Retro Club - 8 & 16-bit puzzlers - The Bear and Badger

Moot_Geeza

Played a bit more of this last night, it's pretty good. With the added perspective of time it's probably not quite top tier, but if I'd owned this somewhere near release I bet I'd have added affection for it. On the non-specific 16-bit quality scale I'm pegging it between somewhere between Vectorman (83%) and Pulseman (92%).

retroking1981

Super Tennis (SNES) - 4hr 09mins

Still plays a great game of Tennis almost 30 years on. There not many sports games that can say that.

4/5

Moot_Geeza

So good I played it twice.

Edit: It feels a bit clunky at first, but bear with it.

monkey

Pulseman is great.

monkey

Cross post from 52 games thread
Skyblazer (Snes)
Very decent. The overall design of the game and the levels is excellent. Nice and varied with lots of ideas. It knows the exact moments to stop what it’s doing and mix it up. The sound and graphics are decent enough. You acquire magic spells by beating bosses. The bosses were nearly all good. Each needing their own little formula but not particularly difficult once you’ve worked out what to do. The end boss run is one of the only one of those that I’ve enjoyed.
There’s one gripe and one major flaw. The gripe is you keep getting magic right up until just before the last level. There’s probably too many spells which makes cycling through them when you need them a bit tricky. Some of them are redundant.
The big flaw is that it’s not mechanically precise enough to stand toe to toe with the better games of this type. The hero guy can be quite fiddly to control. Jumping down from a wall climb onto a small platform with a moving enemy and your limited attack range can be a real lottery. Most of the time you can let the enemies come into range and get them. Or you’ve got the space you need to attack. But if you’ve got to close a baddy down there’s a thin sliver of pixels to get to where you attacks can get them without crashing into them and losing health. Some of the seem to have odd hit boxes as well. It’s mostly fine despite this. Just the odd bit now and again where it becomes a slight issue. And you’re well-compensated in lives and power ups for any health lost from some fiddly bit. This shouldn’t take away from the fact that’s it’s a good game. It’s difficult to compete in the 16-bit platformer leagues though. All in all, I enjoyed it and it’s a strong [7].

retroking1981

Glad you enjoyed it, agree with everything you said. Score is bang on.

Moot_Geeza

Good stuff. I'll try to finish this tomorrow.

Fancy picking next month's game monkey (or topic, if you want to create a specific brief)? Keep it under your thinking cap for now.

monkey

Yeah I'm happy to do that. I've got a spreadsheet full of old games that I'm working through. Mostly they're in the 'really should have played but haven't' category eg I'm playing Starfox at the moment. So I'm not sure how relevant that will be here. That Snesdrunk channel seems pretty good though. There's a few there I wouldn't mind having a look at.

Moot_Geeza

Sky Blazer

Finally finished this. I don't think doing it in four sessions helped in the end, I probably should've put more of an effort in. I'd like to try it on original hardware to see if it's the emulation that gives the controls that 'a little bit off' factor, which can be a problem on the Pi from time to time (the timing of the double jump in Revenge of Shinobi has never felt quite right to me via emulation, for example). The franky pathetic short range of the attack is my main bugbear, as it exacerbates the already floaty controls thanks to the way certain enemies have to be approached precisely. Playing this without any nostalgia gives it an unfair disadvantage though; my retro head is savvy enough to know that this would've been legit in 1994. I know for a fact some of the bosses would've got my juices flowing (some - a couple are bobbins). It's varied, often a massive tick in the plus column for late period 16-bit titles, but in worthwhile ways. I enjoyed the forced scrolling levels and Mode 7 always looks sexy af to my Megadrive eyes. As usual I'll go for a percentage rating. FWIW my retro scores can be roughly deciphered using the formula 'what I would've given it at the time minus 5-10% (depending on genre)'. So a healthy 83%, from me - doesn't quite sneak into the low top tier but definitely a good platformer overall.

retroking1981

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES)

The best of the RARE DKC games and one of the best 16-Bit platformers imo. Only SMW and YI spring to mind as definitely being better, which is nothing to be ashamed about.

