Time Cruise

~ TIME CRUISE ~

Face

HuCard

1992

You'd think game designers would've realized that a Turbo pinball title couldn't afford to seem bland, not when arriving on the heels of the thematically compelling Crush games. Actually, many PCE development teams probably believed that taking on a pinball project would've been a wasteful endeavor, futile in the face of a series that is considered by many even today to be the paradigm of its mini-genre. Well, Face's intrepid programmers accepted the challenge but missed the notice regarding the unacceptability of blandness, producing a sim that I'd always thought would be unenjoyable due to its dull brown-brick surface architecture. But Time Cruise proves itself worthwhile, even when pitted against the Crush brothers, with its fast and lively soundtrack; its competent manipulation of physics; and its massive (if brown-bricked) playfield, which hosts plenty of passageways, bumpers, and ball-gulping time machines.

Aforesaid time machines transport you to bonus rounds, where TC really earns its keep. Some of these side-screens feature typical pinball play but actually emerge as the package's most enticing assets thanks to wonderful music (the sword-stocked medieval chamber) or impressive visuals (the parallax-sporting prehistoric riverbed).

Other bonus opportunities present themselves in the forms of ball-rolling mini-games that shun pinball's traditional whack-with-a-flipper arrangement. You have to force the orb into specified openings by toying with gravity effects, tipping ramps, or playing a round of caveman golf. In truth, these aren't the most enjoyable side-events in gaming history, but they're interesting enough in theme and clever enough in construction to hold appeal as novelties.

Dull surface visual work doesn't offset the heart and creativity that went into most aspects of Time Cruise's design. It has more to offer than Alien Crush in the way of main-field elements, and it provides more variety than Devil's with its enormous play-area and wacky bonus segments. Truthfully, all of that may not be enough to propel it to the Turbo pinball pinnacle; cool demons go a long way. But it's worth a purchase (and more than just a few plays) nonetheless.

Silent Debuggers

~ SILENT DEBUGGERS ~

Data East / NEC

HuCard

1991

Silent Debuggers is the miserable, monotonous result of Data East's attempt to craft a "suspenseful" first-person "sentry shooter." The player must patrol a mazelike area and rid the hallways of hostile alien creatures who all look and act the same. I can't understand why people hype up the "atmosphere" in this clunker and make the game out to be some sort of shock-filled thriller. I don't think I was surprised by even a single thing that happened during my hall-patrolling exploits. Why would I have been when there's but one type of enemy and it appears over and over again, with its arrival almost always preceded by audible and visual signals? I do like the look of the creatures and the noises they make, but little else.

Choose two weapons to tote. The Sleep Launcher is quite handy as it can stun the aliens, rendering them immobile and defenseless for brief periods.

Defend the zones in your base. Each serves a purpose, and some (such as the reloading room) are essential to survival.

The action is terribly repetitive. All you do is run around and clobber countless look-alike aliens (some breeds of which are stronger and sneakier than others). Note the timer: once you complete the first level, you're allowed "only" one hundred minutes to finish off your adversaries. This adds oh-so-much suspense to the proceedings. Imagine my anxiety when I saw I had but 94:00 left to finish five more stages of doing the exact same thing.

Well, here I am ninety minutes later... still fighting the same fools. Some of the tough guys in the last stage pull a little funny stuff through powers of invisibility.

Wish I could say the same.

Cosmic Fantasy 3

~ COSMIC FANTASY 3 ~

Laser Soft / Telenet

Super CD-ROM

1992

Cosmic Fantasy 3 does everything it can to move itself along at a fast pace and make the player's life easy. It prudently provides a dash button, so you needn't lurch your way across the countryside. As your fleet-footed characters proceed from one area to the next, they partake in random battles that occur at appropriate intervals (i.e., frequently enough to keep your warriors at an adequate experience level but not so often that they drive you mad during environmental reconnaissance). The combat system is simple and effective and grants you many different ways to go about slaying your enemies, enemies who can be taken care of quickly and painlessly if you bother to learn the advantages particular to each weapon you wield. And rather than having you focus on single objectives for long stretches of time, CF3 continually charges you with fresh tasks. You'll go from challenging the local fistfighting champion to donning an animal mask and making friends with the neighborhood felines.

