Shape Shifter

~ SHAPE SHIFTER ~

ICOM Simulations

Super CD-ROM

1992

What first made Shape Shifter so alluring to me back in '92 were its apparent similarities, visually and conceptually, to The Legendary Axe, one of my favorite TG-16 titles. Screenshots showed a barbarian fellow wielding a battle axe as he fought off giant spiders and the like in forests and caverns. I figured SS would take the excellent basics of LA and place them in a Simon's Quest-type adventure setting. I was right in my assessment, and the quest lived up to my expectations.

Shape Shifter utilizes its broader theme to explore a wider variety of locales than Axe. In addition to the expected jungles and caves, you also pay visits to an underwater city; an ancient, cannon-equipped sky fortress that houses living weapons and monstrous sentries; and even the surface and interior of the moon.

Of course, the forest sections flanking the first town get the most attention thanks to their stunning parallax. But while the game presents many such beautiful areas to explore, my favorite zone of all is the anything-but-gorgeous sewer system beneath the first town, which not only looks extremely cool in its griminess but also makes you fight awesomely appropriate enemies in sewage serpents and enormous cockroaches.

The makers of the game put a hell of a lot of effort into enemy design. There are lots of interesting creatures to defeat in every new strip you reach. Sometimes a particular beast will simply be a one-off treat; the daunting Triceratops that roams the jungle area is a great example. He's not even a boss; it's just that the designers thought it'd be neat to have a cool creature like a Triceratops come rumbling along from out of nowhere.

The lumbering fellow is pretty easy to take down, but that isn't the case with every creature you come across. Another great one-off monster, a skeletal beast that awaits you in a sky tower near the end, is invincible to your attacks, and you have to pull off a bit of shrewd trickery to get the best of him (check out the bell hanging at the top of the structure's interior...).

Not to be forgotten are the formidable bosses, screenshots of whom provided me with extra incentive to purchase the game back in the day. The giant spider, the dinosaur skeleton, and the infamous mud monster seemed so huge and impressive in the many magazine shots they occupied.

Those are actually early-game foes. While some of the later bosses might not make as much of an impact visually, they sure as hell make you work hard to defeat them. The green blob tinkering with the underwater city's airtubes might not look particularly daunting or even do very much, but the fact that he's in a spike-lined chamber with powerful fans blowing you every which way makes the fight against him both stressful and exhilarating. The giant head ruling the moon's core also plays breeze games as you attempt to batter him.

During most of those memorable boss fights, you'll be treated to an intense musical track heavy with violin and augmented by lines of ominous bass. At other points, you'll hear some great guitar leads (the best of which comes in the middle of the rustic forest theme). Piano-based melodies accompany beautifully melancholy moments, like when you tread past the beggars to the east of the first town.

During that beggar scene, you get to see some evidence of the attention the designers devoted to little touches, minor things that help make Shape Shifter an even greater and more engaging adventure game. You can slaughter the vagrants if you so choose, but if you approach them in peace, they'll simply hold out their cups, in each of which you'll drop a single gold piece. Interaction with the bizarre characters you meet is a very interesting element of the experience. You'll need to transform into a panther to be accepted by the cat-folk and their cunning ruler, but other characters will attempt to hack you up if you take on such a form in their presences.

The forms themselves are much more interesting than those in many other transformation-themed games, and they're incorporated as much more than simple novelties. Unlike Night Creatures, in which you morph into weak-sauce creatures like badgers and owls for no more than ten seconds or so, Shape Shifter grants you the ability to turn into fearsome beasts (a panther, a shark, a rock troll, and a dragon), and requires you to master the use of all of them. The panther's deadly claws and fantastic leaping ability are necessities for surviving the peaks of the Eagle Mountains, while only the shark form will do for the battle with the aqua-lizard, as you must evade the reptile's efforts to blast and impale you while launching timely and accurate shots of your own.