5/5

monkey

A couple of the ones I've got my eyes on that people might not have already played are

Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow - Disney platformer. Supposed to be fairly straightforward but elevated by high-standard cartoony animation. Not everyone's cup of tea.

Herzog Zwei - MD prototype RTS thing. Well-rated.

Drill Dozer - GBA action platformer. Supposed to be good.

If people have played these or they don't appeal or whatever then I'm happy for any others. What have you got lined up retro?

Moot_Geeza

I'd be happy to play Drill Dozer. Got the cart and a GB Micro, never finished it.

retroking1981

I got quite the list but Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow is one of them, so I'm happy to go with that.

monkey

Hmm. Well I’ll play them both so I don’t mind.

Moot_Geeza

I'm up for Maui Mallard. Even though I'm annoyed with myself for not knowing it existed until yesterday.

monkey

Done.

I saw it on that snes drunk channel. It’s on that and the MD. The SNES version is supposed to be graphically superior but with a wonky camera that can be a bit off-putting. I had a couple of minutes on each to compare and I thought the SNES one was fine so I’m going to go for that one.

retroking1981

I've not modded my Mega Drive mini yet so will go SNES also for now.

Moot_Geeza

I'm considering selling my raspberry pi to a colleague and jumping in on the MD Mini scene. Is it easy to mod?

monkey

The camera on this really is quite annoying. I've had 60 seconds or so on 5 different roms to try and find the best. There's two regions for the MD (Brazil and Europe) and they both seem the same. Snes has Japan, Europe and USA. I'm about 25 minutes into the Snes USA so not changing now but the camera is an issue. Every time you turn around to face the other way, the whole screen shifts over to the way you're facing, so tap left to line up a jump right and it jumps one way, then the other when you turn to look at the jump. It's not great.

In both MD versions the colours are mud, the audio sounds like an 8-bit game and a lot of the animations seem to have been cut or reduced in complexity and smoothness. And those are all the decent bits of the game. But the camera is much smoother and you can get a more playable version of what seems like an average game.

Of the Snes ones, the Europe version seems the smoothest and the one I'd do if I was starting from scratch (that one's called Donald in Maui Mallard). The others are both really janky. But the Snes really does have some nice, vibrant cartoony stuff going on despite that. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a best version, just ones with different issues. Apologies if this turns out to be a turkey. I'm sort of enjoying it so far. If anyone needs any of those roms let me know.

retroking1981

Nice write up/thoughts there mate.

monkey wrote:

Every time you turn around to face the other way, the whole screen shifts over to the way you're facing, so tap left to line up a jump right and it jumps one way, then the other when you turn to look at the jump. It's not great.

This has always been a pet peeve of mine. A lot of Virgin Games platformers had it, and it's one of the main reasons why I prefer the SNES version of Aladdin over the MD one.

monkey wrote:

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a best version, just ones with different issues.

I've noticed this is the case with a lot of multiplat 16-Bit games since diving into the emulation scene. It's both cool and a pain in the arse.

Moot_Geeza

Played a bit of this, went for the MD rom. My initial thoughts were that Monkey was a touch harsh on it up there. I thought the graphics were quite impressive for a Megadrive game. Decent animation, and some neat touches (character reflections, Donald moving between bookcases behind the glass, Donald's idle animations etc), plus some of the level design was intriguing (points for the roving spotlight gradually revealing platforms). It's clearly a late era effort judged on the visuals. I can't really judge the sound because most things sound a touch ropey on the Pi imo. Unfortunately the decent animation comes at a price, as the jumping is particularly imprecise, requiring lots of annoying mid-air adjustments. Got stuck on the first boss for ages, and the word 'imprecise' popped into my head again. Jumping over the thing is a hit and miss affair. Still, when I eventually realised you could cycle through weapons I made it to level two. And promptly got properly stuck. The main weapon seems to have been nerfed into a bubble gun that causes no damage. Two of us were trying for ages (like, four whole minutes), not a clue how to get out of the first area. Will consult Youtube later then facepalm myself on and off for the rest of the day.

