Meteor Blaster DX

MindRec - 2004 - U.S.A.

Super CD-ROM

For years I lamented the void in the TurboGrafx library created by the lack of an Asteroids clone and thereby all the thrills and chills I was missing out on. Asteroids is such an enthralling experience, after all. Lucky for me, after nearly 15 years of waiting, Meteor Blaster DX showed up to save the, uh, decade.

While obsolete consoles such as the Genesis and Dreamcast are enjoying successful lives after death with extraordinary original games such as Pier Solar and Last Hope, the Turbo is turning over in its grave with the release of ancient Commodore 64 ports and clunky arcade games that had long since retired when the console was still in its heyday.

All that said, Meteor Blaster DX brings nothing to the table that hasn't already been done previously (and better) in the genre. There is only so much that can be done with the Asteroids template, and I'll concede MB does just about all of it. Twice nothing is still nothing, however, as the game does a good job of proving.

You have the option of flying one of four ships, none of which are too inspired design-wise. As a matter of fact, the ships look downright ugly and out of place over the pleasant backdrops and alongside the competently detailed asteroids. Each ship has its pros and cons, but ultimately it doesn't matter which one you choose as the differences aren't realy significant enough to affect gameplay.

The Emerald Falcon is the pinnacle of spacecraft design.

If you found Asteroids plodding, slow, monotonous, and boring the first, second and third time around you probably won't be thrilled to hear that little has changed in that regard. For this outing, the developers saw fit to add a techno soundtrack extremely similar in style to the one they used in Implode. While I thought the techno tracks worked surprisingly well in Implode, they unfortunately fall flat here and only work to enhance the dreary ambiance. The core gameplay still feels dated as ever, and you'll suffer one cheap death after another from bits of rock that wrap around from the opposite side of the screen to whatever spot you happen to occupy. Meteor Blaster's attempt at a "wow" factor is the addition of actual bosses every 10th stage. Trouble is, you face off against the same boss (albeit palette-swapped) over and over again. The action drones on for a much-too-lengthy 99 levels. If you actually make it to the end, you deserve a medal. Not for skill, mind you, but for unparalleled stamina and endurance. I turned the game off long before reaching that point.

Cutting the length of the game by about 70% and introducing some other bosses and enemies to shoot at would've done wonders for Meteor Blaster. The "silver lining," if such a thing exists in this game, is in the presentation. The in-game visuals are pretty nice for the most part, and the package feels polished. That is, of course, excepting the physical disc itself. Someone thought they could save some dough by distributing the game on blue-dye CD-R, rendering the game unplayable on about 50% of Turbo consoles out there. The good news is that 50% isn't missing out on anything novel.

Be it stage 3 or stage 16 (or stage 28 or stage 52 or....), you can count on more of the same.

Coming soon: a look at the brand new port of an Atari 2600 game so old we're having trouble with the carbon dating process.

Prince of Persia

~ PRINCE OF PERSIA ~

Broderbund / Hudson Soft / Argent

Super CD-ROM

1992

PoP was ancient even at the time of its release for the Duo, and there are a million other versions out there. But this is a nice-looking rendition of the classic, with a quality soundtrack (by T's Music) to back it up.

I liked this game a lot when I first bought it years ago, but I find myself annoyed with a few things when I replay it these days. The combat is horrible: every fight (including the battle with the last boss) can be won in the same manner, except sometimes you have to parry twice instead of once before landing a blow.

The controls are shoddy, as they always have been, but people used to accept them because of how phenomenal the animation was back in the day.

And the trial-and-error gameplay becomes wearisome, as you end up replaying boring battles and simple stretches just to take another shot at a particularly tricky leap or puzzle.

I still think PoP is cleverly designed in a lot of ways, and I still think it's a good game all in all, but there's better stuff to play now... like Sands of Time or Warrior Within.

Bonk 3: Bonk's Big Adventure

~ BONK 3 ~

Hudson Soft / Red

HuCard

1993

Well, I know I defy consensus with my views on the series, but here are what I consider to be the strongest points of each Turbo Bonk episode:

Adventure - The original brilliant tunes, the most memorable and charismatic band of bosses, the tightest controls (smooth spin attack), and the most nostalgia value.