The panther is often the object of criticism because people can't seem to figure out how to avoid falling from platforms with him. The game's controls do require some practice, but once I became competent with them, I found them remarkably smooth, and I was able to one-life the journey. There are few video game characters who are as much fun to control as SS's full-power panther, who lunges ahead at light speed, ripping other beasts apart with his claws. Of course, your human form is no slouch either, and he eventually dons suits of armor and powers up his arrows into energy shots.

If you do master the controls, you'll be treated to some fine dramatic moments, including the cat-ruler's act of betrayal and an encounter with your horrifyingly mutated self. ("An illusion, you say? Can an illusion do THIS?")

Then, of course, comes the confrontation with the Dark Ones.

The last three battles are long and tough, but if you persevere and emerge victorious, you'll be treated to a killer rock song during the end credits and cool old-painting-style cinematics the likes of which the game opens with (and that make for a very refreshing departure from the usual anime-themed event scenes).

Now, I actually do have a complaint or two to make about the game. I don't like the fact that you can save in only one spot. The least ICOM could've done is make it easier to return to said spot from great distances, as Dragon's Curse's respective designers did with that game. Another very minor concern to note is that, while it's cool that you get a fifth undocumented form towards the end, the form itself is a little bit lame and superhero-ish; but again, that's a very minor gripe, and the last few fights end up being enjoyable anyway.

If you're up for a challenge and you're willing to put in some practice, and if the concepts I've described sound intriguing to you, go ahead and purchase the game. It really is brilliant, definitely one of my favorite Turbo titles of all time.

(If you find yourself struggling with any aspect of the quest, you can refer to the walkthrough I wrote.)

Spiral Wave

~ SPIRAL WAVE ~

Media Rings

HuCard

1991

This is a really interesting little game and a bit of a sleeper. In the spirit of Cyber Knight, it begins by having you utilize menus (the main commands of which are in English) to travel via starship to different worlds and solar systems. You'll encounter plenty of strange beings--some friendly, some adversarial--during your voyages.

The game typically eschews its role-playing elements and requires you to play through an "into-the-screen" shooter sequence a la Space Harrier and After Burner II once you reach a selected destination. You'll have to blast up waves of enemies as well as the occasional minor or major boss machine.

To be successful, you'll need to acquire lots of energy units and make prudent use of them. Energy is necessary for practically everything you do outside of the action scenes, from traveling to other planets to upgrading your ship, and the only way to obtain it is by annihilating your foes.

You can pass most of the early shooter stages simply by dodging your opponents and the projectiles they fire, but if you utilize such a tactic, you'll eventually end up stuck in a sad, energy-less plight.

The shooting action gradually picks up and becomes surprisingly intense as far as speed and number of enemies and missiles go. But one problem that afflicts the opposing armies is that, while the troops you fight change in physical appearance, their patterns largely remain the same. And once you've earned some nice lasers and shields for your ship, you'll probably be able to zip right through the levels, as your adversaries wear out their attack stratagems early on. The sequences are fun but mindless and repetitive.

Repetition strikes the background graphics as well, as all of the action scenes take place in outer space. You orbit many different planets but never actually head down to visit any of them. The backdrops look pretty good, actually, and change in tone as you travel around, but various shades of vacuum can't rival actual environments.

Quality music makes up a bit for the repetition in other areas. The tracks are catchy and reminiscent of the spectacular audio in Sinistron. But even the tunes are stretched a little thin, as there are so many action scenes they need to cover.

As mentioned before, the ship menu is in English, but folks who can't read Japanese may still experience some trying times and at some point find themselves warping around aimlessly. The last system in particular can be difficult to navigate. I've written up a mini-guide to ensure that players will be able to focus on the enjoyable action and not end up bumbling around the universe.

Spiral Wave could've been something special had its designers provided level settings other than outer space and given the enemies a little more to do. But they certainly deserve credit for producing something different and achieving a fair amount of success with their efforts. SW is a fun game with good music that can be had on the cheap, and it's definitely worth experiencing.

Gradius II

~ GRADIUS II ~

Konami

Super CD-ROM

1992

I'd heard lots of great things about Gradius II before I purchased it. Back then, it was relatively expensive and hard to come by, so I had to wait a while to nab my own copy, and I grew more and more eager to play it as time went by. Right before I finally got it, I'd beaten and loved Parodius, so at that point in time I was totally psyched for more Gradius-style action.

