The Local Girls of Hawaii

Excite Software - 1993 - U.S.A.

CD-ROM

Excite Software's unexciting "girl" series continues in The Local Girls of Hawaii with yet another underwhelming entry.

Like the others, Local Girls offers a collection of images of various scantily clad girls, 58 in total. Also like the others, Local Girls offers nothing in the way of features. No audio, not even a simple slideshow mode to cycle through the images automatically is anywhere to be found.

Unlike the others, a good number of the girls here are shown topless. Also unlike the others, many of the images are downright ludicrous with fish and other tropical wildlife superimposed over the photos.

I'm not even sure what to say.

While the poor dithering never reaches the laughable lows of Bikini Girls, the image quality on many is still pretty lackluster.

Whereas Bikini Girls originally retailed for $150, Local Girls is a "bargain" at only $90 (price difference probably having something to do with the difference in total number of images). It boggles my mind that these discs fetch anything over $1 today, they certainly aren't worth it.

Bikini Girls

Excite Software - 1993 - U.S.A.

CD-ROM

What a complete and total waste of money, especially considering Bikini Girls retailed for an incomprehensible $150 in 1993. It has come down a bit in price over the years, but not nearly enough. This, folks, should be a $0.99 bargain bin throwaway.

Bikini Girls compiles a total of 217 images seemingly culled from Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition magazines and various swimsuit calendars. Why you'd want to use your game console to look at this sort of thing is beyond me, but apparently someone thought it was a good idea.

A sample of Bikini Girls' "finest."

Excite Software's no-frills approach is evident before you even open the case; a regular full-size jewel case wasn't in the budget, apparently.

It seems a proper graphic utility for the digitizing process wasn't in the budget, either. Some of the images are dithered so badly you can literally barely even make out a human form in the pixelated mess. I know the console's capabilities, and I know for a fact that the Duo is capable of so much more (see C. Covell's High-Res Slideshow).

Uhh.....

...

What the hell?

For anyone considering buying Bikini Girls, don't bother. Rest assured, I've included all the "best" shots right here for your perusal. To put a $150 price tag on a product so poor is not only highway robbery, it's insulting.

Sol Moonarge

~ SOL MOONARGE ~

Irem

Super CD-ROM

1993

I have mixed feelings about this RPG. There were times when it annoyed the hell out of me. Then things would happen that made me admire the ambition and creativity that went into it and think about how great it would be if it didn't insist on repeatedly mucking things up with its flaws.

I don't like the characters much at all. Understand that just prior to playing this game for the first time, I'd revisited Cosmic Fantasy 2 and Kabuki Den, which star some of the video-game characters I'm fondest of. Then I sat down with Moonarge and encountered a blonde-haired Pinocchio clone and his odd-looking cohorts. I felt like I was controlling a bunch of Sesame Street puppets. Granted, the wacky theme paves the way for some funny moments to occur (primarily early in the adventure); but when I'm tagging along with a video-game crew for a fifteen-hour quest, I like to have some sort of emotional investment in the affair, and it just didn't happen with this overly caricaturish bunch.

The random-battle enemies are also lame; impressive designs such as a fiery golden spike-head are few and far between. And while the bad-guy graphics are sub-mediocre, the overworld visuals border on horrible. Some locations feature a lot of colors, but the shades are poorly matched, creating big, bright, kaleidoscopic messes. The game shoots itself in the foot when it splatters too many colors on screen at once; the places that do look cool generally keep things simple.

The soundtrack has its fair share of nice tunes, but some of them are maimed by poor, abrasive sound quality, making them reminiscent of bad Genny-sound-chip ditties. A few of the ones that came out okay truly manage to shine, including a very exciting boss number.

My gripes about the gameplay generally involve the way-too-frequent random battles. And I guess I just stated the primary problem: there are just too damn many random battles. Laying off the dash button can help a little bit, but then exploration becomes a slower and more tedious task; and some areas will toss you into fights every few seconds no matter how slowly you're proceeding. The fact that the enemies win initiative far more often than your party members doesn't help.

But at least Irem did a lot of cool things with the battle system. You can divvy the damage you do among the entire band of enemies or concentrate the full force of your blow on just one unfortunate beast. The fights are generally fast paced (slowing down only when an enemy performs an attack that affects your whole party and you have to sit through the repeated animations, but I've endured much worse). There are decent-looking backdrops, and your characters celebrate in amusing fashion when they're victorious. Plus, one character you use early in the game gets killer animation bits for his critical hits (it's a pity all of the characters weren't granted such exciting attack theatrics).

The designers also did well with their take on RPG commerce. When you're looking at an item in a store, the game shows the effects on stats said item will have for each party member. And if you decide to go ahead and buy it, you can equip it right then and there without having to exit the shop menu and open a new one.

But perhaps the best element of all is the dungeon design. "Dungeon" might not be the most appropriate term, though; perhaps "challenge area" would be more accurate, considering the variety of challenges that await you in certain places. You're asked to do a hell of a lot more than trek through mazes: you'll ride enormous spinning gears, climb brambles up castle walls, assume different animal forms to pass unusual trials, and do plenty more.

Should you overcome the challenges, you'll have some fantastic bosses to look forward to fighting. These guys have lots of tricks up their sleeves; you can't just trade blows with them. There's a haunted mirror that pits you against scowling versions of your own party members; there's the swordsman Brack with his amazing show of swipes among petal storms; and there's a polygonal nightmare that delights in interacting with (and butchering) your little character avatars at the bottom of the screen.