Revenge - Superior graphics and stage designs.

And then there's Bonk III. It has... giant and tiny Bonk forms, which are amusing for about thirty seconds before seeming silly and gimmicky, if not utterly pointless.

B3 keeps the crappy controls from Revenge, but ends up inferior in level design and graphics, with only a few zones that qualify as nice looking or fun to explore.

It's pretty boring. The levels are large, but I'm not the type who can delight in stumbling around vast, mostly empty spaces with little to come across but fruit, meat, candy, and the occasional bonus area.

I like to have some action to keep me occupied while I do my item hunting, and Bonk III gives me very little of that.

The music doesn't help things. The first Bonk wasn't difficult at all, but it felt fun and exciting thanks in large part to a very lively soundtrack. Heck, some sections (like 4-1) even felt intense because of the awesome boss tune and other great tracks. Bonk III's music is very laid-back and "contributes" to the somniferous atmosphere. And while Adventure had unforgettable bosses, the bums here are stupid-looking and stupidly easy to beat.

Playing Bonk III is like watching a television show that has stuck around a season too long. It looks, sounds, and feels like its day has passed. My brother Duomitri had warned me before I played it that "the magic was almost gone" in this episode. I'd say it's nowhere to be found.

Youkai Douchuuki

~ YOUKAI DOUCHUUKI ~

Namco

HuCard

1988

My lord, does this thing show its age. Remember that really old guy in the wheelchair in Big Trouble in Little China, the dude who had been cursed to walk the earth for eternity or whatever? Well, this is the "really old guy in Big Trouble in Little China" of HuCards. It's absolutely ancient.

Not that I necessarily mind ancient visuals. Mystical Fighter on the Genesis is kind of a personal favorite of mine. But Youkai asks a lot here... not only is it so, so primitive looking (especially since the play field is scrunched down to accomodate a "map" at the top), but it doesn't play all that wonderfully either. At least it offers some levels with multiple objectives to complete and paths to take, along with a few different ending scenes. And it's dirt cheap--unless, of course, you're looking for the gold version, in which case you're completely nuts.

Something weird about the game: I first tried it on my Duo-R, and it didn't work. However, when I gave it a go on my SuperGrafx, it worked just fine. My brother Alexei had similar issues with his own copy (or "copies," I should say, as he actually purchased the HuCard twice thinking the first was defunct, and neither worked on his US Duo+Kisado, or on his TurboGrafx+Kisado, or even on his SGX--it wasn't until he tried them on his GT that he realized they were in "working" condition). Now, I haven't heard any other reports regarding this sort of thing, but that's probably because Alexei and I are the only ones who actually play stuff like this. Anyway, Youkai's apparent aversion to certain units is very weird.

And that's not the only thing that's weird about this game...

You run into a hell of a lot of weird demon-folk during your quest. The gameplay is standard run-and-pelt stuff, but the characters are anything but normal. Actually, I've always found the "hero" to be the freakiest-looking one.

Simple platforming sequences can be sort of difficult because your guy doesn't jump very well and he slips around a lot.

A boss fight! Pray, little dude, pray. You take control of some spirit fighter as he prays.

Save up cash to buy health restorers and power up your shot. Don't spend too much in the shops, though; you'll need some dough to hitch a ride on the big turtle.

The turtle takes you to this nice, sweet princess... who puts on a strip show for you. Catch what you can while the spotlights zip around the screen.

She also gives you a box. It might contain a lot of money. Or it might explode in your face and transform you into an old dude.

Before you can be done with this thing, you have to answer a few questions that this guy throws at you. You do know Japanese, right?

The ending you get depends on how many enemies you killed and how many points you earned during the final stage. "Zero" is a great number.

Tsuru Teruhito no Jissen Kabushiki Bai Game

~ TSURU [...] GAME ~

Intec

HuCard

1989

Let's call it "Tsuru."

