's Capture  The Sega Genesis cartridge |
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| gvamp | Nov 6 2007, 10:56 PM Post #3 |
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Monsterland Associate
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Nice thread Josh, this was one of my favorite games on the NES. I never beat it though, perhaps I should download the 360 Arcade version. |
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| josh TX | Nov 6 2007, 11:57 PM Post #4 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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Thanks for taking the time to read it. The Live Arcade version of DD isn't without a couple small flaws, but it's worth the 5 bucks for the nostalgia alone. The achievements are fun to get also. |
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| josh TX | Nov 12 2007, 06:26 PM Post #5 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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Review: Pooyan (Arcade, 1982) You might be wondering already just from reading the title, "What the hell is a Pooyan?" Honestly I'm not even sure myself, but it is the title of this 1982 Konami game starring Wolves and cute little pigs, so i'm guessing it has something to do with that... In Pooyan players control a "Mama" pig trying to save her young from a pack of hungry wolves who use baloons to float either up or down the screen (depending on which level) to reach the piglets. As Mama pig, you ride up and down the side of a cliff in an elevator like contraption, shooting arrows at the wolves to pop their baloons and keep them from the piglets. Occasionally a piece of meat (huh?) will appear and it can be fired at the wolves as well, with the added ability to pop multiple wolf baloons in one hit. Sound weird? It most definetly is an odd little game. The whole of the game includes 2 stages plus a bonus stage, then starts over with a slightly amped-up difficulty. In the first screen wolves appear at the top of the screen and try to float down on baloons to the bottom to reach Mama's piglets. They usually come in waves of 4 or 5 wolves at a time, and present players with a sense of urgency to kill them before they reach the bottom, somewhat similar to the feeling you might experience in space invaders when you are trying to blast up all the aliens before they got to the bottom of the screen. In the second stage, the wolves start at the bottom of the screen and blow up baloons to try to reach the top. If too many reach the top, they will eventually push a large boulder off the cliff to kill the Mama pig. The bonus stage looks similar to this second stage only that you can't die in this one as the ascending wolves don't throw stones at you as they go up like they do in the regular stages. As players complete level after level in Pooyan, the difficulty will ramp up pretty quickly. Boss-like purple wolves that can only be killed by meat will appear more frequently, wolves will use small shields in front of their baloons to block your arrows, and bigger waves of wolves will advance faster. It can be quite the challenge even for greatly skilled players. At the end of the day, Pooyan feels like a cute shoot-em up style game with some new ideas and plenty of charm thrown in to set it on its own. The graphics are well done for it's time, the cutesy sounds and "O Sussana" tune feel in line with the cartoon-like presentation, and the game is forgiving enough at the begginning but becomes tough enough even for seasoned gamers to get their fair challenge. A little more variety would have been nice though, maybe a couple more screens to cut down on the repetitive nature of it, but hey it was 1982. Pooyan is a quirky little title I could recommend to anyone who enjoys games like centipede or space invaders. It's no classic, but it's original enough to stand apart and avoids being a clone of these games, and it's presentation alone is enough to warrant checking it out just to see how weird it is. My Score: 6.5/10  Promo Flyer   1st and 2nd stages from a home version of the game |
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| josh TX | Nov 21 2007, 10:59 PM Post #6 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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Review: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (SNES, 1994) Ahh I remember the Power Rangers heyday. All that cool martial arts cut and pasted with cheesy teenage american actors playing the parts when the helmets came off. It took America by storm. Not long after the tv show picked up steam, Bandai jumped on the money train and pumped out the first game for the SNES. As could be expected, the emphasis here was more on the rush getting the game to market than the quality of the actual game. The game starts with the player (Yes, it's only 1 player) choosing any one of the 5 rangers in teenage form and embarking on a mission to destroy countless numbers of evil villian Lord Zedd's minions. This is not much fun, and is extremely repetitive. The game restricts you to one linear path and you are unable to move up and down the screen with the exception of a couple jumping