Yes, it was an up-and-down ride for me, and I think my expectations for the game exceeded what it actually delivered, but it does get progressively better as the journey goes on, and my final overall impression did fall on the positive side. I have a feeling that more people will like it than don't (and like it more than I do, at that). Still, you might want to keep in mind that for the $30-40 the game often costs, you can purchase ten other PCE RPGs, many of which may prove superior.

Insanity

~ INSANITY ~

Aetherbyte / Hurgle

Super CD-ROM

2009

I'm very glad that Insanity exists. If my brother Alexei hadn't penned an Insanity review, I might still be unaware that he was a Kaypro player during his youth, just like I was during mine (we grew up in separate garrisons, you see). Ensuing upon our discovery of this commonality was a merry conversation on the greatness of Kaypro games ranging from the tricky platformer Ladder to the space-set stock-trader that neither of us could quite remember the title of (Star Traders!).

But while I wax nostalgic over my way-back-when Kaypro experiences, the truth is I have a very difficult time sitting down with most pre-16-bit-era titles. There are few NES games I can stomach at this point; go back even further in time and you're almost sure to disgust me. And being that I was never a big Berzerk fan, you can understand why I did not anticipate good times with its PCE descendant.

After just a few rounds of drone thrashing, I'd already compiled a sizable list of qualms I had with Insanity's gameplay. The action starts off terribly slowly, and the protagonist's lethargic gait had me wishing on many occasions that button I had been utilized for a dash function. (A sped-up version of the game can be accessed, though the almost-immediate mass robot suicide that takes place in many stages makes it more of a source of chuckles than a viable play option.) Once the pace picks up in the main mode, cheap deaths occur regularly, as the robots don't hesitate to level you with potshots as soon as a new room materializes onscreen.

Berzerk's premise and the manner in which it plays out haven't ever appealed to me, and the fact that it and its successor are so repetitive makes the respective experiences all the more vexatious. It's easy for me to play armchair programmer, so I will. I wish the walls periodically changed in color and in brand of construct. I wish the robotic voices were used sparingly so as to alleviate the Bravoman-esque aural pangs. I wish there were some sort of interlude prior to the appearance of each new wave of foes--if Berzerk's rudiments don't lend themselves to full-fledged cinemas, perhaps stills (a la Avenger) in the style of the title-screen and ending art would have served well. And I wish there were different kinds of enemies to evade or fend off (aside from the time's-up chaser and the big boss).

I know that Aetherbyte placed major importance on the notion of "staying true" to the original Berzerk. But the problem is that different people will have different ideas as to how far the concept could've been fleshed out while remaining faithful and tributary to the source material. If more variety would have increased the amount of enjoyment that many players would get out of the title and won over some of those averse to the concept in the first place, then perhaps more additions and amendments to the formula should have been explored. It bears mentioning that people who are in fact fans of Berzerk have often voiced the same criticisms of this game as those who were never thrilled with the template.

But what everyone does seem to be into is Insanity's music, particularly the PSG material. While not every tune works for me, I do think there's some pretty good stuff here. The main theme is a sticks-in-your-head sort of number, and the subdued melodies accompanying the end credits are quite nice. And as the adventure concludes on a positive note, so will this review: as unappealing as its foundation was to me from the start, and as many issues as I have with the approach taken by Aetherbyte, Insanity is certainly playable and has a soundtrack that may just achieve greatness in the ears of many. Even one with an eye that perceives the game as flawed and underdeveloped will likely acknowledge it worthy of a fair spin or two.

Steam Heart's

~ STEAM HEART'S ~

TGL / GIGA

Super CD-ROM

1996

TGL vert Steam Hearts (I hate the apostrophe) is known for being a relatively rare piece of smut, but before it shows off its filthy side, it makes an impression with the quantities of missiles it shakes out of its little enemy sprites. Now, we're not talking prehistoric manic hell a la Raiden or Kyuukyoku Tiger here, as these shot-showers are a little lackadaisical as they travel across the playfield. Still, such focus on bullet bevies was abnormal for the 16-bit day.

There's not much else interesting to speak of when it comes to SH's stage play. The action is decent, but the game has a low-budget look and feel about it--pretty ironic for what has long been a fairly expensive title. The visuals are extremely simplistic--appealingly so in a few parts, but blah-ishly dark and unimpressive for far too many strips. You have two craft to select from, but each can equip just a couple of not-so-hot main guns and a handful of typical auxiliary pieces. A speed burst function is also at your disposal, but strategic use of it (as is required in Rayxanber II with that game's similar tool) won't really be needed save for during a few boss encounters.

Those boss battles constitute the true main draw of the experience. SH's lord mecha initially seem small and informidable, but they're very capable fighters: one creates laser-beam downpours while another wields an enormous energy spear.

Best those admirable warriors and you'll get to watch the naughty Steam Hearts circus shows, intermissions depicting beast-girl rape for the supposed betterment of the universe. Mildly repugnant stills stay onscreen for excessive amounts of time and are accompanied by voice-acted crying and conversing. It's incredibly boring stuff. If developers are going to go this route, they may as well strive to make a mark, perhaps with scenes that are so ludicrous as to be amusingly silly or so over the top as to be memorably revolting. Steam Hearts bores its audiences and leaves it at that.

But it does feature some smooth animation during its opening sequence as well as a bit of nice art as it concludes. I suppose that seeking such signs of effort and artistic merit throughout the experience would have been to ask too much of the game's designers.