If you're a fan of 2D point'n'click adventures, especially when you grew up on Lucas Arts games like Day of the Tentacle and the Monkey Island series, The Wardrobe most certainly should be of interest to you.
I know, right? The title sucks big time. Who in his/her right mind would call a program after furniture, even though it makes sense after all? Maybe you've skipped it on sale like me because of that, maybe because some reviews are written from the perspective of players not familiar with the game mechanics of the glory days. Don't worry, The Wardrobe: Even Better Edition does a good job recapturing some of the old school flavour, without hurting too much, if you ask me, having played it on Nintendo Switch.
Also, judging from colourful screenshots, I wasn't too sure if The Wardrobe could be too friendly and bright for my taste. With the skeleton protagonist and overall Halloween theme, this adventure might have as well been the Grim Fandango us old school fans deserved but never got. The Wardrobe is neither of that precisely.
It is true though, that the incorporated tropes are as manifold as the popcultural references. Sarcastic humor and breaking of the fourth wall make The Wardrobe almost appear like the Deadpool of point'n'click adventures.
The Wardrobe delightfully challenges you to spot all the hidden quotes and objects ranging from games of course over movies like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Matrix or Donnie Darko to shows like How I Met Your Mother, Game of Thrones or Stranger Things, to name some. They did not forget The Bride of Frankenstein and Stan & Ollie for us oldies though, included paintings like the poker playing dogs and it seems the dudes also like heavier tunes (Korn, Slipknot).
The respectable effort put into showing off the creators' cultural interest does not completely reflect in The Wardrobe's storytelling though. There's a short origin on how you became a skeleton and next moment you get out of your casket (wardrobe) to witness your friend's belongings being moved to another place.
There's a hint of haunting in here, based on friendship. The plum buddy Roland fed Skinny, the guy to become the skeleton, caused an allergic shock by accident. Struggle is now the move divides the two friends before Skinny can forgive Roland. And once we made it on the truck, we're far away from joining.
That's enough to visit a map full of places to meet an entertaining variety of unique characters and solve puzzles not without crossing the line of moon logic. I really appreciate CINIC Games have chosen to not make The Wardrobe too simple for the sake of pleasing the other half of players hating to walk back and forth checking for possible interactions to solve a puzzle.
In case of The Wardrobe: Even Better Edition on Nintendo Switch I can say they transferred the old routines in a more, but not most comfortable way - meaning it helps you can highlight all hotspots (by pressing R) and the interface is very usable but I felt lost twice, so I consulted a walkthrough as no hints are included directly. It plays alright via touchscreen, though as often I prefer my pro controller.
The included straightforward tutorial is actually funny. It is very easy being dropped into a dialogue situation first and then being forced to try the icons popping up by holding the A-button on a hotspot. There's the usual look, pick up, use or talk and sometimes only an action trigger. Left stick moves the cursor in a most convenient way and you really only need B additionally for menu, inventory and map. The Wardrobe may be one of the best controllable point'n'click ports to the Switch.
The start is actually so welcoming it was easy to forgive minor flaws and some matters of taste. One btw. was on my german Switch I could only change language from the main menu, so when I discovered there's only a mostly pleasant english dub in The Wardrobe, I was stuck with German subs, that I could turn off for translations, but still was facing german dialogue options which felt weird to me, as the texts of course still triggered Skinny talking english. So adjust that to your preference from the beginning and you'll be fine.
Having been growing up in Germany is also a crucial factor in my reception of The Wardrobe though, I think, being so heavily intertwined with the experience of popular culture. As much as I am interested and involved in consuming mostly the same works, my perspective and especially the environmental influence is different to those of the creators', whilst I've almost been growing up in the same neighborhood (and probably having traded similar Amiga games in school) as Jan "Poki" Müller-Michaelis, creator of games such as Edna & Harvey or Deponia.
So it's probably natural, as much as I think being able to progress what CINIC Games are trying to express, them being based in Italy could mean a totally different relation to possibly localized games that I'm missing out on. It's maybe for that reason I would always prefer a Poki game, also drawing a lot from the same influences like Lucas Arts, over an also entertaining The Wardrobe.
Even though CINIC Games try to lead players a little in subtext of interactions (implying you could combine items under other circumstances) the game doesn't encourage interactions as much as Edna & Harvey does for instance, to the point I missed trying combinations in the above mentioned cases of feeling lost. And that's in an adventure I found it easier to achieve results through actions within different time zones.
When Edna & Harvey rewards you by entertaining unique reactions to pretty much anything and is able to imperceptibly guide you through the game at the same time, The Wardrobe asks you to stop your impractical input or just doesn't react to some of the phone numbers you can call for instance, relying on relentlessness to find out a twist before the ending a few reviewers might have been skipping.
With those examples I'd like to point out the two different attempts of basically an escape scenario by Edna & Harvey enriching the genre by refining what I liked and polishing off struggles and The Wardrobe taking the, in my opinion, lesser sophisticated route of mostly throwing references at you while trying to please with what you already know and like. If that kind of gaming wasn't yours before though, there's nothing to make you change your mind.
Please get me right, I really like both games, but there's a reason I prefer one over the other. It's almost like judging on graphics for example. Both are hand drawn visuals executed well, in this case maybe Edna & Harvey could be described as pragmatic dilletantism and The Wardrobe as more refined comic art, but it depends on your personal reception what you like better.
Having said all that, The Wardrobe does never require you to save other than to pick up later, or at least I didn't find a way to mess up so badly I had to go back and try again. The game even usually erases inventory items once they fulfilled their purpose. It was maybe a 50/50 mix of puzzles that fell into place naturally and trial and error. You have to be prepared to revisit locations and then finally make sense of objects you spotted earlier, keeping you occupied enough for a game more or less at a sweet spot between too short and too long.
Had it been shorter, I wouldn't have felt like I got my money's worth. Any longer and there would have had to be a more captivating plot. Not that any old point'n'click adventure had that, but The Wardrobe that way is a bit like the Halloween party we visit in the game.
It's dressing up inspired by all those great franchises and meet in a house where fun things happen in all corners. Some of them you can miss if you don't look for them. You can only play with the props people brought, but there's no protocol other than enter the party and get along well enough to find a way back home in the end. It's a good night amongst old friends, nice chat as well, but nobody is available for a deep talk in the kitchen. You still like to show up to these occasions, but you know other parties are fresher and better organized.
That's what you should take The Wardrobe as, I guess, and being an indie game it does very well in capturing previous ideas and mix them at a high standard addressed to fans. There's nothing wrong with that, for that one playthrough you probably keep it at. And if you expect no more than that, you won't be disappointed. So good job, CINIC Games, I'd like to play another one, but also wouldn't mind you taking that experience to the next level.
I know, right? The title sucks big time. Who in his/her right mind would call a program after furniture, even though it makes sense after all? Maybe you've skipped it on sale like me because of that, maybe because some reviews are written from the perspective of players not familiar with the game mechanics of the glory days. Don't worry, The Wardrobe: Even Better Edition does a good job recapturing some of the old school flavour, without hurting too much, if you ask me, having played it on Nintendo Switch.
Also, judging from colourful screenshots, I wasn't too sure if The Wardrobe could be too friendly and bright for my taste. With the skeleton protagonist and overall Halloween theme, this adventure might have as well been the Grim Fandango us old school fans deserved but never got. The Wardrobe is neither of that precisely.
It is true though, that the incorporated tropes are as manifold as the popcultural references. Sarcastic humor and breaking of the fourth wall make The Wardrobe almost appear like the Deadpool of point'n'click adventures.
The Wardrobe delightfully challenges you to spot all the hidden quotes and objects ranging from games of course over movies like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Matrix or Donnie Darko to shows like How I Met Your Mother, Game of Thrones or Stranger Things, to name some. They did not forget The Bride of Frankenstein and Stan & Ollie for us oldies though, included paintings like the poker playing dogs and it seems the dudes also like heavier tunes (Korn, Slipknot).
The respectable effort put into showing off the creators' cultural interest does not completely reflect in The Wardrobe's storytelling though. There's a short origin on how you became a skeleton and next moment you get out of your casket (wardrobe) to witness your friend's belongings being moved to another place.
There's a hint of haunting in here, based on friendship. The plum buddy Roland fed Skinny, the guy to become the skeleton, caused an allergic shock by accident. Struggle is now the move divides the two friends before Skinny can forgive Roland. And once we made it on the truck, we're far away from joining.
That's enough to visit a map full of places to meet an entertaining variety of unique characters and solve puzzles not without crossing the line of moon logic. I really appreciate CINIC Games have chosen to not make The Wardrobe too simple for the sake of pleasing the other half of players hating to walk back and forth checking for possible interactions to solve a puzzle.
In case of The Wardrobe: Even Better Edition on Nintendo Switch I can say they transferred the old routines in a more, but not most comfortable way - meaning it helps you can highlight all hotspots (by pressing R) and the interface is very usable but I felt lost twice, so I consulted a walkthrough as no hints are included directly. It plays alright via touchscreen, though as often I prefer my pro controller.
The included straightforward tutorial is actually funny. It is very easy being dropped into a dialogue situation first and then being forced to try the icons popping up by holding the A-button on a hotspot. There's the usual look, pick up, use or talk and sometimes only an action trigger. Left stick moves the cursor in a most convenient way and you really only need B additionally for menu, inventory and map. The Wardrobe may be one of the best controllable point'n'click ports to the Switch.
The start is actually so welcoming it was easy to forgive minor flaws and some matters of taste. One btw. was on my german Switch I could only change language from the main menu, so when I discovered there's only a mostly pleasant english dub in The Wardrobe, I was stuck with German subs, that I could turn off for translations, but still was facing german dialogue options which felt weird to me, as the texts of course still triggered Skinny talking english. So adjust that to your preference from the beginning and you'll be fine.
Having been growing up in Germany is also a crucial factor in my reception of The Wardrobe though, I think, being so heavily intertwined with the experience of popular culture. As much as I am interested and involved in consuming mostly the same works, my perspective and especially the environmental influence is different to those of the creators', whilst I've almost been growing up in the same neighborhood (and probably having traded similar Amiga games in school) as Jan "Poki" Müller-Michaelis, creator of games such as Edna & Harvey or Deponia.
So it's probably natural, as much as I think being able to progress what CINIC Games are trying to express, them being based in Italy could mean a totally different relation to possibly localized games that I'm missing out on. It's maybe for that reason I would always prefer a Poki game, also drawing a lot from the same influences like Lucas Arts, over an also entertaining The Wardrobe.
Even though CINIC Games try to lead players a little in subtext of interactions (implying you could combine items under other circumstances) the game doesn't encourage interactions as much as Edna & Harvey does for instance, to the point I missed trying combinations in the above mentioned cases of feeling lost. And that's in an adventure I found it easier to achieve results through actions within different time zones.
When Edna & Harvey rewards you by entertaining unique reactions to pretty much anything and is able to imperceptibly guide you through the game at the same time, The Wardrobe asks you to stop your impractical input or just doesn't react to some of the phone numbers you can call for instance, relying on relentlessness to find out a twist before the ending a few reviewers might have been skipping.
With those examples I'd like to point out the two different attempts of basically an escape scenario by Edna & Harvey enriching the genre by refining what I liked and polishing off struggles and The Wardrobe taking the, in my opinion, lesser sophisticated route of mostly throwing references at you while trying to please with what you already know and like. If that kind of gaming wasn't yours before though, there's nothing to make you change your mind.