You won't find many other PCE games like Tsuru. Buying and selling stocks is its unusual basis of play. Analyze market trends, acquire the right shares at the right times, and get out while the going's good.

You don't have forever to amass your fortune; and given its premise and how it immediately bombards the player with Japanese text, Tsuru might seem inaccessible to a lot of people at first. It's actually really easy to figure out, though, as it just doesn't give you all that many options, and you won't need knowledge of Japanese to observe the rise and fall of your capital and tell the positive "jingles" apart from the negative ones.

As far as incentive goes, well, you do get new girls to make phone calls for you as you ascend through the business world.

Obviously, not many folks are going to be interested in Tsuru. I didn't hate the game at all, but I didn't exactly think it was incredible either. I just clicked and clicked and clicked my way through it... and found that there is little reward to reap from it.

Bonk's Revenge

~ BONK'S REVENGE ~

Hudson Soft / Red

HuCard

1991

I've never been a big fan of Revenge, but whenever I power it up, I'm immediately struck by how appealing the cartoony graphics are. Bonk's Adventure was nice and colorful and all, but Revenge definitely takes things to an entirely different level. The difference in graphics is vast despite many level themes and cast members being quite similar.

The level design also took a huge step forward. There are secrets all over the place, great ideas at work in enemy design and level structuring...

...and numerous bonus rounds that are enjoyable for the most part. And as my brother Duomitri will tell you, it's tons of fun to see how many smiley faces you can find in a level (and the train bonus scene at the end of each stage is cool too).

The soundtrack is as good as you'd expect it to be since it borrows quite heavily from the first game (although most of the original material is also quality stuff).

My only major complaint, and it really killed Revenge for me for many years, is that the delay in the spin jump sucks ass. It really makes the game play like crap sometimes. I know there are two typical responses to this gripe:

1) It adds to the challenge. Well, I always beat the game with lots of lives left no matter how terribly out of practice I am. There is very little challenge with or without the delay.

2) It prevents people from leaping into the air and cannonballing their way through stages, as was possible in many levels of the first Bonk. Well, the level design is strong enough here to minimize that anyway, and there's so much more incentive to explore this time.

It could be said that the boss battles are a little more interesting in Revenge because, for the most part, you can't just bounce around on top of the fools' heads like you could with most of the big lugs in Adventure. This is a fairly minor point since the game's strengths lie in level design and aesthetic appeal rather than in strategic battling, so I still wish for the old spin back.

Speaking of the bosses, another (relatively minor) complaint that I have is that the last boss battle stinks. Talk about anticlimactic. Some of the earlier fights are interesting if not particularly difficult...

...but the last couple bosses are bums.

Anyway, I enjoy Revenge more now than I did in years past, even if the spin delay still irks me. I guess I'm more patient these days, so I appreciate things like the level design and smiley scavenger hunts a lot more. I still find Adventure to be much more enjoyable, though.

Bonk's Adventure

~ BONK'S ADVENTURE ~

Hudson Soft / Atlus / Red

HuCard

1990

Good old Bonk. I've never liked "mascot platformers" in general, but this one has always been great fun. It's a very endearing game, with its charismatic and infectiously gleeful protagonist, colorful enemy cast (T. Ractorhead and the crew of giant-dino bosses are particularly memorable), cute ending, and neat visual touches. And I must mention that the soundtrack is one of the Turbo's finest.

I turn the game on from time to time with the expectation of playing only a level or so, getting a nice dose of nostalgia, and then finding something else to do. I always end up playing all the way through. It's really, really nice when you revisit an old game and that sort of thing happens.

The eggshell guys are the low-ranking wretches of King Drool's army, but they could slaughter any "Little Goomba"-type fool, without question. One of the Bonk series's greatest strengths is its lineup of bad-guy dinosaurs, who are so much more fun to fight than the mushrooms-and-turtles Mario contingent or Sonic's "woodland robots."

The coolest villain of all is the awesome T. Ractorhead. Even Bonk seems happy to see him.

