Fun fact for all of you at home: did you know that Karnov, the big ol’ Russian man over on the left/top/whereverthepictureis there, was actually the mascot for Data East?......................... what kind of mascot is that? I mean, seriously, you’d think they would choose a more appealing and recognizable character for their mascot, such as with Joe or Mac, or maybe even the Bad Dudes if they are feeling special enough… you know, two sets of characters who have had a longer lasting time in the spotlight than him. But no, instead, you settle for this random fuck who only got one game, and then just randomly appeared in a bunch of other games afterwards. No clue what the reason for this was, but hey, who knows? Maybe the original game was just TOO perfect, where it never needed any kind of follow-up whatsoever, and they figured, since they could never improve from there, they just decided to stick with him. Well, you know what, I think it’s about time someone found out for sure.
I have never played this game before, but I had seen it before in videos, specifically with the NES version, and it looked… rough. I wouldn’t say it looked terrible, but it definitely looked on the cheaper side of NES arcade ports, something that you would buy little Jimmy for his birthday, thinking he would love it, until you then find him burning the cartridge in the backyard while roasting marshmallows over the fire. But hey, I didn’t wanna judge a book by its cover, despite how ugly it is, and since I couldn’t get the arcade version to work on my emulator, I ended up having to play the NES version instead, so now I could actually see if the game was as rough as I had initially thought it would be. Unsurprisingly though, after my playthrough, I did come to the conclusion that this game… just isn’t really that good, not to the point where I would say it is terrible or even that bad, but because of how unpolished, boring, and lifeless the package as a whole is.
The story is practically non-existent, where it just focuses on Karnov searching many different lands to try to find the ultimate treasure, which does make him very relatable, since I am also a big greedy dumbshit, but it doesn’t make me care anymore about anything that is happening. The graphics for the arcade version are very generic, looking and feeling like any other arcade game from the time, and as for the NES version… I mean, at least they don’t make me wanna rip out my eyeballs, so that’s kind of a plus, the music unfortunately suffers from Simpsons syndrome, where for a majority of the game, only one song plays, and if you aren’t a fan of that one song, then you are definitely gonna want to turn that shit down and throw on some peak music instead, and the gameplay/control feels exactly like a cheap arcade game from the late 80s should, not only replicating how flimsy and rigid it can be, but also that allowing the depression laying deep within me to fully come out and envelop me to where I wasn’t having that much of a good time.
The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Karnov, go through a set of nine different levels through nine different, yet very similar looking locations, shoot fireballs all over the place to take out the many enemies before while you do the bare minimum platforming required for this game to be considered a platformer, gather plenty of items that can not only be used to upgrade your main attack, but also to assist you in many other ways that I will get into in a second, and take on plenty of bosses that are just as fair as you can expect (not at all), and thus become as fun to fight as you would expect (NOT AT ALL). It does everything it needs to do to be a platformer, and I’m sure that someone who has never played any other platformer in their lives could find some fun out of it, but someone like me, who has been playing platformers even before I could fully comprehend I was alive, it is basically nothing to me.
Most of what you will find in this game is as standard as it gets, with the typical platforming tropes that you would come to expect, none of it having the proper care or thought put into it to where it becomes as addicting or fun as many other games on the market at the time. However, to the game’s credit, there was one element of the game that was somewhat creative and interesting, and that was the many items that you get throughout the game. Of course, there are the typical items you would get from this kind of game, such as the fireballs that upgrades your shot up to being able to shoot three fireballs at once, but there are also plenty of items that actually allow you to mess around with the environment and whatever’s in it, such as a ladder that you can use to reach certain places, bombs which can be used to blow up walls, shoes that let you jump higher, and even wings that allow you to fly along a certain distance before they run out. That is all pretty neat and all, but of course, there is a catch to it, and by that I mean, while all these items are cool, none of them are really all that useful. There are rarely any points in the game where it feels like you need to use these items to proceed forward, with the exception of Stages 7 and 8, where you are required to use some of them to beat the stages, and in every other instance, there just isn’t really any need to use them, making me question why they were included in the first place.
Not only that, but the game also carries along a lot of the typical problems that arcade games from this generation usually have, such as arcade syndrome, where it throws a bunch of enemies at you at once while saying “What are you talking about, that’s fair difficulty! Everyone’s doing it, so it has to be true”, and there are bosses that repeated throughout the game, especially the first boss, who is repeated CONSTANTLY throughout the whole game. Although, none of that really bothers me that much when compared to the biggest criticism that I have with the game as a whole: it just doesn’t feel fun to play. Everything about it just feels… wrong, from the way you control, to the way that levels are designed, to how you progress through some levels, and everything else in between. It feels like it is trying its best, like it is trying to be a good game with everything that it is trying, but at the end of the day, nothing meshes well together, and while it doesn’t make the game terrible, it doesn’t make me wanna think about it anymore then I already have.
Overall, despite having some creative ideas when it comes to the items it gives you, there is just nothing here to cohesively hold the entire game together to make one, solid package, and as a result, it ends up being kind of a mess, one that is one of the most poor and pathetic attempts at an arcade game that I have ever seen, but not one that is even worth getting too mad about, as there is just nothing to it as a whole. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone, unless you really wanna know where the mascot for Data East initially came from, but then again, you could probably find plenty of other Data East games that he just so happened to be in, and you would probably have a much better time with those as a result instead. And even then, again, some other gaming characters like Joe & Mac would’ve been a MUCH better choice for mascots for this company, as they were more prevalent icons. Speaking of which…….