Please get me right, I really like both games, but there's a reason I prefer one over the other. It's almost like judging on graphics for example. Both are hand drawn visuals executed well, in this case maybe Edna & Harvey could be described as pragmatic dilletantism and The Wardrobe as more refined comic art, but it depends on your personal reception what you like better.
Having said all that, The Wardrobe does never require you to save other than to pick up later, or at least I didn't find a way to mess up so badly I had to go back and try again. The game even usually erases inventory items once they fulfilled their purpose. It was maybe a 50/50 mix of puzzles that fell into place naturally and trial and error. You have to be prepared to revisit locations and then finally make sense of objects you spotted earlier, keeping you occupied enough for a game more or less at a sweet spot between too short and too long.
Had it been shorter, I wouldn't have felt like I got my money's worth. Any longer and there would have had to be a more captivating plot. Not that any old point'n'click adventure had that, but The Wardrobe that way is a bit like the Halloween party we visit in the game.
It's dressing up inspired by all those great franchises and meet in a house where fun things happen in all corners. Some of them you can miss if you don't look for them. You can only play with the props people brought, but there's no protocol other than enter the party and get along well enough to find a way back home in the end. It's a good night amongst old friends, nice chat as well, but nobody is available for a deep talk in the kitchen. You still like to show up to these occasions, but you know other parties are fresher and better organized.
That's what you should take The Wardrobe as, I guess, and being an indie game it does very well in capturing previous ideas and mix them at a high standard addressed to fans. There's nothing wrong with that, for that one playthrough you probably keep it at. And if you expect no more than that, you won't be disappointed. So good job, CINIC Games, I'd like to play another one, but also wouldn't mind you taking that experience to the next level.
2020
You've probably skipped The Innsmouth Case a couple of times on sale, just like me. But, if not convinced already, maybe you should check it out, not only if you're interested in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, because it is also a hilarious not so hard boiled detective story.
It's been a while since I've read his stories as a foundation for a series of essays on lovecraftian movies for a handful of print and online publications, amongst them Dagon and Cthulhu, both inspired by The Shadows Over Innsmouth, a story you should at least know, if you want to understand the interconnection with the lovecraftian world.
The Innsmouth Case however is neither retelling nor precisely recapturing the literature, so if you wanted to get into the game just for fun, you can. It's just that as always with referential storytelling you might not understand the humorous facets as much. I also don't think an adventure like this is going to prepare you for the books, though it does one thing better than many Lovecraft adaptions.
Those usually struggle to capture the unspeakable horror between the lines of what was told by the author rediscovered in pop culture during recent years. A guy like Cthulhu, for instance, isn't the tentacle faced baby Yoda of demonology depictions like Funko Pops make you want to believe.
In the eighties, a short story by H.P. Lovecraft usually was good for delivering a basic idea for a picture to be garnished with practical effects extravaganza. Which is awesome, by the way, in cases like From Beyond even more thought through than it appears at first sight. But as much gore galore can be entertaining, it's not the feeling of desperation like I get from the originals.
There's a reason Lovecraft works better as audio plays or maybe even audiobooks told by a single narrator. Even though in cosmic scale the stories create a rather intimate atmosphere depending on your individual interpretation. Using a format to be described more as interactive than a visual novel, using spare but beautifully sombre illustrations, appears to be comprehensible.
I'd call The Innsmouth Case a text adventure if it wasn't too easy to be confused with games relying heavily on keyboard input, which isn't the case. You've got your 27 endings reached via interconnecting plot fragments and plenty decisions to make, so you can discover completely new areas or meet the same people in the same situation, but heavily influenced by if you made friends with them earlier or not.
From my first hardly five minutes, where I've managed to drop the case and go home to watch TV, I was hooked until I finally saw the last possibility about 20 hours later. It might have helped the atmospheric score was not so essential I couldn't listen to the newest Mostrich Mixtape instead, but once I found out anything can happen in this story, I was highly motivated to explore what's called achievements on Nintendo Switch.
It doesn't matter if you seek help at an early stage or look for a walkthrough to puzzle last pieces that you basically have seen, but not in the correct order to log in the last two endings - like me - but confusingly as often platforms like Steam or Xbox seem to have their own additional achievement system to keep track on how often you've been talking about veganism in a playthrough for example.
Whilst that's ok to check what you could have missed along the way, I couldn't care less about this type of scoring, even though I could not hold back counting myself how many occasions of sexual intercourse can be put into a single playthrough, because there's a diverse variety of creatures at your service in The Innsmouth Case. My focus though is what made it to the Switch, keeping track what's left to explore.
If there's one thing to criticize in this game it's that due to interactivity (and maybe confusion with previous decisions in cache) you will find mismatching text pages once you dig deep enough. That can be an ending speaking of a reward you did not collect for instance, but at that point you will have skipped plenty of pages anyway and will make enough sense of it. It's just not as perfect as it could be.
Additionally, I would have preferred a more direct connection to the decision tree, so it's possible to instantly go back and see what would happen if chosen differently. There are chapters you can address to go back and take it again from there, but you will skip quite some text and action sometimes to get to a specific moment again.
The Innsmouth Case however makes that up with the weird tale of a private detective at the bottom of existence. Once you're on a case of a missing girl in Innsmouth, you will have to save expenses and decide to go by bus or hitchhike, to give you a hint of the situation (a bit like the original protagonist waiting for the bus, because he can't afford a train ticket, if I remember correctly).
It's up to the player now if you can bring the girl back home and the level of molestation it takes, well, if it doesn't end in death anyway. Chances are significantly high.
Could be it's because The Innsmouth Case speaks to my bitter generation grown old on not growing up, but I like the incorporated dark humor referencing b-movies and games from the eighties, first person shooters from the nineties, experience of the second Star Wars trilogy but also confrontation with mobile app addiction and gender diversity along the rituals of Dagon with the possibility to travel dimensions.
It falls into place more naturally than a movie like Cthulhu, which made an interesting take on homosexuality within the cult but felt a bit constructed. It's more like "What the heck, sleep with me creature of unknown ancestry, I'm on vacation here!"
And The Innsmouth Case sure is more refreshing than the latest survival horror.
I know there are plenty of lovecraftian games, from very outdated point'n'click adventures like Call Of Cthulhu: Shadow Of The Comet to a more recent Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure that despite the lovely artstyle I still have in backlog. And there's even another text based game called Omen Exitio: Plague, that on first sight appeared as a more serious take on old game books and also more complicated, keeping track with a stat sheet, map and everything.
I will dive deeper into that sometime, but let me tell you this: Even looking to expand my adventure addiction from point'n'click to visual novels, I'm not sure I knew I was looking for something like The Innsmouth Case, but it turns out I was!
It's perfect for me, as I too often skip my reading for a game and I like to listen to music when reading and I can do this here as well. It's an entertaining take on lovecraftian horror by using noir tropes in a sarcastic if not cynical way, so two things I love matching with the dark humour of mine. I don't regret a second spent on The Innsmouth Case, I'm just sad it's over.
I really want more like this, but meanwhile, check it out yourself. You get it on sale often and who knows, maybe you too didn't know it's exactly what you wanted?
Even if it's just for the reason it permits you to finally decide for the things other games won't, because the format allows to paraphrase the effect, rather than having to manifest it in pixels - which makes connecting it to H.P. Lovecraft an utterly brilliant move, if you ask me.
It's been a while since I've read his stories as a foundation for a series of essays on lovecraftian movies for a handful of print and online publications, amongst them Dagon and Cthulhu, both inspired by The Shadows Over Innsmouth, a story you should at least know, if you want to understand the interconnection with the lovecraftian world.
The Innsmouth Case however is neither retelling nor precisely recapturing the literature, so if you wanted to get into the game just for fun, you can. It's just that as always with referential storytelling you might not understand the humorous facets as much. I also don't think an adventure like this is going to prepare you for the books, though it does one thing better than many Lovecraft adaptions.
Those usually struggle to capture the unspeakable horror between the lines of what was told by the author rediscovered in pop culture during recent years. A guy like Cthulhu, for instance, isn't the tentacle faced baby Yoda of demonology depictions like Funko Pops make you want to believe.
In the eighties, a short story by H.P. Lovecraft usually was good for delivering a basic idea for a picture to be garnished with practical effects extravaganza. Which is awesome, by the way, in cases like From Beyond even more thought through than it appears at first sight. But as much gore galore can be entertaining, it's not the feeling of desperation like I get from the originals.
There's a reason Lovecraft works better as audio plays or maybe even audiobooks told by a single narrator. Even though in cosmic scale the stories create a rather intimate atmosphere depending on your individual interpretation. Using a format to be described more as interactive than a visual novel, using spare but beautifully sombre illustrations, appears to be comprehensible.
I'd call The Innsmouth Case a text adventure if it wasn't too easy to be confused with games relying heavily on keyboard input, which isn't the case. You've got your 27 endings reached via interconnecting plot fragments and plenty decisions to make, so you can discover completely new areas or meet the same people in the same situation, but heavily influenced by if you made friends with them earlier or not.
From my first hardly five minutes, where I've managed to drop the case and go home to watch TV, I was hooked until I finally saw the last possibility about 20 hours later. It might have helped the atmospheric score was not so essential I couldn't listen to the newest Mostrich Mixtape instead, but once I found out anything can happen in this story, I was highly motivated to explore what's called achievements on Nintendo Switch.
It doesn't matter if you seek help at an early stage or look for a walkthrough to puzzle last pieces that you basically have seen, but not in the correct order to log in the last two endings - like me - but confusingly as often platforms like Steam or Xbox seem to have their own additional achievement system to keep track on how often you've been talking about veganism in a playthrough for example.
Whilst that's ok to check what you could have missed along the way, I couldn't care less about this type of scoring, even though I could not hold back counting myself how many occasions of sexual intercourse can be put into a single playthrough, because there's a diverse variety of creatures at your service in The Innsmouth Case. My focus though is what made it to the Switch, keeping track what's left to explore.
If there's one thing to criticize in this game it's that due to interactivity (and maybe confusion with previous decisions in cache) you will find mismatching text pages once you dig deep enough. That can be an ending speaking of a reward you did not collect for instance, but at that point you will have skipped plenty of pages anyway and will make enough sense of it. It's just not as perfect as it could be.
Additionally, I would have preferred a more direct connection to the decision tree, so it's possible to instantly go back and see what would happen if chosen differently. There are chapters you can address to go back and take it again from there, but you will skip quite some text and action sometimes to get to a specific moment again.
The Innsmouth Case however makes that up with the weird tale of a private detective at the bottom of existence. Once you're on a case of a missing girl in Innsmouth, you will have to save expenses and decide to go by bus or hitchhike, to give you a hint of the situation (a bit like the original protagonist waiting for the bus, because he can't afford a train ticket, if I remember correctly).
It's up to the player now if you can bring the girl back home and the level of molestation it takes, well, if it doesn't end in death anyway. Chances are significantly high.
Could be it's because The Innsmouth Case speaks to my bitter generation grown old on not growing up, but I like the incorporated dark humor referencing b-movies and games from the eighties, first person shooters from the nineties, experience of the second Star Wars trilogy but also confrontation with mobile app addiction and gender diversity along the rituals of Dagon with the possibility to travel dimensions.