And as you'd expect from a Cosmic Fantasy title, CF3 features cool characters, emotional moments, hilarious bits, and lots of great cinemas.

The game does have some flaws though, mostly minor things:

Field and town screens are no longer kept separate, meaning that a close-camera view is maintained at all times. Most of the overworld environments are simple in design and appearance and look similar to one another, and since you can see only a small segment of terrain at any given time, it can be a little difficult in some spots to figure out where exactly to go next. Sometimes, you just need to stumble about blindly in the hopes that you'll happen upon something interesting.

The game doesn't feel as epic as CF2, which features lots of large dungeons to explore and plenty of people to meet and recruit. You do encounter some interesting folks in 3, and a few of them do tag along with you for a while, but the adventure seems shorter and less expansive on the whole than the one that precedes it.

The monster art is cartoony, which doesn't sit well with me. The creatures aren't drawn poorly by any means, but smiling tomato-like things and such are not the sort of fiends that are much fun to fight. At least your own characters look pretty cool in their battle-screen portraits.

Maybe I've always had my characters at super-high levels or I've just happened to use all the right techniques and equipment, but I've always found the bosses to be ridiculously easy to beat. And there's a terrible "Cosmic Fantasy" vocal number that plays during the boss fights. Most of the game's other tunes are pretty good, but as is the case in every other CF game, there just aren't many tracks to listen to.

Despite the issues I have with it, Cosmic Fantasy 3 still rates in my mind as an excellent RPG, one that provides a fairly short but very sweet questing experience.

Download 2

~ DOWNLOAD 2 ~

NEC Avenue

CD-ROM

1991

The Download series was full of surprises for me. Having long held the belief that DL2 would be right up my alley, I was a little disappointed when I had to "settle" for playing its predecessor first. Talk about serendipity: the HuCard blew me away with its incredible background graphics and challenging action. Then, of course, I was even more excited about the prospect of playing the sequel, even though my cautious cousin Zigfriedeltinov had administered a grave warning:

"Download 2 is the anti-Download!"

When I finally got the chance to try the followup, I found that... well...

Things are indeed different in 2. Its backdrops are sometimes drab but often very pretty (or at least interesting), but at no point are they as impressive as the effect-heavy marvel-lands in the first game. Selectable ship speed has been jettisoned; icon grabbing is now required if you have aspirations of outpacing a sloth. You have access to your craft's full range of weaponry right from the very beginning, which isn't really a terrible thing, but the fun to be had experimenting with different gun-and-auxiliary-item combinations in the previous episode is absent here, as is the emphasis on strategy. You'll still need to do some thinking, but you'll be using your noggin for mundane matters such as memorizing the safest paths through dull block gauntlets. And the enemy cast disappoints: for every cool ice dragon, there are dozens of small, silly miscreants.

The bosses received better treatment than did their minions. While there are some gateway-guarding duds to be encountered, the creepier demons and stouter behemoths make up for their meek mates.

You'll enjoy a rockin' tune during fights with those bosses; but, unfortunately, that's the only exciting number to be heard in the game. NEC Avenue had good intentions with the DL2 soundtrack, placing a welcome emphasis on catchy riffs that are supported by occasional lead work, but while most of the material is decent, none of it is special; and there's a lot of crappy PSG to be endured during the intermissions. Although the cinemas receive no help from the accompanying audio, they do somehow manage to merge goofiness with stylishness effectively enough to remain interesting (except for when particular scenes are repeated unnecessarily). The character designs found here are a little lame compared to those featured in the first episode, however.

Download 2's pretty backgrounds and cool bosses make it worth a shooter fan's while, but it falls far short of excellence; and its failure to live up to its heritage made it a letdown for me.