Game #567
I have never played this game before, but I had seen it before in videos, specifically with the NES version, and it looked… rough. I wouldn’t say it looked terrible, but it definitely looked on the cheaper side of NES arcade ports, something that you would buy little Jimmy for his birthday, thinking he would love it, until you then find him burning the cartridge in the backyard while roasting marshmallows over the fire. But hey, I didn’t wanna judge a book by its cover, despite how ugly it is, and since I couldn’t get the arcade version to work on my emulator, I ended up having to play the NES version instead, so now I could actually see if the game was as rough as I had initially thought it would be. Unsurprisingly though, after my playthrough, I did come to the conclusion that this game… just isn’t really that good, not to the point where I would say it is terrible or even that bad, but because of how unpolished, boring, and lifeless the package as a whole is.
The story is practically non-existent, where it just focuses on Karnov searching many different lands to try to find the ultimate treasure, which does make him very relatable, since I am also a big greedy dumbshit, but it doesn’t make me care anymore about anything that is happening. The graphics for the arcade version are very generic, looking and feeling like any other arcade game from the time, and as for the NES version… I mean, at least they don’t make me wanna rip out my eyeballs, so that’s kind of a plus, the music unfortunately suffers from Simpsons syndrome, where for a majority of the game, only one song plays, and if you aren’t a fan of that one song, then you are definitely gonna want to turn that shit down and throw on some peak music instead, and the gameplay/control feels exactly like a cheap arcade game from the late 80s should, not only replicating how flimsy and rigid it can be, but also that allowing the depression laying deep within me to fully come out and envelop me to where I wasn’t having that much of a good time.
The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Karnov, go through a set of nine different levels through nine different, yet very similar looking locations, shoot fireballs all over the place to take out the many enemies before while you do the bare minimum platforming required for this game to be considered a platformer, gather plenty of items that can not only be used to upgrade your main attack, but also to assist you in many other ways that I will get into in a second, and take on plenty of bosses that are just as fair as you can expect (not at all), and thus become as fun to fight as you would expect (NOT AT ALL). It does everything it needs to do to be a platformer, and I’m sure that someone who has never played any other platformer in their lives could find some fun out of it, but someone like me, who has been playing platformers even before I could fully comprehend I was alive, it is basically nothing to me.
Most of what you will find in this game is as standard as it gets, with the typical platforming tropes that you would come to expect, none of it having the proper care or thought put into it to where it becomes as addicting or fun as many other games on the market at the time. However, to the game’s credit, there was one element of the game that was somewhat creative and interesting, and that was the many items that you get throughout the game. Of course, there are the typical items you would get from this kind of game, such as the fireballs that upgrades your shot up to being able to shoot three fireballs at once, but there are also plenty of items that actually allow you to mess around with the environment and whatever’s in it, such as a ladder that you can use to reach certain places, bombs which can be used to blow up walls, shoes that let you jump higher, and even wings that allow you to fly along a certain distance before they run out. That is all pretty neat and all, but of course, there is a catch to it, and by that I mean, while all these items are cool, none of them are really all that useful. There are rarely any points in the game where it feels like you need to use these items to proceed forward, with the exception of Stages 7 and 8, where you are required to use some of them to beat the stages, and in every other instance, there just isn’t really any need to use them, making me question why they were included in the first place.
Not only that, but the game also carries along a lot of the typical problems that arcade games from this generation usually have, such as arcade syndrome, where it throws a bunch of enemies at you at once while saying “What are you talking about, that’s fair difficulty! Everyone’s doing it, so it has to be true”, and there are bosses that repeated throughout the game, especially the first boss, who is repeated CONSTANTLY throughout the whole game. Although, none of that really bothers me that much when compared to the biggest criticism that I have with the game as a whole: it just doesn’t feel fun to play. Everything about it just feels… wrong, from the way you control, to the way that levels are designed, to how you progress through some levels, and everything else in between. It feels like it is trying its best, like it is trying to be a good game with everything that it is trying, but at the end of the day, nothing meshes well together, and while it doesn’t make the game terrible, it doesn’t make me wanna think about it anymore then I already have.
Overall, despite having some creative ideas when it comes to the items it gives you, there is just nothing here to cohesively hold the entire game together to make one, solid package, and as a result, it ends up being kind of a mess, one that is one of the most poor and pathetic attempts at an arcade game that I have ever seen, but not one that is even worth getting too mad about, as there is just nothing to it as a whole. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone, unless you really wanna know where the mascot for Data East initially came from, but then again, you could probably find plenty of other Data East games that he just so happened to be in, and you would probably have a much better time with those as a result instead. And even then, again, some other gaming characters like Joe & Mac would’ve been a MUCH better choice for mascots for this company, as they were more prevalent icons. Speaking of which…….
Game #567
2 Comments
Funny thing about the box for the NES version- they actually used screenshots from the arcade game. Data East also did this for the NES port of Kid Niki, which I find hilarious. I have to wonder if they ever got in trouble for what is obviously false advertising. As for the game itself...I'd actually put it in the same camp as Kid Niki. Neither are particularly well made games (hell, Kid Niki even spazzes out during some of the level end screens and I recall it doing that while playing as a child on an actual NES) but they're sorta charming in their own right.
Mapache
10 days ago
He's the perfect mascot