It falls into place more naturally than a movie like Cthulhu, which made an interesting take on homosexuality within the cult but felt a bit constructed. It's more like "What the heck, sleep with me creature of unknown ancestry, I'm on vacation here!"
And The Innsmouth Case sure is more refreshing than the latest survival horror.
I know there are plenty of lovecraftian games, from very outdated point'n'click adventures like Call Of Cthulhu: Shadow Of The Comet to a more recent Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure that despite the lovely artstyle I still have in backlog. And there's even another text based game called Omen Exitio: Plague, that on first sight appeared as a more serious take on old game books and also more complicated, keeping track with a stat sheet, map and everything.
I will dive deeper into that sometime, but let me tell you this: Even looking to expand my adventure addiction from point'n'click to visual novels, I'm not sure I knew I was looking for something like The Innsmouth Case, but it turns out I was!
It's perfect for me, as I too often skip my reading for a game and I like to listen to music when reading and I can do this here as well. It's an entertaining take on lovecraftian horror by using noir tropes in a sarcastic if not cynical way, so two things I love matching with the dark humour of mine. I don't regret a second spent on The Innsmouth Case, I'm just sad it's over.
I really want more like this, but meanwhile, check it out yourself. You get it on sale often and who knows, maybe you too didn't know it's exactly what you wanted?
Even if it's just for the reason it permits you to finally decide for the things other games won't, because the format allows to paraphrase the effect, rather than having to manifest it in pixels - which makes connecting it to H.P. Lovecraft an utterly brilliant move, if you ask me.
I'm usually not an early bird gamer, but for me, the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass was a no-brainer that I just had to preorder and play instantly the second of its release. Judging from about a minute of struggling to contact the server for activation I'd say I wasn't alone.
After the official release announcement by Nintendo, I've read the average mixed opinions online and that is something I'd like to address here, being neither fanboy nor hater, rather observing from my very own subjective perspective, which in this case includes an affinity towards Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, that actually pulled me back in the franchise after I thought it had lost its course.
So, you've got to have in mind I haven't played most of the reused tracks too often, but would on the other hand fancy my good old flat SNES Mario Circuit or Ghost Valley. But exactly because we all have favourite designs we'd like to play in Mario Kart 8 is another good reason for Nintendo to include all of them.
There have always been remakes in new Mario Kart games and the design elements are part of the identity. There's always a good chance they'd be criticized just the same for too much innovation. Even if I try to stay open minded, the impact the original Super Mario Kart had on me makes me a bit conservative on this topic as well.
But I've also read people bragging about expecting a Mario Kart 9 and I must admit, I don't see why this would have been customer friendly.
Sure, I'd be happy to play another great Mario Kart, especially after trying some underwhelming Mario Kart Tour to research for this review. But the Booster Course Pass in general was also a statement by Nintendo to expand the lifetime of the Switch at least to the end of 2023.
Considering the situation of the pandemic world not only short on electronic parts, but now also on the edge to a global war, I think that's the best way to handle. I wouldn't pay the scalping prices, that get asked for the rare new Playstation or Xbox machines these days. And why would anyone want those, if there's not enough specific software anyway?
Why shouldn't there be a Mario Kart 9 on the Switch then? Well, Nintendo's console hybrid isn't famous for its computing power. Strength of the small machine is portability whilst being usable on the big screen as well. And of course, aside from opening up to the indie market and having the exclusive franchises, it's older generation games receiving a second chance on the Switch.
I understand if you bought both Mario Kart 8 and the DLC for WiiU, that it felt weird to start off new in pretty much the same game. Maybe some of you did never go that route, still hold a grudge and would now have to buy the Deluxe version just to get access to the Booster Course Pass.
But in my opinion, in 2022, that's the least possible collateral damage, taking WiiU sales and age of the release into account. It's rather a good way from preventing the same happening during the transition to a new Nintendo console generation, supposedly announced in 2023 and maybe released in 2024 (my speculation after Nintendo Direct 2022).
It's probably my personal problem that I did not like Mario Kart 8 on WiiU and could first start to familiarize myself once it was out on the Switch. For me, that was a transition in itself, from being almost exclusively old-school to opening up to a new era of gaming. So I can't say it was the game, it could have been me.
But as far as I understand the game works a little better on the Switch on one hand and on the other it's a bestseller for years now, the question is, can they really create a Mario Kart 9 that is technically superior? I certainly hope so, but if they do, wouldn't the effort be better invested in the starting grid of a next generation rather than a console with a remaining lifespan of maybe two additional years?
It's not that they didn't try something new. There was Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit with the technically interesting concept of augmented reality and the chance to sell peripherals. I couldn't care less though for exactly that reason.
And then, there was Mario Kart Tour targeting a completely new generation of mobile gamers. Did they like it? I don't know. I prefer a racing game that I have in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe already and all I need are more courses.
I've read that selling new tracks as a season pass is not family friendly. Really? What they could have done, of course, is sell us each cup for 2,99€+ individually instead of 2,09€ retail (ca. 1,66€ via keyseller) with the pass.
Or even sell basically the same game as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe minus connection to an existing online community with just the 48 new tracks at 59,99€. How would that be better?
Nintendo is observing the market. They're into micro transactions already, targeting the mobile gaming section, a business a lot more lucrative than all consoles together. If they gave away new courses for free, as some seem to think would be reasonable, they would try to get your money another way.
And don't you think if they wanted to, they could've duplicated FIFA sale strategies? That means the same game with tiny adjustment every year full price just to buy new booster packs on top?
In a world where this seems to be widely accepted and enough whales are backing those systems, isn't Nintendo giving up a lot of dough by doubling the tracks for an admission of a third of the initial retail price?
Aren't they even redirecting players from their potential moneymaker by including Mario Kart Tour courses? To me that sounds like to Nintendo, the Switch is the main business model (and I hope they're not luring players in to have them accepting future micro transactions on the console). To me that sounds like maxing out one of my favorite games for a reasonable price, so shut up, Nintendo take my money, right?
But now towards the tracks. A couple of days in, what do I think of the two new cups in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass? Usually, I wouldn't write a review on an unfinished game, but usually I also don't buy season passes, at least not before season is over. So if everything goes as planned, I will expand the review wave by wave and add a final conclusion.
When the Booster Course Pass was activated, we played for about half an hour online to enjoy our first impressions together. Those initially were, despite surprises like directional change on Paris Promenade, that both Golden Dash and Lucky Cat Cup are entertaining but fairly easy, except for Ninja Hideaway maybe.
Then I went on and beat all Golden Dash Cup classes with three stars on the first try, except the reversed one that required a second attempt. This isn't supposed to be boasting. I think of myself as a motivated average player and I'm used to getting my arse kicked online, because I need to really work on my defense.
Once I was feeling dizzy, release was at midnight, I at least had beaten a few staff ghosts at Time Trial and got gold for the 150ccm Lucky Cat Cup. At that point I had loosely played for about five hours and wasted most of it for Time Trial, which I usually finish before starting 150ccm.
At first, I felt underwhelmed, but after a few hours of sleep in this event I had planned for, I picked up the Switch controller again to perceive I wasn't playing an advanced add-on to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
There's a reason they divided Booster Course Cups as a similar structured roster from the original ones. If these two cups are equivalent to Mushroom and Flower Cup, it all falls into place.
And actually it is Time Trial where I can spot a difference. As easy it seems at first to finish gold in Grand Prix mode, finding the ideal line appears to be more challenging or at least the Nintendo staff ghosts make it feel like it.
Doing so however led to a significant advantage against other experienced players who did not spend as much time with it yet.
There is a racing potential in those tracks, that will unfold with training and that way probably will resonate best with the less arcadey, not so casual players.
I appreciate that a lot as a reward for spending time with a game. Slingshooting lazy gamers forward at all cost is something I despise. A game is balanced, when you win after doing homework. You lose, you analyze, you work on it.
At this point, I don't regret a Cent spend on the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass. But it is hard to mess up the delivery of 48 tracks for just about 52 Cents a course (or even less if you bought a key elsewhere) to an already great game, innit?
Though I share an empty feeling, missing the opportunity to play all new tracks at once, I think Nintendo made a wise decision for the online community they did not sacrifice for the sake of releasing a new game.
Imagine the split if it were two different programs! Instead, you get access via DLC Season Pass or as a Nintendo Switch Online + Expension Pack member, if that's your preference. And if you can't or won't invest into any of them, you're still able to enter any online competition and ride the new courses if an opponent has the access. How isn't that inclusive and user friendly?
As exceptional it is to have a game sell that well and have players return to compete online for years, releasing new tracks will increase the number of competitors and naturally will decrease with freshness fading, independent from the number of courses released. So by dropping six waves over two years, the online community can only benefit, whilst 8 tracks in two cups is enough to keep you occupied a while until perfection of you racing them.
Wave 1
Golden Dash Cup
Paris Promenade
This course confronts the player with two things. I've not played Mario Kart Tour until a few days ago, but I cannot deny it was awkward enough to shy away from a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remake. Another issue could be trademarks. I don't even know if they ever touched real places other than augmented in Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.
Not caring for the authenticity of the city design and rather happy about a new course to play though I enjoyed the long drift passage and surprise element, when route changes in third lap, so that possibly some players still drive opposite your direction.
It's really an incorporation of elements taken from multiple Mario Kart Tour Paris Passage tracks, one of them acting as a short cut, if I understand correctly. Some use of pipes and a piranha plant or the glider passages help to not forget it's a Mario Kart game. It's fun. And of course it plays a lot better with a pro controller than swiping your mobile screen.
Toad Circuit
It's maybe odd to include a course to the second slot, that was clearly designed to be the opener of Mario Kart 7, very much in the tradition of the first Mario Circuit. However, as I love the plain perfection of the SNES inspiration, I'm totally up for pure racing on this course.
Here, it's simple enough that items of course play a role, but the driving requires more than avoiding traps and shots to win while staying on track. If you don't find the ideal line and don't make use of cuts, you must be very lucky to win against advanced players here. That's probably why they decided against the addition of more laps to this rather short course.
It's the first track where a difference in textures really caught my attention. There's enough happening on Paris Promenade and you could observe the greenery there as an individual art style, but even though they've blown up and reworked graphics since the Nintendo Direct trailer, the grass on Toad Circuit for instance is just plain green.
On the other hand, I've seen critique that the tires had the same problem, and I just can't remember if I really saw the same on release day. I know they felt odd. But when I checked specifically after that review, the tires had profile textures and a shade, missing in that critique's footage. Was there a patch?
Yes, that's the beauty of technology, they could update those graphics easily, if it was just because they've been in a rush. But even if they didn't and the Booster Course Pass will act more as an exploitation of leftovers, do you really have your eyes on the green while driving? That's for the backseat.
It would be interesting though, if there's a pattern of courses from Mario Kart Tour to find the way to the Booster Course Pass roster, as Toad Circuit is one of them as well.
Choco Mountain
Another one of those Tour ports is Choco Mountain, first appearing in Mario Kart 64. I must have played the first incarnation a ton as despite I never really liked Mario Kart 64 for several reasons, we played it just as often at a friend's place as we did Super Mario Kart.
I don't recall much though, because that was totally last century, a millennium ago. I'm not even sure if I had more problems with the boulder dropping passage than on the Booster Course version.
I also had to read up that there's a curve now having a banister present all the time, whilst the N64 version only had it on 50ccm and Time Trial and Mario Kart DS omitted the banister completely.