So, initial positive thoughts soon made way for something a touch more along the lines of 'ehhh, maybe, dunno yet', but its has merits for sure. Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure - another overly animated big character platformer - seemed to review reasonably well at the time, receiving scores in the low to mid 80s. Based on the little I've played of both I'd say I prefer this. Will try a SNES version later.

monkey

Yeah it’s very similar to pitfall. I gave that ten minutes a while ago but it started getting a bit annoying, I remember loving it at the time. MD version of this is probably fine tbh but I was swapping over to it from the SNES version so just noticed the differences.

monkey

Hold the phone. This is available on Steam. It came out on Windows back in the 90s as well and that got a rerelease last year. £4.79 but the community hub is complaining about lack of controller support. God knows what that one plays like.

Moot_Geeza

Aha, so this glitched on me. Turns out you can turn into a ninja duck for stage 2. Except I can't on my save. Will start again.

retroking1981

Started this yesterday.

Initial impressions aren't great, but it's not terrible.

Will play through it sometime this week.

monkey

I've finished this now. The first couple of levels were a nightmare, I couldn't get used to the camera, had no idea what the game wanted from me or how to play. Then I sort of figured it out a bit. The levels seemed a bit sprawling and chaotic at first, but there's one main route and every branching path is just a dead end for a treasure room or whatever. So it was more normal than it seemed. The enemies, especially the ninjas on level 2, I was going mad trying to work out how to fight them without getting hit. I don't know if it's possible for the ninjas. Most of the others are fairly routine. The game chucks loads of health at you. As long as you keep shooting or hitting baddies you usually can keep on increasing your health and you don't need to worry about picking up hits from the ropey combat. From about level 3 to the end of 4 or 5, I settled into it and started enjoying it more, started thinking that this might actually be quite good. Then it chucks a few more ideas in that don't really work. The bosses are piss easy. It's all over the place really.

There's a game inside this that's really good. An adventure, exploration, treasure hunt thing with some decent ideas and wacky characters and stuff. I like the levels, I like hunting round for the loot. I love the animation and the music. But it's really hampered by the often poor quality of it's gameplay. It's very similar to Earthworm Jim in how it plays and where a lot of it's faults lie. Better than that though I think. Far less frustrating. Far more interested in helping you overcome it's fairly messy mechanics rather than punishing you needlessly.

I don't know what happens if you don't meet the loot threshold for getting to the next level. Presumably it makes you replay which would be a real kick in the balls. I only beat the threshold by 1% on one of the later levels.

Moot_Geeza

Earthworm Jim comparison is a good shout.

retroking1981

On level 3. Not digging it so far but will persevere until the end.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one who struggled against the ninjas on the second level. I don't think it's possible not to get hit, which is not a good thing at all.

Will play more this evening.

retroking1981

Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow (SNES)

What first feels like a run-of-the-mill collectathon platformer, turns out to be a fun half decent one, that gets quite inventive at times.

First off the collectathon aspect. Initially I was under the impression that it was a compulsory objective to collect X amount of loot to get to the next level, artificially lengthening the game, forcing you to replay until you meet the minimum requirement.

Thankfully that is not the case at all, it turns out its all completely optional. What meeting the loot threshold actually does is unlock the end of World (called Trials in the game) bonus area. In these areas you are tasked with finding all the hidden fireworks in order to unlock the password for your adventure, which can be failed itself if you don't find them in the time limit.

Its a nice looking game, and some of the levels are really unique in design. Swinging on the vines in the Test of Duckhood Trial, or using your gun for momentum in the waters of the Sunken Flying Duckman Trial were a couple of the standouts. Not to mention when the game makes you switch between Maui Mallard and his Ninja abilities on the fly in order to advance.

Unfortunately the games mechanics are ok at best. Combat is quite poor, and more often than not it just turns into spamming the attack button, especially when your the Ninja. The bosses are pitiful with only the last one approaching anything near a challenge. Add to that the ever so slightly off jumping, and it makes an otherwise easy game a frustrating one for the wrong reasons.

Not a bad game but probably just on the wrong side of 'Is it worth playing?'

3/5

My Reviews

Moot_Geeza

I'll go back to it this week some time. Sounds like a reasonably good additional to the 16-bit Disneys. Aspects of your review would be applicable to World of Illusion.

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