Most of the bosses are extremely vulnerable to noggin spin-slams. I'll still take 'em any day over the Bowser clan or Robotnik's stupid contraptions.

Kongo Zilla can actually fight pretty well, but he softens up just like his buddies.

The best thing about those fights is the tune that accompanies them; it ranks among the greatest boss tracks ever if you ask me. And it helps make the brief, action-packed, Triceratops-and-Pterodactyl-dominated fourth stage my favorite level in the game. Bonk doesn't seem to be coping with the intensity well in this screen.

One thing he can handle very well is swimming. The controls feel great whether you're underwater or under... whatever that orange stuff is.

Bonk is also a proficient climber. Being that these are prehistoric times, crazy ideas like using your hands and feet for climbing hadn't been invented yet. So clever Bonk uses his teeth.

Swimming and climbing are neat and all, but there isn't all that much of it to do. In fact, you can spend most of your time spin-jumping your way right through the mostly linear stages. Some areas tighten things up a bit, but the level design improved by leaps and bounds in Bonk's Revenge. Still, at least the action remains fast and fun here, while many similar titles slow everything down for the sake of dull moving platforms and the like.

Bonk's Adventure isn't amazing graphically, but its backgrounds occasionally feature some very nice touches, like the enormous moon up in the sky. And some of the levels are really neat thematically; who needs "donut plains" and "marble zones" when we can explore dino innards?

And do make sure to explore each stage thoroughly, as there are lots of secret entryways to stumble upon...

...some lead to bonus rounds, others to rooms full of goodies.

Of course, the best goody of all is meat. Bonk blows his top and turns super-strong, eager to steamroll all who stand in his way.

Aw.

Shubibinman 3

~ SHUBIBINMAN 3 ~

NCS/Masaya

CD-ROM

1992

It isn't often that a line of games is given until its third episode to achieve greatness. Most companies are more than happy to put an engine to sleep following a single unimpressive outing--a repeat performance typically signals certain death, usually displaying prudence on the part of the executioners. The first two Shubibinman titles hardly made a mark on the world, but NCS/Masaya stuck to their guns and finally unleashed brilliance in the form of the sidescrolling torpedo, Shubibinman 3, an insanely fast-paced hack-and-slash platformer propelled by adrenaline-pumping senses of urgency and sheer madness. Dash through futuristic metropolises and penetrate enormous airships; shatter crystal monsters and annihilate faceless flame-throwing magicians. There are no level breaks here, just one crazy scenario after another--a "parade of insanity," as my impressed cousin Zigfriederov once called it.

One minute you're commandeering a mecha and blasting your way through a city, the next you're riding a strange beast in outer space as a huge red dragon pursues you.

Hop on to floating platforms and fight off circling cannons until a group of gargoyles wrecks your ride and sends you plummeting to the land of killer snowmen!

You never know what to expect here. Plus, the graphics are unbelievable (especially for a CD-ROM2 game), the red book soundtrack is dynamic, and the cinemas are awesome.

Sadly, copious strength restorers and the blazing baubles our heroes unleash make Shubibinman 3 one of the easiest 16-bit platformers available--much easier than even Shinobi III, which is usually the poster child for titles with a forgivable lack of challenge. The difficulty can be boosted a notch, although the difference is hardly noticeable. It's not like the elements for a challenging experience weren't all in place; some enemies have lots of different attacks. But a simple trade-off of shots will take care of most bosses, and they never approach relentlessness with their attack strategies.

Still, Shubibinman 3 is very memorable; it's not the sort of super-easy game that you forget about by the next day (like, say, Chiki Chiki Boys). The events and tunes in this game have stuck with me; and when I first bought it, I played through it lots of times before moving on. It's one of the PC Engine's must-own action titles, without any question.