Maybe for that reason Choco Mountain doesn't feel very challenging in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
In this case though, having had it in Mario Kart Tour before, where a cave passage with bats was added, might actually be an enrichment.
Choco Mountain plays alright and it has just enough variation including good drifting passages and few jumps to keep you busy in tournaments. But other than cutting a corner via an acceleration item, I didn't find any twist to make the track stand out a lot.
Even though the original music hurts, I'm not sure if the remake is better. But I would prefer an off switch anyway, so I can listen to the latest Mostrich Mixtape. Until then, I think any soundtrack from the Pass is quite alright.
Coconut Mall
Originating from Mario Kart Wii, Coconut Mall back in the day was one of those examples of overcomplicating course designs, one of the reasons I turned away from the franchise.
However, despite still having mixed feelings about design choices, I got more used to lavish layouts and can accept them better with the positive gameplay evolution in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Being the first track not having an appearance in Mario Kart Tour, Coconut Mall seems to also have the purpose to compensate for the lack of height difference so far in the Golden Dash Cup.
You start with stairs and escalators to a race on different levels of a shopping mall offering multiple opportunities for tricks and shortcuts. Once you've oriented, you will find your preferred path including acceleration through a shop.
It is challenging to combine tricks with entering drift passages, forcing you to brake if not in line perfectly, either. It's also one of the few courses in this wave that don't get just even better on 200ccm.
Again though, the true potential isn't found in Grand Prix mode as the computer isn't very hard to beat.
I appreciate in this mostly cosmetically remade adaption there's no additional confusion like trains hitting randomly in Super Bell Subway for instance, one of my lesser favourite tracks. for me it's probably helpful the cars near the finish line don't move like on Mario Kart Wii. That way, Coconut Mall isn't my preferred choice, but something I can practice enough swiftly to be on par.
Looking back at the Wii version though I understand the critique on the visuals here. How can the palm trees look better in the original? And those escalators! They've been gorgeous! But I'm also grateful I can see which direction they're going now. Flooring? Couldn't care less, but If you played it for ages it maybe is essential to you.
I can say Coconut Mall plays good on the Switch from my perspective, but yes, a cosmetic makeover would be a nice gesture towards customers who actually bought the pass and don't just use it as a bonus to the online upgrade.
Lucky Cat Cup
Tokyo Blur
The Lucky Cat Cup starts with just another one of those urban Mario Kart Tour courses. If I looked it up correctly, each of the three laps is modeled after one of the first three Tokyo Blur tracks in Tour, though like on Paris Promenade the biggest noticable change happens in third lap when you pass a gate to a very long mostly driftable passage with coins and item boxes.
Just like the rest of this course, if it wasn't for some Thwomps and a lot of the coins placed oddly off what I consider an ideal line, Tokyo Blur could be purely high speed.
The first two laps even feature a ramp you can easily use on 200ccm without sacrificing a mushroom. I think this is a good development for gameplay, though. Looking back, many courses in Mario Kart 8 were clearly not made with 200ccm in mind, at least if smooth driving was intended.
Tokyo Blur however isn't as entertaining as its city counterpart in the Golden Dash Cup to me, but of course offers another advantage to those who work on mastering the layout.
And even though the last player has now realized there's not a single anti-gravity or underwater section in this wave, I can only appreciate the focus on actual driving skill independent from surviving hazards and dodging items.
I don't know why exactly Nintendo withhold on placing landmarks more prominent on Tokyo Blur, just like they did with the Arc de Triomphe, Eifeltower or Café for instance. You can spot quite some characteristic elements in the background if not driving yourself, but at the wheel, despite maybe for that shrine like section, the track could be almost anything.
Perhaps it's because a japanese company doesn't look at their place like tourists, maybe they have more respect for the environment. From a western perspective, how great would it have been to pass some distinct landmarks, especially an otaku district of course, more directly?
Like going down the escalator to a train station and there pass shops and vending machines. Take it to the extreme and enter a maid café, where you enter the sewers via a giant japanese toilet in the restroom. You exit towards a view of Fuji-san just to find a Kaiju Bowser attacking Tokyo as a Gojira substitute when you return to the city.
I get you, that doesn't sound like me as a player, but from a design point of view, something like that would make the course more characteristic and memorable.
Shroom Ridge
Surprisingly, quite a few players seem to hate the concept of this Mario Kart DS course, which is a bit of a bastard child of Toad's Turnpike and Yoshi Circuit, looking at it from a Mario Kart 8 perspective. So cut away the fancy wall driving, jumps or piranha plants and place racing amongst public traffic on a narrow mountain ridge with sharp and often blind turns. How isn't that exciting?
It's not so much learning the patterns of traffic, it's about controlling your drifts, so you can slide wherever the flow takes you.
However, already more difficult on 150ccm, Shroom Ridge will require you to work heavily on your breaking technique on 200ccm. But that's something Mario Kart 8 Deluxe should have confronted you with earlier.
I would love to be able to compare this second course not imported from Mario Kart Tour with its original incarnation on the DS, actually playing and not just watching a video.
I would love to know how much of a difference it makes to have one lane of cars actually moving towards you instead of both lanes going your direction. Imagine someone who can't stay on track with the Switch version, what level of rage would be reached with the original then?
After the mixed reactions I understand why they chose to exclude this feature even though it's in the same wave, on Paris Promenade, where you can crash directly into your opponents, possibly causing a massive twist to the results.
They even seem to have been adding guardrails to some of the Shroom Ridge turns, just as if the kids 17 years ago had been hardcore driving dinosaurs. But seriously, I appreciate the challenge as much as balancing the course a bit for 200ccm.
Reusing cars from Toad's Turnpike is fine by me. Why not use something existing if it's more appropriate visually, especially if it's an element not already overstrained.
I did not have the time yet to familiarize with the shortcuts yet, I must admit. In this case I'd say it only speaks for their placement a lot less prominent as usual.
Give Shroom Ridge a chance, it's not at all that bad.
Sky Garden
If you've read my raving review of Mario Kart: Super Circuit, you might expect me to rant about how different this Booster Course Pass version is from the original. But if I wanted to play exactly the same game, I would wheel out my trusty GBA or ask for an emulated version to be released on Nintendo's Switch.
Well, maybe it's because I don't have that strong connection to the original course or the remake is more like a new undulating interpretation of the theme related to Cloudtop Cruise, that I totally feel at home on Sky Garden. I like the smooth drifts and small break ups via jumps like on a mushroom trampoline. Usually I avoid the leaves though, it might be a shortcut, but too big a chance of falling.
Speaking of shortcuts, they removed quite some for the remake due to design, but just like the donut from Sweet Sweet Canyon, you can also cut through a beanstalk here.
Again released for Mario Kart Tour before, in this case it was as far as I know included in the mobile game between the Nintendo Direct announcement of the Booster Course Pass and the release of Wave 1, so it's relatively fresh in both formats.
I think it's a good balance between concentration on racing and not getting into the zone too quickly. It is one of those tracks however I can play for eternities on Time Trial and just forget the world until I finally hit another record.
Ninja Hideaway
As a grande finale Nintendo decides to unwrap another original course from Mario Kart Tour, although this time they forgot to mark it in the select screen. So without better knowledge I actually thought we got an exclusive track with the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass.
But let's focus on what we actually have. Besides the Asian flavor of a chinese themed Dragon Driftway and a more modern yet less characteristic Tokyo Blur, we now finally have a more historically inspired japanese course around a ninja dojo, that clearly shines with its alternate routes.
There are several sharp corners to master in this mansion, but as much as I hated getting stuck from the first lap on, it matches the design and acts as an actual challenge, rarely seen in Booster Course Pass so far. On 200ccm Grand Prix I could only finish first yet, when I fell back to second place on a course before. As much as it bothers if you're about to rush through the wave, a challenge like this is actually needed, so it requires you to try more often until you ace the cup on three stars entirely.
Possibly the placed iconography is as random as some people think. I'm not familiar enough with the current lore to distinguish how much this is accurately a Wario course or not. I don't care much though, because compared to most other tracks in this wave there's quite a lot happening to keep me occupied with finding my way through the labyrinth.
It's a bit like a wooden Bowser Castle with its turns, spikes and jumps. You can take a lower route or decide to drive up a ladder to pass girders and an elevator before you fly over to the rooftops. It's a wild ride, especially compared to the remaining lineup of this Wave and yet I don't think it is unfair. It's got to be mastered.
I'd like refer to letshugbro's review on Backloggd here with the idea this Season could be a testing phase where to go with Mario Kart in the future. Now, we all hope it will be at least as good as now, but what I'm not convinced of yet is his idea of Mario Kart Mayhem.
I don't know, if, where I go, I won't be lost without roads. It is true that Ninja Hideaway doesn't exactly have a defined course, but somehow it does. On one hand it's not much more than the alternate routes in early Bowser Castles, innit? I wouldn't call a number of options within an imperative connection between point a and b open world yet, on the other hand I'm not sure expanding any further than Ninja Hideaway would be my thing. I'm still acclimatizing to this much.
Around the millennium I had my phase of Formula 1 games for a reason. Just as much as I preferred T.O.C.A. 2 about Ridge Racer or Grand Turismo. The games I liked were a lot more realistic and in that sense unforgiving.
You might take from my review so far, that I'm a big fan of the simple courses and the original Super Mario Kart, so contradictory to me saying the Booster Course Pass was mostly too easy, I actually enjoy the majority of the added tracks and will be fine if it stays with designs like that, except that I feel a break in continuity visually with the new art style, if it's really on purpose.
But on the other hand, I did love the game Driver back in the day and I'm still thinking about catching up on Burnout Paradise, which is already offering multiple choices of how to ride. I don't know, what would you think would be an appropriate continuation of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe?
It sure isn't a mobile game, though I think the Mario Kart Tour courses aren't bad per se. But would it be interesting to expand the world and options? Maybe in an MMO rally format? Something taking place in an individual career alongside everybody else and rather concentrated on how you work on set obstacles than race cups?
If it's going to be less casual then, I probably would enjoy real racing weekends much more. Training, qualifiers and then about 64 laps of racing on one course with legendary sections like the Miyamoto Switchback everybody hates when it's raining.
But that's neither the anything can happen I take from Ninja Hideaway nor any of the other Booster Course Pass tracks so far. I rather see a continuation of non-similar laps in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, just as we got with courses like Mount Wario or Merry Mountain from Mario Kart Tour, that I could imagine being ported for a Christmas wave.
If there's one conclusion so far, I'd say we can expect more Mario Kart Tour and as much as we like to play something new, we're not too keen on change, but might have to get used to a new art style which is just cosmetic, as the courses play great.
We'll see if Nintendo is going to cave in and submit a patch based on textures and shades already existing in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It's not going to have an effect on the overall racing experience though. Toad Circuit is just going to look more in line with Mario Circuit for instance. It will look more refined and therefore more satisfying.
But don't let those details hold you back.
Don't hide away, come out and play!
After the official release announcement by Nintendo, I've read the average mixed opinions online and that is something I'd like to address here, being neither fanboy nor hater, rather observing from my very own subjective perspective, which in this case includes an affinity towards Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, that actually pulled me back in the franchise after I thought it had lost its course.
So, you've got to have in mind I haven't played most of the reused tracks too often, but would on the other hand fancy my good old flat SNES Mario Circuit or Ghost Valley. But exactly because we all have favourite designs we'd like to play in Mario Kart 8 is another good reason for Nintendo to include all of them.