platform sequences, severely limiting the combat to simplistic "I hit you first" style play. After beating the stuffing out of minions for what feels like forever, the level boss will appear. Upon seeing them, your teenager will transform into their respective ranger and then continue to beat the piss out of minions for 10 or 15 more minutes with the same basic punch combination. There is only 1 attack button and the jump button, so combo attacks are slim to none. All 5 rangers play essentially the same, so that kills the variety of choosing different characters, and even though they all carry a different weapon, none of them stand out as unique. As a ranger you also have the ability to perform a special "zord" attack, but other than that, its really not much different than playing as a teenager. After 4 or 5 mind numbing levels of killing hundreds of pallete swapped enemy ninjas, you finally get to play as the giant Megazord in a on-on-one fighting mode, ala Street Fighter 2. Don't hold your breath though, as this mode stumbles all over itself as well with poor control, cheesy moves and unresponsive commands. The Megazord and the monsters he fights have a special power bar that refills over time, allowing you to shoot fireballs or throw energy waves from your sword based on how long you charged up. The one on one monster fighting is cool in concept, but feels rushed and was executed poorly. The frames of animation present are very limited, and there is no fluidity in the attacks or movements, making the Megazord feel more like a snail with a delayed response time. As the fights become more difficult, it quickly becomes clear that this just isnt worth spending time on. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was most likely a fan service game, made to cash in on the franchise quick on the cusp of it's popularity. It feels rushed, thrown together quickly, and lacks any sort of real imagination or variety that you might expect from such a unique television show. Many other games have done this formula far better, and much earlier than this title. This would be the first of many Power Ranger games to come, and though they did improve somewhat, this game was simply a cheap way to cash in on a popular license, as many adaptation games are. My Score: 4/10 cheeky sick smiley  
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| packmule | Nov 22 2007, 04:22 AM Post #7 |
Site founder - Searching for Cropsy
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Your reviews Josh, thus far, have been great! Thanks for the efforts here and keep up the great work! :) thumbs up |
 Packmule's Pen Latitude Zero(1969) The Relic(1997) | |
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| josh TX | Nov 29 2007, 12:35 AM Post #8 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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Review: Wizard Of Wor (Arcade, 1980) In gaming company Midway's infancy, before the Mortal Kombat's and all the blood and gore they're known for, they released one of their first titles, the two-player co-op space shooter Wizard of Wor. (They love misspelling stuff on purpose, don't they.) While it didnt look like much on-screen, Wizard of Wor was a fun addictive title, and one of the first to give players more than one option on how they chose to play the game. All too commonplace now to have multiple paths in your favorite games, but Wizard of Wor might have been the first to do it in 1980. The object of the game was simple: Exterminate the monsters that float around a pacman-esque maze with your ray-gun. 5 or 6 monsters would usually appear on-screen at once. Some have the ability to turn invisible, so the bottom of the screen was equipped with a radar detector to track their movements while you couldnt see them directly. Pretty cool feature. After exterminating the first wave, a couple faster, smarter ones would appear. Destroy them and a "Worluk" would appear: a monster that floated quickly through the screen towards one of the two side exits in the game. Shoot him before he dissapears and you might get a shot at the Wizard himself, who floated through the maze dissapearing and reappearing and throwing small projectiles your way. If you did manage to kill him, it was worth buku points. Then move on to the next maze layout complete with a new pack of quicker, smarter monsters. Here's the interseting part: the game allows for two player simultaneous action, and this is where the decision making process really comes into play. On one hand you can work with the other player to eliminate the creatures, helping your fellow comrade and most likely getting further along in the game as you will have 2 guns working instead of one. On the other hand however, a blasted space hero is worth a hefty 1,000 point bonus. Drop your fellow spaceman in his tracks and you can cash in on a bigger score for yourself, and 1000 points is quite a bit in this game, considering the basic creatures are only worth 100-300 points each or so. Blast him on a double score round and your looking at 2000 a pop. It can definetly be tempting if you are trying to beat an old high score or just want to piss someone