I ended up disappointed. There are lots of 16-bit sidescrolling shooters that are more intense and have better visuals, and very little of this fairly antiquated game seemed fresh to me. Cartoony Parodius boasts not only more personality than G2 but also more action. But at least the CD renditions of familiar Gradius tunes are absolutely wonderful (fans of the series will adore them), and while the bitter taste from that initial experience still lingers, every time I replay the game I like it more than I expect to, as it really isn't terrible.

I could gripe about the lousy checkpoints, the options thieves (who sometimes appear during boss fights--argh!), the unimpressive weaponry, the horrible slowdown, the poor collision detection, and the absurdly redundant "shoot the core" bosses, but Gradius fans already know about all of that stuff and are accepting of it. What bugged me the most was the lack of freshness, which might just be what'll make G2 paradise for the aforementioned fans. In any event, let's take a look at each stage in turn:

Stage 1 - The money level--the one everyone knows about thanks to its huge "fire planets" and flame serpents. It scores points for cool looks and cool concepts, but there's pretty much nothing going on action-wise. That's fine for a first stage but not so much for a money level.

Stage 2 - You get web-like crap to shoot through and hopping spider-like things to kill as you make your way through a drab gray level. This stage has one of the few tunes that I dislike in the game.

Stage 3 - How many shooters have you seen by now with a level where you have to break apart chunks of rock/ice/crystal?

Stage 4 - The usual Gradius forestial "bytopia" with the usual cannons, little guys, and volcanic debris to deal with.

Stage 5 - Moai head time. Seen these guys before? It's still pretty intense stuff, and the Moai music sounds GREAT here, very chilling.

Stage 6 - Ruins with pillars that break from their foundations and shoot vertically across the screen. This stage wasn't in the arcade game. It's pretty lackluster, but the statue-like things that hop towards you are quite cool.

Stage 7 - Maze level. I much prefer high-speed reflex-based scenes like the Aero Blasters speed tunnels to crap like this that basically has you crash, learn, and proceed.

Stage 8 - Boss gauntlet. Great rendition of a familiar tune. You've seen most if not all of these bosses elsewhere by now.

Stage 9 - Lots of small-fry to contend with, and then pieces of the floor and ceiling break off and fly towards you. This is pretty tough to get through if you die and lose your power. A typical "wall" boss, then the indestructible spider thing (which seemed really unimpressive after the Parodius showgirl), and finally, the requisite joke of a final boss. Poor ending, and that's all folks... unless you keep going and play the more-difficult loop. I did not.

Cotton

~ COTTON ~

Success / Hudson Soft

Super CD-ROM

1993

A number of years had passed since I'd last played through Cotton when I decided to revisit it for this review, and I was able to recall pretty much nothing about it. That wasn't a particularly positive sign, but at least everything seemed fresh as I made my way through it once again.

Cotton is a sidescrolling shooter that features neither the fast feel of a Thunder Force nor the memorization requirements of an R-Type. I suppose it's comparable to Air Zonk, as it employs "chunky" sprites and leans towards the cartoony side of things. There's nothing challenging about it aside from initial encounters with a couple of bosses, but there's plenty to shoot at.

The music is very catchy (particularly Stage 2's theme), and Success did some cool things with the visuals: observe the shaking terrain at the end of Stage 1 and the wavy background during the graveyard boss fight.

They also produced some amusing cinematic sequences. The protagonist shows herself to be a real nut, running rampant one minute and apologizing to a defeated dragon boss the next. Incidentally, in the Japanese version, you can indeed view the text that accompanies these wacky interludes in English.

Well, I probably won't remember anything about the game in two weeks' time, but it was fun while it lasted; and I think it'll still be enjoyable when I revisit it again a few years from now. Don't expect good value per your buck if you spend a lot of cash on the US rendition, but if you're thinking about buying the affordable JPN version, then I say go for it.