There have always been remakes in new Mario Kart games and the design elements are part of the identity. There's always a good chance they'd be criticized just the same for too much innovation. Even if I try to stay open minded, the impact the original Super Mario Kart had on me makes me a bit conservative on this topic as well.
But I've also read people bragging about expecting a Mario Kart 9 and I must admit, I don't see why this would have been customer friendly.
Sure, I'd be happy to play another great Mario Kart, especially after trying some underwhelming Mario Kart Tour to research for this review. But the Booster Course Pass in general was also a statement by Nintendo to expand the lifetime of the Switch at least to the end of 2023.
Considering the situation of the pandemic world not only short on electronic parts, but now also on the edge to a global war, I think that's the best way to handle. I wouldn't pay the scalping prices, that get asked for the rare new Playstation or Xbox machines these days. And why would anyone want those, if there's not enough specific software anyway?
Why shouldn't there be a Mario Kart 9 on the Switch then? Well, Nintendo's console hybrid isn't famous for its computing power. Strength of the small machine is portability whilst being usable on the big screen as well. And of course, aside from opening up to the indie market and having the exclusive franchises, it's older generation games receiving a second chance on the Switch.
I understand if you bought both Mario Kart 8 and the DLC for WiiU, that it felt weird to start off new in pretty much the same game. Maybe some of you did never go that route, still hold a grudge and would now have to buy the Deluxe version just to get access to the Booster Course Pass.
But in my opinion, in 2022, that's the least possible collateral damage, taking WiiU sales and age of the release into account. It's rather a good way from preventing the same happening during the transition to a new Nintendo console generation, supposedly announced in 2023 and maybe released in 2024 (my speculation after Nintendo Direct 2022).
It's probably my personal problem that I did not like Mario Kart 8 on WiiU and could first start to familiarize myself once it was out on the Switch. For me, that was a transition in itself, from being almost exclusively old-school to opening up to a new era of gaming. So I can't say it was the game, it could have been me.
But as far as I understand the game works a little better on the Switch on one hand and on the other it's a bestseller for years now, the question is, can they really create a Mario Kart 9 that is technically superior? I certainly hope so, but if they do, wouldn't the effort be better invested in the starting grid of a next generation rather than a console with a remaining lifespan of maybe two additional years?
It's not that they didn't try something new. There was Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit with the technically interesting concept of augmented reality and the chance to sell peripherals. I couldn't care less though for exactly that reason.
And then, there was Mario Kart Tour targeting a completely new generation of mobile gamers. Did they like it? I don't know. I prefer a racing game that I have in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe already and all I need are more courses.
I've read that selling new tracks as a season pass is not family friendly. Really? What they could have done, of course, is sell us each cup for 2,99€+ individually instead of 2,09€ retail (ca. 1,66€ via keyseller) with the pass.
Or even sell basically the same game as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe minus connection to an existing online community with just the 48 new tracks at 59,99€. How would that be better?
Nintendo is observing the market. They're into micro transactions already, targeting the mobile gaming section, a business a lot more lucrative than all consoles together. If they gave away new courses for free, as some seem to think would be reasonable, they would try to get your money another way.
And don't you think if they wanted to, they could've duplicated FIFA sale strategies? That means the same game with tiny adjustment every year full price just to buy new booster packs on top?
In a world where this seems to be widely accepted and enough whales are backing those systems, isn't Nintendo giving up a lot of dough by doubling the tracks for an admission of a third of the initial retail price?
Aren't they even redirecting players from their potential moneymaker by including Mario Kart Tour courses? To me that sounds like to Nintendo, the Switch is the main business model (and I hope they're not luring players in to have them accepting future micro transactions on the console). To me that sounds like maxing out one of my favorite games for a reasonable price, so shut up, Nintendo take my money, right?
But now towards the tracks. A couple of days in, what do I think of the two new cups in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass? Usually, I wouldn't write a review on an unfinished game, but usually I also don't buy season passes, at least not before season is over. So if everything goes as planned, I will expand the review wave by wave and add a final conclusion.
When the Booster Course Pass was activated, we played for about half an hour online to enjoy our first impressions together. Those initially were, despite surprises like directional change on Paris Promenade, that both Golden Dash and Lucky Cat Cup are entertaining but fairly easy, except for Ninja Hideaway maybe.
Then I went on and beat all Golden Dash Cup classes with three stars on the first try, except the reversed one that required a second attempt. This isn't supposed to be boasting. I think of myself as a motivated average player and I'm used to getting my arse kicked online, because I need to really work on my defense.
Once I was feeling dizzy, release was at midnight, I at least had beaten a few staff ghosts at Time Trial and got gold for the 150ccm Lucky Cat Cup. At that point I had loosely played for about five hours and wasted most of it for Time Trial, which I usually finish before starting 150ccm.
At first, I felt underwhelmed, but after a few hours of sleep in this event I had planned for, I picked up the Switch controller again to perceive I wasn't playing an advanced add-on to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
There's a reason they divided Booster Course Cups as a similar structured roster from the original ones. If these two cups are equivalent to Mushroom and Flower Cup, it all falls into place.
And actually it is Time Trial where I can spot a difference. As easy it seems at first to finish gold in Grand Prix mode, finding the ideal line appears to be more challenging or at least the Nintendo staff ghosts make it feel like it.
Doing so however led to a significant advantage against other experienced players who did not spend as much time with it yet.
There is a racing potential in those tracks, that will unfold with training and that way probably will resonate best with the less arcadey, not so casual players.
I appreciate that a lot as a reward for spending time with a game. Slingshooting lazy gamers forward at all cost is something I despise. A game is balanced, when you win after doing homework. You lose, you analyze, you work on it.
At this point, I don't regret a Cent spend on the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass. But it is hard to mess up the delivery of 48 tracks for just about 52 Cents a course (or even less if you bought a key elsewhere) to an already great game, innit?
Though I share an empty feeling, missing the opportunity to play all new tracks at once, I think Nintendo made a wise decision for the online community they did not sacrifice for the sake of releasing a new game.
Imagine the split if it were two different programs! Instead, you get access via DLC Season Pass or as a Nintendo Switch Online + Expension Pack member, if that's your preference. And if you can't or won't invest into any of them, you're still able to enter any online competition and ride the new courses if an opponent has the access. How isn't that inclusive and user friendly?
As exceptional it is to have a game sell that well and have players return to compete online for years, releasing new tracks will increase the number of competitors and naturally will decrease with freshness fading, independent from the number of courses released. So by dropping six waves over two years, the online community can only benefit, whilst 8 tracks in two cups is enough to keep you occupied a while until perfection of you racing them.
Wave 1
Golden Dash Cup
Paris Promenade
This course confronts the player with two things. I've not played Mario Kart Tour until a few days ago, but I cannot deny it was awkward enough to shy away from a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remake. Another issue could be trademarks. I don't even know if they ever touched real places other than augmented in Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit.
Not caring for the authenticity of the city design and rather happy about a new course to play though I enjoyed the long drift passage and surprise element, when route changes in third lap, so that possibly some players still drive opposite your direction.
It's really an incorporation of elements taken from multiple Mario Kart Tour Paris Passage tracks, one of them acting as a short cut, if I understand correctly. Some use of pipes and a piranha plant or the glider passages help to not forget it's a Mario Kart game. It's fun. And of course it plays a lot better with a pro controller than swiping your mobile screen.
Toad Circuit
It's maybe odd to include a course to the second slot, that was clearly designed to be the opener of Mario Kart 7, very much in the tradition of the first Mario Circuit. However, as I love the plain perfection of the SNES inspiration, I'm totally up for pure racing on this course.
Here, it's simple enough that items of course play a role, but the driving requires more than avoiding traps and shots to win while staying on track. If you don't find the ideal line and don't make use of cuts, you must be very lucky to win against advanced players here. That's probably why they decided against the addition of more laps to this rather short course.
It's the first track where a difference in textures really caught my attention. There's enough happening on Paris Promenade and you could observe the greenery there as an individual art style, but even though they've blown up and reworked graphics since the Nintendo Direct trailer, the grass on Toad Circuit for instance is just plain green.
On the other hand, I've seen critique that the tires had the same problem, and I just can't remember if I really saw the same on release day. I know they felt odd. But when I checked specifically after that review, the tires had profile textures and a shade, missing in that critique's footage. Was there a patch?
Yes, that's the beauty of technology, they could update those graphics easily, if it was just because they've been in a rush. But even if they didn't and the Booster Course Pass will act more as an exploitation of leftovers, do you really have your eyes on the green while driving? That's for the backseat.
It would be interesting though, if there's a pattern of courses from Mario Kart Tour to find the way to the Booster Course Pass roster, as Toad Circuit is one of them as well.
Choco Mountain
Another one of those Tour ports is Choco Mountain, first appearing in Mario Kart 64. I must have played the first incarnation a ton as despite I never really liked Mario Kart 64 for several reasons, we played it just as often at a friend's place as we did Super Mario Kart.
I don't recall much though, because that was totally last century, a millennium ago. I'm not even sure if I had more problems with the boulder dropping passage than on the Booster Course version.
I also had to read up that there's a curve now having a banister present all the time, whilst the N64 version only had it on 50ccm and Time Trial and Mario Kart DS omitted the banister completely.
Maybe for that reason Choco Mountain doesn't feel very challenging in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
In this case though, having had it in Mario Kart Tour before, where a cave passage with bats was added, might actually be an enrichment.
Choco Mountain plays alright and it has just enough variation including good drifting passages and few jumps to keep you busy in tournaments. But other than cutting a corner via an acceleration item, I didn't find any twist to make the track stand out a lot.
Even though the original music hurts, I'm not sure if the remake is better. But I would prefer an off switch anyway, so I can listen to the latest Mostrich Mixtape. Until then, I think any soundtrack from the Pass is quite alright.
Coconut Mall
Originating from Mario Kart Wii, Coconut Mall back in the day was one of those examples of overcomplicating course designs, one of the reasons I turned away from the franchise.
However, despite still having mixed feelings about design choices, I got more used to lavish layouts and can accept them better with the positive gameplay evolution in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Being the first track not having an appearance in Mario Kart Tour, Coconut Mall seems to also have the purpose to compensate for the lack of height difference so far in the Golden Dash Cup.
You start with stairs and escalators to a race on different levels of a shopping mall offering multiple opportunities for tricks and shortcuts. Once you've oriented, you will find your preferred path including acceleration through a shop.
It is challenging to combine tricks with entering drift passages, forcing you to brake if not in line perfectly, either. It's also one of the few courses in this wave that don't get just even better on 200ccm.
Again though, the true potential isn't found in Grand Prix mode as the computer isn't very hard to beat.
I appreciate in this mostly cosmetically remade adaption there's no additional confusion like trains hitting randomly in Super Bell Subway for instance, one of my lesser favourite tracks. for me it's probably helpful the cars near the finish line don't move like on Mario Kart Wii. That way, Coconut Mall isn't my preferred choice, but something I can practice enough swiftly to be on par.
Looking back at the Wii version though I understand the critique on the visuals here. How can the palm trees look better in the original? And those escalators! They've been gorgeous! But I'm also grateful I can see which direction they're going now. Flooring? Couldn't care less, but If you played it for ages it maybe is essential to you.