off. Regardless of which decision you choose, it's nice to be able to have one at all, especially in 1980. The points reward system was a clever way to make this work. Graphically, Wizard Of Wor was probably impressive in its day but is not much to look at now. From a distance it probably resembles some kind of pac-man clone without the dots, and the neon red colors the screen changes to when the Wizard appears will have old timers thinking they slipped back into a psychedelic trip from the 60's. The in-game bleeps and bloops for sound effects arent anything special either, although the pre-game screens do trigger an onimous but short little tune that gives the game more of the "Lost in Space" feel. Although the years haven't exactly been kind to Wizard Of Wor's dated presentation, the game still feels fun and controls as well as you would expect. The constantly changing mazes and 2 player co-op element add quite a bit of replay value to the game, and the strategy involved in working together or alone to succeed put this game ahead of others like it at the time. A solid effort that is worth playing again today. While it didn't exactly catch on and become a classic retro title, Wizard of Wor is remembered fondly by those who did play it so many years ago. My Score: 7/10  Atari 2600 version game packaging    Hunting the Wizard himself |
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| josh TX | Dec 10 2007, 02:01 AM Post #9 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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Sorry about the lack of updates here, faithful readers, but the Christmas season hasn't been too particularly kind with my spare time. I will be back here later this week though, with a review of a popular sports title. See you then! |
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| packmule | Dec 10 2007, 03:17 AM Post #10 |
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Site founder - Searching for Cropsy
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No need to apologize Josh-the demands on your time are completely understandable. I have greatly enjoyed reading your outstanding reviews, which are a nice blend of text and images. Keep up the great work here! :) |
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Packmule's Pen Latitude Zero(1969) The Relic(1997) | |
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| gojiramatthew | Dec 10 2007, 04:27 AM Post #11 |
Fan Of The Evil Dead Trilogy
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You know, I would be very interested in seeing a review for the game "Doom" made by Id software. B) |
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My Youtube Account: http://www.youtube.com/user/gojiramatthew?gl=AU&hl=en-GB Enjoy the videos, that I made with my friends :)  | |
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| josh TX | Dec 11 2007, 09:21 PM Post #12 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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I do believe, Matthew, that I have a copy of Doom somewhere in my collection. I will see if I can get some time to play it in the next couple months (I havent played it for years) and get a fresh review up. Thanks guys for dropping by and keeping me motivated to continue this. thumbs up |
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| gojiramatthew | Dec 12 2007, 05:36 AM Post #13 |
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Fan Of The Evil Dead Trilogy
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I hope you enjoy the game once you get to playing it. Doom is one of my favorite games overall, I do prefer Doom 3 but Doom is still great and I do like FPS. |
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My Youtube Account: http://www.youtube.com/user/gojiramatthew?gl=AU&hl=en-GB Enjoy the videos, that I made with my friends :) | |
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| josh TX | Dec 17 2007, 05:36 PM Post #14 |
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Monsterland Hall Of Famer
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Review: NBA Jam (SNES, 1993) Imagine, if you will, an NBA game played with no rules, no fouls, and the ball never rolls out of bounds. Imagine a lightning fast 2 on 2 game with only the best players from each team. Imagine somersault, reverse dunks strong enough to break the backboard. That pretty much sums up the fantasy world of NBA Jam. After toying around with the idea for a faster paced, non-simulation style basketbal game, Midway finally found success in programmer Mark Turmell's NBA Jam, after previous attempts such as 1989's Arch Rivals weren't received so well. NBA Jam kept things very simple: Basically you have your 24 second clock, and a goaltending rule. Besides that there was nothing else to slow the game down. No timeouts, no personal fouls, no out of bounds calls, and no momentum-killing free throws to shoot. What we have here is a fast paced game of 2 minute quarters, full of pushing, shoving, and dunking. Players first choose any NBA team available at the time (remember this is 1993, no Canadian teams yet) and take control of two of the best players from that team during the 1993-94 season. That's going back quite a bit, huh? Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Choose the Jazz and you'll play as the classic Stockton-Malone tandem, the Spurs will give you the Admiral David Robinson and soft-spoken Sean Elliot, and choosing the Charlotte Hornets got you two of the best young players at the time, Mr. Grandmama Larry Johnson and a young Alonzo Mourning. And since you were probably wondering, no Michael Jordan is not included here. EA owned the rights to his likeness at the time, therefore Midway could not include him in their game. However, Scottie Pippen was given boosted stats to make up for this. Onto the gameplay. Offense, for the most part, consisted of basically trying to work around the defense through the use of passing and a turbo button, which would temporarily increase the speed of a player and allow him to attempt a dunk further from the hoop. On defense, the priority was to block and steal, but holding down the turbo button here would allow you to push and shove offensive players, hopefully getting them to drop the ball for a turnover. The no foul gameplay led to very quick turnovers and lots of fast breaks up and down the court. The emphasis on the game was definetly the dunks, and this aspect of the game was truly glorified. Although every player had individual stats, pretty much everyone could dunk, and the players with the higher dunk ratings were capable of performing quite ridiculous dunks indeed, like windmill jams from the freethrow line or acrobatic-style spinning dunks that arent even humanly possible. In all there were well over 20 different dunks in the game, and besides looking cool, these were an encouraged form of offense as they were the toughest to block. Another interesting fantasy aspect to the game was "fire" mode, which occured when a player had scored three unanswered baskets. The ball would literally catch on fire, and the powered-up player would have unlimited use of turbo, be allowed to goaltend, and have the ability to make a basket from almost anywhere on the court until the other team scored. This feature could really turn the tide in a game and usually led to lots of three pointers made. NBA Jam was pretty light on options. The bread and butter of the game was the action, and unlike basketball "sims" there was no season mode, franchise mode, trade options, or any of the other features found on many of those basketball games. The game included support for 4 players, and the single player mode was a bare bones schedule of games where you would take on every NBA team once, starting from the team with the worst record the prior year (Wolves) all the way up to the last game against the Chicago Bulls. The game included a password option to save your progress and W-L record, as the developers themselves probably realized it would a bit repetitive to try to take on all the teams in one sitting. The SNES version of this arcade hit was a decent translation from developer Iguana entertainment. Although the arcade versions' digitized characters couldnt be reproduced on a home console, the most important part, the gameplay was kept faithfully intact and most of the hidden game codes included there are here, as well as quite a few of the hidden characters (mostly the developers themselves) with boosted stats. The in-game music is missing, and the announcer sounds muffled and repetitive, but these arent too much of a loss. This home version does include basic configuration options to change the shot clock time and length of quarters. NBA Jam was a successful title because it revolutionized an alternate way to play a sports game. While it took a basketball enthusiast to play a sim title, NBA jam was simple and easy enough to learn so that just about anyone, NBA fan or not, could pick it up and find enjoyment in playing. The gameplay would often become repetitive and sometimes feel mindless due to the lack of strategy, but the no rules style of play was perfect for a quick game and there was always someone around who knew how to play it. NBA Jam birthed a slew of like-minded titles, with countless sequels, Midway's own NFL Blitz and NHL Hitz titles, and EA's more recent "Street" series of games, which have really expanded on the jam idea have become iconic titles themselves. While the unrealistic, repetitive play and lack of rules might not be for everyone, NBA Jam was definetly a milestone in sports game history and the effects are still being felt in it's influences on many of today's titles. My Score 8/10 thumbs up    SNES Screenshots  Arcade Version Screenshot |
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| gojiramatthew | Dec 24 2007, 12:21 AM Post #15 |
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Fan Of The Evil Dead Trilogy
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Good review for NBA Jam Josh. ;) But the one Im really waiting for is the Doom one. B) |
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My Youtube Account: http://www.youtube.com/user/gojiramatthew?gl=AU&hl=en-GB Enjoy the videos, that I made with my friends :) | |
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