Drop Off

~ DROP OFF ~

Data East / NEC

HuCard

1990

I've always hated Breakout and its many imitators. The only title along those lines I'd ever enjoyed was an ancient LCD handheld game called Spitball Sparky, which starred a likable Q*bert-like character and played better than its "paddle"-featuring peers. Of course, I haven't had the pleasure of giving SS a go since I was about seven years old; if it's actually crap and my memories are horribly distorted by nostalgia, well, I'm none the wiser. And this didn't bode well for Drop Off: I'm inclined to despise its ilk to begin with, and there wasn't any chance it could compete with the masterpiece that I recall Spitball Sparky being. With things looking grim, DO actually brought a quick smile to my face with its opening cinematics, which can boast of very cool music and very goofy text that relays a Psychosis-like "go inside a mind" plot.

The weaving of this intriguing tale continues with melodramatic between-realm intermissions. It's funny: the original PCE version featured mangled English during these scenes, so whoever localized the title decided to fix that... and still came up with gibberish.

So the story stuff is entertaining, but then there's the game itself. Well, let's try to get through this quickly. You control a blue thing and destroy objects with a ball. You can "open up" your blue thing to deflect the ball at a sharper angle. There are plenty of different objects to obliterate: apples, crystals, eyeballs, amoebas, and so on. If you hit the right spot in a chain and break off a bunch of objects at once, you're rewarded with bonus points. The "interesting" thing is that the chains of objects gradually descend. This is no Space Invaders; you don't have to annihilate every item to finish a round. You just have to hang in there until the chains have fully descended. But if an object touches you, you die. And if the ball bashes its way through the floor, you die. You can repel the chains a limited number of times to create a little breathing room, and a steamroller-type thing occasionally shows up to perform floor repair.

That's about all there is to it, aside from the occasional instance of silliness.

Drop Off is not excellent. It's not a great concept and it's not executed particularly well. But it's often said to be a disaster. Well, even though I was predisposed to hate it, I really can't say that I did. It gets kind of intense, I suppose, when items come down and crowd you. The music really is nice and made me want to like the game, as did the amusing story. I came in expecting about a billion levels, but there are only sixteen, which is just fine. And it does have something even Spitball Sparky doesn't: a final boss.

Cyber Core

~ CYBER CORE ~

IGS

HuCard

1990

People often compare this game to Dragon Spirit, which I think is inane. The control setups are similar, as you have your main weapon to take out aerial foes and "bombs" to deal with enemies on the ground, but that's where the similarities end. Cyber Core is faster and has much more action; it really is one of the "busiest" chip shooters, while crappy Dragon Spirit plods along. Delightful, upbeat melodies and a lovable cast of big-bosses and mini-bosses contribute to CC's irresistible charm. Veteran players will have little trouble beating it, but the fast action gives it good replay value.

It's unfortunate that Cyber's backgrounds generally don't look very nice, but the game thrives on speed and onscreen activity, so its visual shortcomings are hardly devastating.

Heck, most of the midbosses do look pretty cool, and they're lots of fun to fight. An enormous mosquito with a mighty sword of a proboscis challenges you to a duel. And then there’s the gargantuan moth who plops himself onto the playfield.

Some of the bosses really make you work: you'll have to sneak through a barrage of projectiles and smaller vermin to make precise bomb strikes on the massive spider. The final boss, on the other hand, gives up after a few seconds' worth of direct hits from powered-up weaponry.

Speaking of weaponry, four different devastators are at your disposal. Power up the mighty blue "pinwheel" and you'll be flying freely for most of the adventure. The defense-oriented green shot had the most promise, as it unleashes sickles capable of eliminating any sort of projectile attack, but CC gives us little reason to play with a defensive game plan.

Look down at Stage 2's desecrated city to find a line of funny little beetles scampering down the road. The game gets more serious with its enemies later on.

It isn't until the very last level that it gets at all challenging, though. Those small blue pests are incredibly fast and actually pose more of a threat than do their daunting one-eyed allies.

So sure, if you’re an experienced shooter player, you'll reach the end of Cyber Core quickly and with a healthy number of lives in tow. The amazing thing, though, is that the game doesn’t feel easy while you’re actually playing it, as it gives you so many insects and bullets and explosions to be concerned with. Perhaps you'll finish it the first time you power it up... but you’ll probably return to it the next day, cruise right through it again -- and have yourself a blast.