I can say Coconut Mall plays good on the Switch from my perspective, but yes, a cosmetic makeover would be a nice gesture towards customers who actually bought the pass and don't just use it as a bonus to the online upgrade.
Lucky Cat Cup
Tokyo Blur
The Lucky Cat Cup starts with just another one of those urban Mario Kart Tour courses. If I looked it up correctly, each of the three laps is modeled after one of the first three Tokyo Blur tracks in Tour, though like on Paris Promenade the biggest noticable change happens in third lap when you pass a gate to a very long mostly driftable passage with coins and item boxes.
Just like the rest of this course, if it wasn't for some Thwomps and a lot of the coins placed oddly off what I consider an ideal line, Tokyo Blur could be purely high speed.
The first two laps even feature a ramp you can easily use on 200ccm without sacrificing a mushroom. I think this is a good development for gameplay, though. Looking back, many courses in Mario Kart 8 were clearly not made with 200ccm in mind, at least if smooth driving was intended.
Tokyo Blur however isn't as entertaining as its city counterpart in the Golden Dash Cup to me, but of course offers another advantage to those who work on mastering the layout.
And even though the last player has now realized there's not a single anti-gravity or underwater section in this wave, I can only appreciate the focus on actual driving skill independent from surviving hazards and dodging items.
I don't know why exactly Nintendo withhold on placing landmarks more prominent on Tokyo Blur, just like they did with the Arc de Triomphe, Eifeltower or Café for instance. You can spot quite some characteristic elements in the background if not driving yourself, but at the wheel, despite maybe for that shrine like section, the track could be almost anything.
Perhaps it's because a japanese company doesn't look at their place like tourists, maybe they have more respect for the environment. From a western perspective, how great would it have been to pass some distinct landmarks, especially an otaku district of course, more directly?
Like going down the escalator to a train station and there pass shops and vending machines. Take it to the extreme and enter a maid café, where you enter the sewers via a giant japanese toilet in the restroom. You exit towards a view of Fuji-san just to find a Kaiju Bowser attacking Tokyo as a Gojira substitute when you return to the city.
I get you, that doesn't sound like me as a player, but from a design point of view, something like that would make the course more characteristic and memorable.
Shroom Ridge
Surprisingly, quite a few players seem to hate the concept of this Mario Kart DS course, which is a bit of a bastard child of Toad's Turnpike and Yoshi Circuit, looking at it from a Mario Kart 8 perspective. So cut away the fancy wall driving, jumps or piranha plants and place racing amongst public traffic on a narrow mountain ridge with sharp and often blind turns. How isn't that exciting?
It's not so much learning the patterns of traffic, it's about controlling your drifts, so you can slide wherever the flow takes you.
However, already more difficult on 150ccm, Shroom Ridge will require you to work heavily on your breaking technique on 200ccm. But that's something Mario Kart 8 Deluxe should have confronted you with earlier.
I would love to be able to compare this second course not imported from Mario Kart Tour with its original incarnation on the DS, actually playing and not just watching a video.
I would love to know how much of a difference it makes to have one lane of cars actually moving towards you instead of both lanes going your direction. Imagine someone who can't stay on track with the Switch version, what level of rage would be reached with the original then?
After the mixed reactions I understand why they chose to exclude this feature even though it's in the same wave, on Paris Promenade, where you can crash directly into your opponents, possibly causing a massive twist to the results.
They even seem to have been adding guardrails to some of the Shroom Ridge turns, just as if the kids 17 years ago had been hardcore driving dinosaurs. But seriously, I appreciate the challenge as much as balancing the course a bit for 200ccm.
Reusing cars from Toad's Turnpike is fine by me. Why not use something existing if it's more appropriate visually, especially if it's an element not already overstrained.
I did not have the time yet to familiarize with the shortcuts yet, I must admit. In this case I'd say it only speaks for their placement a lot less prominent as usual.
Give Shroom Ridge a chance, it's not at all that bad.
Sky Garden
If you've read my raving review of Mario Kart: Super Circuit, you might expect me to rant about how different this Booster Course Pass version is from the original. But if I wanted to play exactly the same game, I would wheel out my trusty GBA or ask for an emulated version to be released on Nintendo's Switch.
Well, maybe it's because I don't have that strong connection to the original course or the remake is more like a new undulating interpretation of the theme related to Cloudtop Cruise, that I totally feel at home on Sky Garden. I like the smooth drifts and small break ups via jumps like on a mushroom trampoline. Usually I avoid the leaves though, it might be a shortcut, but too big a chance of falling.
Speaking of shortcuts, they removed quite some for the remake due to design, but just like the donut from Sweet Sweet Canyon, you can also cut through a beanstalk here.
Again released for Mario Kart Tour before, in this case it was as far as I know included in the mobile game between the Nintendo Direct announcement of the Booster Course Pass and the release of Wave 1, so it's relatively fresh in both formats.
I think it's a good balance between concentration on racing and not getting into the zone too quickly. It is one of those tracks however I can play for eternities on Time Trial and just forget the world until I finally hit another record.
Ninja Hideaway
As a grande finale Nintendo decides to unwrap another original course from Mario Kart Tour, although this time they forgot to mark it in the select screen. So without better knowledge I actually thought we got an exclusive track with the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass.
But let's focus on what we actually have. Besides the Asian flavor of a chinese themed Dragon Driftway and a more modern yet less characteristic Tokyo Blur, we now finally have a more historically inspired japanese course around a ninja dojo, that clearly shines with its alternate routes.
There are several sharp corners to master in this mansion, but as much as I hated getting stuck from the first lap on, it matches the design and acts as an actual challenge, rarely seen in Booster Course Pass so far. On 200ccm Grand Prix I could only finish first yet, when I fell back to second place on a course before. As much as it bothers if you're about to rush through the wave, a challenge like this is actually needed, so it requires you to try more often until you ace the cup on three stars entirely.
Possibly the placed iconography is as random as some people think. I'm not familiar enough with the current lore to distinguish how much this is accurately a Wario course or not. I don't care much though, because compared to most other tracks in this wave there's quite a lot happening to keep me occupied with finding my way through the labyrinth.
It's a bit like a wooden Bowser Castle with its turns, spikes and jumps. You can take a lower route or decide to drive up a ladder to pass girders and an elevator before you fly over to the rooftops. It's a wild ride, especially compared to the remaining lineup of this Wave and yet I don't think it is unfair. It's got to be mastered.
I'd like refer to letshugbro's review on Backloggd here with the idea this Season could be a testing phase where to go with Mario Kart in the future. Now, we all hope it will be at least as good as now, but what I'm not convinced of yet is his idea of Mario Kart Mayhem.
I don't know, if, where I go, I won't be lost without roads. It is true that Ninja Hideaway doesn't exactly have a defined course, but somehow it does. On one hand it's not much more than the alternate routes in early Bowser Castles, innit? I wouldn't call a number of options within an imperative connection between point a and b open world yet, on the other hand I'm not sure expanding any further than Ninja Hideaway would be my thing. I'm still acclimatizing to this much.
Around the millennium I had my phase of Formula 1 games for a reason. Just as much as I preferred T.O.C.A. 2 about Ridge Racer or Grand Turismo. The games I liked were a lot more realistic and in that sense unforgiving.
You might take from my review so far, that I'm a big fan of the simple courses and the original Super Mario Kart, so contradictory to me saying the Booster Course Pass was mostly too easy, I actually enjoy the majority of the added tracks and will be fine if it stays with designs like that, except that I feel a break in continuity visually with the new art style, if it's really on purpose.
But on the other hand, I did love the game Driver back in the day and I'm still thinking about catching up on Burnout Paradise, which is already offering multiple choices of how to ride. I don't know, what would you think would be an appropriate continuation of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe?
It sure isn't a mobile game, though I think the Mario Kart Tour courses aren't bad per se. But would it be interesting to expand the world and options? Maybe in an MMO rally format? Something taking place in an individual career alongside everybody else and rather concentrated on how you work on set obstacles than race cups?
If it's going to be less casual then, I probably would enjoy real racing weekends much more. Training, qualifiers and then about 64 laps of racing on one course with legendary sections like the Miyamoto Switchback everybody hates when it's raining.
But that's neither the anything can happen I take from Ninja Hideaway nor any of the other Booster Course Pass tracks so far. I rather see a continuation of non-similar laps in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, just as we got with courses like Mount Wario or Merry Mountain from Mario Kart Tour, that I could imagine being ported for a Christmas wave.
If there's one conclusion so far, I'd say we can expect more Mario Kart Tour and as much as we like to play something new, we're not too keen on change, but might have to get used to a new art style which is just cosmetic, as the courses play great.
We'll see if Nintendo is going to cave in and submit a patch based on textures and shades already existing in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It's not going to have an effect on the overall racing experience though. Toad Circuit is just going to look more in line with Mario Circuit for instance. It will look more refined and therefore more satisfying.
But don't let those details hold you back.
Don't hide away, come out and play!
2019
With Little Misfortune Killmonday Games rather created a spin off than an actual sequel to the brilliant Fran Bow. It's also good I didn't know about any connection before, because my expectations might have disturbed my reception.
If you played the predecessor, you will eventually recognize the obscure pagan mythology, although it's less obvious within the design of child book illustrations, receiving occasional sparkle from the young female protagonist named Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez.
The eight year old has a heartwarming naive temperament, formed by a background of domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse as we soon learn next to the information Misfortune is going to die on the present day. That's not a spoiler, it's something the invisible narrator tells us early on whilst Misfortune, who communicates with him as Mr. Voice, can't hear him for a minute.
The two are about to play a game that we seemingly can have an influence on by making decisions for the protagonist, who has an obsession for unicorns, glitter and the fox Benjamin she saw in the garden.
Sure, Fran Bow was sort of linear, too. But it played like a point'n'click adventure unlike Little Misfortune, that is better described as an interactive story book. It's much simpler picking path A or B on multiple obvious occasions rather than solving puzzles to proceed.
A few simple minigames to break the pattern are not really a challenge. If you play via mouse like me though, you might want to switch to keyboard for those events. It felt more natural.
That's actually the only real problem I have with Little Misfortune. It's just about two hours of watching a story with quite a few dilemmas if you care about the figure. But it's neither actual gameplay, nor is it very rewarding on a second playthrough.
There have been a couple of decisions I wanted to revisit and they usually somehow have an effect, but only few of them really make a difference to the action, yet they still seem to make the ending more or less unavoidable.
Other than that, well, Fran Bow was somberly twisted, you know, but even though a lot brighter on the surface, Little Misfortune is morbidly sinister in its own right. You might have to take my word for it as I don't want to reveal too much that is happening on this nondescript stroll.
You shouldn't be triggered by themes like described above, as a lot of the phrases leaving Misfortune's mouth so innocently actually reveal quite downbeat origins. The protagonist also has a tendency to throw up on occasion.
The strength of this program lies in emotions. It's very easy to care for Misfortune, who seems to be protected from her environment by playful resilience built from all the foxy imagination a cute little girl could come up with.
But how far is that going to take her? How much can we help and save her? It's probably as cynical as it sounds and so to perceive a layer of dark humor requires a specific mind set.
Following and interacting with the story might do something to you and I'm not even sure if there's a bigger effect depending on which side of town you grew up yourself. It doesn't matter what background Misfortune has and how unlucky she feels, she's not just junk.
She's a good kid inside, making the best of her situation that includes her mom would have aborted her if it had been legal. We're not used to fairytales being that depressing since Disney took over, but the storytelling is a quite true modernisation of the pristine tales once collected by brothers Grimm.
If you played the predecessor, you will eventually recognize the obscure pagan mythology, although it's less obvious within the design of child book illustrations, receiving occasional sparkle from the young female protagonist named Misfortune Ramirez Hernandez.
The eight year old has a heartwarming naive temperament, formed by a background of domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse as we soon learn next to the information Misfortune is going to die on the present day. That's not a spoiler, it's something the invisible narrator tells us early on whilst Misfortune, who communicates with him as Mr. Voice, can't hear him for a minute.
The two are about to play a game that we seemingly can have an influence on by making decisions for the protagonist, who has an obsession for unicorns, glitter and the fox Benjamin she saw in the garden.
Sure, Fran Bow was sort of linear, too. But it played like a point'n'click adventure unlike Little Misfortune, that is better described as an interactive story book. It's much simpler picking path A or B on multiple obvious occasions rather than solving puzzles to proceed.
A few simple minigames to break the pattern are not really a challenge. If you play via mouse like me though, you might want to switch to keyboard for those events. It felt more natural.
That's actually the only real problem I have with Little Misfortune. It's just about two hours of watching a story with quite a few dilemmas if you care about the figure. But it's neither actual gameplay, nor is it very rewarding on a second playthrough.
There have been a couple of decisions I wanted to revisit and they usually somehow have an effect, but only few of them really make a difference to the action, yet they still seem to make the ending more or less unavoidable.
Other than that, well, Fran Bow was somberly twisted, you know, but even though a lot brighter on the surface, Little Misfortune is morbidly sinister in its own right. You might have to take my word for it as I don't want to reveal too much that is happening on this nondescript stroll.
You shouldn't be triggered by themes like described above, as a lot of the phrases leaving Misfortune's mouth so innocently actually reveal quite downbeat origins. The protagonist also has a tendency to throw up on occasion.
The strength of this program lies in emotions. It's very easy to care for Misfortune, who seems to be protected from her environment by playful resilience built from all the foxy imagination a cute little girl could come up with.
But how far is that going to take her? How much can we help and save her? It's probably as cynical as it sounds and so to perceive a layer of dark humor requires a specific mind set.
Following and interacting with the story might do something to you and I'm not even sure if there's a bigger effect depending on which side of town you grew up yourself. It doesn't matter what background Misfortune has and how unlucky she feels, she's not just junk.
She's a good kid inside, making the best of her situation that includes her mom would have aborted her if it had been legal. We're not used to fairytales being that depressing since Disney took over, but the storytelling is a quite true modernisation of the pristine tales once collected by brothers Grimm.
2022
Looking at Windjammers 2 surprisingly isn't as easy as I expected. Sure, you can beat the arcade mode within a few minutes on easy settings, but is that the game?
Windjammers has a history and DotEmu, from my point of view, did a faithful job in creating a sequel that does look more like a modernized port, actually. When I finally played it, preferred on Nintendo Switch and therefore having been waiting for a half-price key, there was just one thing missing: An online community.
Maybe there was one at release, just like there had been a few hundred players on PC in the beginning and now dropped to almost none. I don't know. Maybe it even was a mistake to include Windjammers 2 in the Game Pass, because it's easier to pass on a game you didn't pay. It seems not only to be the lack of cross play though.
Windjammers, a fast paced Frisbee basterd of Pong/Airhockey and a one on one fighting game, had always been kind of a sleeper. The original release on the Neo Geo system wasn't too catchy on first sight, but since it was part of a competitive video game TV show back in the day, it got my attention.
Windjammers turned out to be an instant classic, easy to learn but hard to master, once we rented it for SNK's bulky home console in the 90ies or played it on other adaptions. It's something you have to experience rather than watch it on video. It seems it also spawned a small but hardcore competitive scene helping the game to stay in circulation.
Even though it hasn't been forgotten and there was also a Switch port, my calculation was to better wait for the sequel and a growing online community there. Why not? DotEmu did a great job creating Streets of Rage 4, updating look and gameplay while staying true enough to the original.
Honestly, there wasn't much to change on an almost perfect program. Keep it fast but make it look fresher, that's basically what they did. Windjammers 2 is a classic arcade game, not Elden Ring. But expectations seem to be different these days. Do people know playing against the computer is more like a training session?
It's even supposed to be fun to play for a few minutes in-between. You can play it for hours as a die hard, sure, but then the virus already got you and you're probably playing Windjammers against humans. That's when it really shines and that's when it really gets competitive.
I see that you might want to at least chat via Discord to swear at each other, preferably with future ex friends, if you can't meet at someone's home like in the good old days. But you also only get better having somebody challenge you.
What's to expect in times when opponents quit on you at the moment of their first K.O. in a match of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, to escape the few seconds of shame? If you need your reward center targeted constantly, wouldn't you be better off with a mobile game?
Windjammers 2, just like its predecessor, plays like the epitome of arcade competition and I'd really love to get my ass beaten multiple times on my way to master the game. There's no additional mini games needed or whatever people ask for. Just commitment. It requires blood, sweat and tears and the ability to lose until you're good enough to win.
Hopefully there's going to be a sale in the future to draw more people in and finally have some regulars stick. I'm not saying this type of gaming has to be your box of juice, but it can't be that hard to reckon the obvious qualities, can it?
Windjammers has a history and DotEmu, from my point of view, did a faithful job in creating a sequel that does look more like a modernized port, actually. When I finally played it, preferred on Nintendo Switch and therefore having been waiting for a half-price key, there was just one thing missing: An online community.
Maybe there was one at release, just like there had been a few hundred players on PC in the beginning and now dropped to almost none. I don't know. Maybe it even was a mistake to include Windjammers 2 in the Game Pass, because it's easier to pass on a game you didn't pay. It seems not only to be the lack of cross play though.
Windjammers, a fast paced Frisbee basterd of Pong/Airhockey and a one on one fighting game, had always been kind of a sleeper. The original release on the Neo Geo system wasn't too catchy on first sight, but since it was part of a competitive video game TV show back in the day, it got my attention.
Windjammers turned out to be an instant classic, easy to learn but hard to master, once we rented it for SNK's bulky home console in the 90ies or played it on other adaptions. It's something you have to experience rather than watch it on video. It seems it also spawned a small but hardcore competitive scene helping the game to stay in circulation.
Even though it hasn't been forgotten and there was also a Switch port, my calculation was to better wait for the sequel and a growing online community there. Why not? DotEmu did a great job creating Streets of Rage 4, updating look and gameplay while staying true enough to the original.
Honestly, there wasn't much to change on an almost perfect program. Keep it fast but make it look fresher, that's basically what they did. Windjammers 2 is a classic arcade game, not Elden Ring. But expectations seem to be different these days. Do people know playing against the computer is more like a training session?
It's even supposed to be fun to play for a few minutes in-between. You can play it for hours as a die hard, sure, but then the virus already got you and you're probably playing Windjammers against humans. That's when it really shines and that's when it really gets competitive.
I see that you might want to at least chat via Discord to swear at each other, preferably with future ex friends, if you can't meet at someone's home like in the good old days. But you also only get better having somebody challenge you.
What's to expect in times when opponents quit on you at the moment of their first K.O. in a match of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, to escape the few seconds of shame? If you need your reward center targeted constantly, wouldn't you be better off with a mobile game?
Windjammers 2, just like its predecessor, plays like the epitome of arcade competition and I'd really love to get my ass beaten multiple times on my way to master the game. There's no additional mini games needed or whatever people ask for. Just commitment. It requires blood, sweat and tears and the ability to lose until you're good enough to win.
Hopefully there's going to be a sale in the future to draw more people in and finally have some regulars stick. I'm not saying this type of gaming has to be your box of juice, but it can't be that hard to reckon the obvious qualities, can it?
1991
Even though Blade Master had all the potential to become Irem's next international arcade blockbuster after Moon Patrol, Kung-Fu Master and R-Type, there might be a reason it is not as well remembered. But look at the screen, aren't the big sprites gorgeous?
For 1991 they look astonishingly close to the airbrush artworks us connoisseurs of 80s genre media adore so much, so the company could have made a fresh take on the subject. The few references of a contemporary reception found online even name Blade Master amongst the most successful releases of the year and rate it surprisingly high. So what is the problem?
Well, just like many other companies at the rise of video games, Pachinko developer Irem saw a future in those new coin up machines and started out with a Space Invaders clone. Though having had quite an impact on the western market with their high-performing trio, now that I think about it, I don't remember their name for very much else.
Part of the reason might be them concentrating on the japanese market. Some of their employees later formed the Nazca Corporation who made a name with Metal Slug, so I don't want to suspect an element of randomness for the results of their products, whose difficulty is traditionally high. Maybe Blade Master just wasn't the clear focus of their development. Maybe it also wasn't Irem's genre.
Hack'n'slash games though had been very successful at the time and I'm pretty sure part of the problem is Blade Master just didn't age well and I might have liked it a lot more back in the day, when you didn't necessarily have the huge selection of other arcade cabinets free to play at one of the museums and clubs formed to make old video games accessible to the public.
Knowing that Kung-Fu Master was originally named Spartan X in Japan and took heavy inspiration from the Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Bruce Lee filmography, it might not even be surprising, that this Master, named Cross Blades! In Japanese, has nothing to do with the 1984 martial arts title, but was drawing from other recent popular tropes.
Blade Master begins with a girl being kidnapped and to rescue her, up to two players can select between the slim sword wielding Roy and the beefy Arnold, being even bulkier than his Austrian cousin.
It's nothing but Final Fight, combined with the fantasy hack'n'slash of Golden Axe or one of the more mediocre but successful fantasy beat'em'ups Capcom was releasing those years. Why shouldn't they try to cash in on that?
It was exactly around the time I began to love playing the equivalents on my Amiga 500 along with excessive sessions of Barbarian. I was practically born into Masters of the Universe and easily transitioned into anything Horror, Rambo or Ninja on the school yard, if it wasn't another barbarian movie like Conan, though I also began to read the stories along with all the old franco-belgian fantasy comics that also influenced the aesthetics of Star Wars. No wonder amongst my most treasured VHS tapes was Yor, the Hunter from the Future.
On first sight, Irem did a great job exactly capturing the different aspects of fantasy artworks. On sprites like Arnold, the muscle definition is on point. You've got demonic designs that sometimes go into that R-Type trademark Giger inspired direction. You get mohawk monster archers as well as ancient steampunk tin objects.
Towards the end they have all the reason to throw multiple, almost screen filling knights at you. Their armour has so brilliantly shining effects, they just had to present them in different shades of metal. The showdown punishes you with lightly dressed worm-women detailed directly from the wet dreams of any virgin 80s fantasy geek. Damn sure I would have wasted plenty of credits on Blade Master at the time!
The credit sequence at the end though rushes through quite a bit of text with a story I didn't feel much connection to throughout my conquest. I think it was Stage 3, when you suddenly storm on a bizarre bumblebee vehicle, which is a concept that felt closer to my impression of an Irem game, but is a unique experience in Blade Master and doesn't play exceptionally enough to repeat it as well, to be honest.
All the rest of the game is fought as a pedestrian and the more you reach the end, elements get reiterated. It almost appears as they maybe had bigger plans with this program, but had to finish it at some point.
Or maybe it's closer to the truth they didn't expect a majority of players to reach that far, which corresponds with how enemies are thrown at you without mercy or the feeling increased skill would help saving credits and keeping your change.
Blade Master doesn't reward you with anything but highscore, which is sad, as Irem should be familiar with a power up system, looking at the super hard, but very pleasurable R-Type. If the items you pick up give more than just some energy back, I must have missed it constantly dying.
That's a big issue within the tight limits of a side scrolling beat'em'up or hack'n'slash. In the limited moveset of the two buttons Jump and Attack, you want some variability through changing armory and rides, in this context maybe even spells or at least some creative gore.
All Roy and Arnold do is literally hack and slash without any additional graphical extravaganza. While mashing the attack button, the game might even miss your jump input, so you fail at one of the few alternate actions: Penetrating stunned larger enemies with your weapon while they're on the ground.
No dashes, no suicide escape moves. Instead, you might get frustrated, especially at later stages, when you need to wiggle around the corner pixels to pass a bridge or didn't manage to jump over a gap again.
Even though Irem put in great effort to please the player's eyes with their design, they don't really want to do much with it. It feels to me there wasn't a story concept behind the wide variety of enemy characters and I didn't see much connection to the landscape as well, other than one instance you wade through water as you defeat sea creatures.
The music, for the most part, might have also been used in a Shmup, but didn't generate the desired atmosphere for a fantasy game, like the grandiose Golden Axe score for example. The few voice samples thrown in don't help either as the protagonists surely aren't as barbaric as the caveman grunts imply.
Blade Master appears to be like just another skin for a generic thieving machine that puts you on test how long you want to explore the beautiful but boring battle ballet before you're totally broke. It's missing gameplay ideas and atmosphere so today it's hardly one of those admittedly imbecilic applications to play with a buddy while chatting about the good old days.
But it really should be and I'd even expect Irem to have been capable of the extra effort. There's a fascination to how touch and go it is, that thin line dividing Blade Master from being a genre classic by feeding delicacies for one and unseasoned rice for another course of the same menu.
Actually, the concluding confrontation with the worm-women illustrates that quite well. They're designed like they could give you all the genre sweetening T&A aesthetics, but their anatomy just has the T and instead of the expected A, there's an enormous appendix incessantly penalizing the player.
For 1991 they look astonishingly close to the airbrush artworks us connoisseurs of 80s genre media adore so much, so the company could have made a fresh take on the subject. The few references of a contemporary reception found online even name Blade Master amongst the most successful releases of the year and rate it surprisingly high. So what is the problem?
Well, just like many other companies at the rise of video games, Pachinko developer Irem saw a future in those new coin up machines and started out with a Space Invaders clone. Though having had quite an impact on the western market with their high-performing trio, now that I think about it, I don't remember their name for very much else.
Part of the reason might be them concentrating on the japanese market. Some of their employees later formed the Nazca Corporation who made a name with Metal Slug, so I don't want to suspect an element of randomness for the results of their products, whose difficulty is traditionally high. Maybe Blade Master just wasn't the clear focus of their development. Maybe it also wasn't Irem's genre.
Hack'n'slash games though had been very successful at the time and I'm pretty sure part of the problem is Blade Master just didn't age well and I might have liked it a lot more back in the day, when you didn't necessarily have the huge selection of other arcade cabinets free to play at one of the museums and clubs formed to make old video games accessible to the public.
Knowing that Kung-Fu Master was originally named Spartan X in Japan and took heavy inspiration from the Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Bruce Lee filmography, it might not even be surprising, that this Master, named Cross Blades! In Japanese, has nothing to do with the 1984 martial arts title, but was drawing from other recent popular tropes.
Blade Master begins with a girl being kidnapped and to rescue her, up to two players can select between the slim sword wielding Roy and the beefy Arnold, being even bulkier than his Austrian cousin.
It's nothing but Final Fight, combined with the fantasy hack'n'slash of Golden Axe or one of the more mediocre but successful fantasy beat'em'ups Capcom was releasing those years. Why shouldn't they try to cash in on that?
It was exactly around the time I began to love playing the equivalents on my Amiga 500 along with excessive sessions of Barbarian. I was practically born into Masters of the Universe and easily transitioned into anything Horror, Rambo or Ninja on the school yard, if it wasn't another barbarian movie like Conan, though I also began to read the stories along with all the old franco-belgian fantasy comics that also influenced the aesthetics of Star Wars. No wonder amongst my most treasured VHS tapes was Yor, the Hunter from the Future.
On first sight, Irem did a great job exactly capturing the different aspects of fantasy artworks. On sprites like Arnold, the muscle definition is on point. You've got demonic designs that sometimes go into that R-Type trademark Giger inspired direction. You get mohawk monster archers as well as ancient steampunk tin objects.
Towards the end they have all the reason to throw multiple, almost screen filling knights at you. Their armour has so brilliantly shining effects, they just had to present them in different shades of metal. The showdown punishes you with lightly dressed worm-women detailed directly from the wet dreams of any virgin 80s fantasy geek. Damn sure I would have wasted plenty of credits on Blade Master at the time!
The credit sequence at the end though rushes through quite a bit of text with a story I didn't feel much connection to throughout my conquest. I think it was Stage 3, when you suddenly storm on a bizarre bumblebee vehicle, which is a concept that felt closer to my impression of an Irem game, but is a unique experience in Blade Master and doesn't play exceptionally enough to repeat it as well, to be honest.
All the rest of the game is fought as a pedestrian and the more you reach the end, elements get reiterated. It almost appears as they maybe had bigger plans with this program, but had to finish it at some point.
Or maybe it's closer to the truth they didn't expect a majority of players to reach that far, which corresponds with how enemies are thrown at you without mercy or the feeling increased skill would help saving credits and keeping your change.
Blade Master doesn't reward you with anything but highscore, which is sad, as Irem should be familiar with a power up system, looking at the super hard, but very pleasurable R-Type. If the items you pick up give more than just some energy back, I must have missed it constantly dying.
That's a big issue within the tight limits of a side scrolling beat'em'up or hack'n'slash. In the limited moveset of the two buttons Jump and Attack, you want some variability through changing armory and rides, in this context maybe even spells or at least some creative gore.
All Roy and Arnold do is literally hack and slash without any additional graphical extravaganza. While mashing the attack button, the game might even miss your jump input, so you fail at one of the few alternate actions: Penetrating stunned larger enemies with your weapon while they're on the ground.
No dashes, no suicide escape moves. Instead, you might get frustrated, especially at later stages, when you need to wiggle around the corner pixels to pass a bridge or didn't manage to jump over a gap again.
Even though Irem put in great effort to please the player's eyes with their design, they don't really want to do much with it. It feels to me there wasn't a story concept behind the wide variety of enemy characters and I didn't see much connection to the landscape as well, other than one instance you wade through water as you defeat sea creatures.
The music, for the most part, might have also been used in a Shmup, but didn't generate the desired atmosphere for a fantasy game, like the grandiose Golden Axe score for example. The few voice samples thrown in don't help either as the protagonists surely aren't as barbaric as the caveman grunts imply.
Blade Master appears to be like just another skin for a generic thieving machine that puts you on test how long you want to explore the beautiful but boring battle ballet before you're totally broke. It's missing gameplay ideas and atmosphere so today it's hardly one of those admittedly imbecilic applications to play with a buddy while chatting about the good old days.
But it really should be and I'd even expect Irem to have been capable of the extra effort. There's a fascination to how touch and go it is, that thin line dividing Blade Master from being a genre classic by feeding delicacies for one and unseasoned rice for another course of the same menu.
Actually, the concluding confrontation with the worm-women illustrates that quite well. They're designed like they could give you all the genre sweetening T&A aesthetics, but their anatomy just has the T and instead of the expected A, there's an enormous appendix incessantly penalizing the player.
2021
Another promising game on my decades long journey through the realms of point'n'clicks was Encodya. Though I instantly liked nanny robot Sam's design, of course, as his features have hints of a gorilla or rather the mecha gorilla in the Kaiju eiga King Kong Escapes, I wasn't too sure about character design overall. It just reminded me too much of the contemporary deformations quite often recognized in the lower price range of digital game stores, where Encodya, despite its initial asking price, ended up swiftly for me to pick up.
In a section of countless Unity games, Encodya being one of them, the titles often are targeting too well, so browsing for the biggest discount percentage often is the only option to make way through countless offers on search for a potential gem. This time, I had the game marked when it was released to Nintendo's Switch, but mixed reviews could not convince me to pay more than a few Cents when the PC version dropped drastically. It had to wait a little on my pile of shame anyway, but after such a satisfying genre title like Return to Monkey Island, there was room for this experiment.
I might even have been encouraged by Ron Gilbert's next big hit, as so many people discredited him in advance and I must admit that I didn't have much doubt, but definitely thought I'd have to get used to the new graphic style, that turned out to be just wonderfully carrying a more grown up perspective on the franchise. So I really wanted to open up to a game like Encodya and give it all the chances to surprise me.
It actually was astonishing to read a disclaimer before Encodya even started. It confused me a little as use of stereotypes sure is questionable, but if they're really bad, then you avoid them. Or you rock them to underline your statement of course, but then it should be clear enough that it doesn't need an explanation. Sadly it's not the last occasion to make me scratch my head.
First off, I appreciate this Kickstarter backed production at least was unleashed as an edition to pass a percentage to charity, so if you decided to go all in early on, then you at least did something good. Sure, I'm totally in line with that a product should cost what it's worth, but after avoiding financial risks in development I think a digital release does need a good reason to cost as much as the new Monkey Island for instance.
And here's the elephant in the room. Even though Chaosmonger suggest knowing the size of footsteps they're following by having a retro computer store clerk wearing a three-headed monkey on his t-shirt, it doesn't turn out they understood the quality of those classics. Even the excessive pixel hunting in Encodya's hard mode could be rather an accidental revival than a nod to the excessive moon logic exploits Sierra had been notorious for and most of us are quite happy have ceased existing in newer games making them a lot more comfortable.
Luckily, I just thought to have found a way to get stuck, but the solution was always hidden in the background somehow. If you hated spotting that small worm in Discworld for example, you should definitely play easy mode with hot spot highlights and hint system, just like modern point'n'clicks usually feature anyway. Having chosen the iron route, I can only imagine the help taking away most of Encodya's challenge though, but hard mode on the other hand didn't feel like featuring a significant bonus.
From the first awakening on a rooftop over Neo-Berlin the main tasks for 9-year old orphan Tina and robot Sam are teaming up to process lists, sadly. As a tutorial it's actually quite functional to have a roll of daily supplies to find, but then it gets dull over time, especially when to check one item off the protocol the only puzzle is to finish another to-do list first.
Encodya is a very bare bone view on point'n'click adventures and it really emphasizes the impression a basic scenario was merged with random nerd references by drag and drop without elaborating a proper story or an idea how to guide the player through the game via interaction - to the extent an obvious action might have to be triggered through dialogue before it can finally be executed.
It's all about wasting screens to get the protagonists from A to B to C to A, whilst the few possible interactions aren't really rewarding, so I even stopped my usual exploring and testing combinations routine completely and rarely used the "look at" command. Encodya is sort of the antithesis of Jan Müller-Michaelis' brilliant Edna & Harvey, part of his thesis on non-linear gaming, that has a phrase in store for each and everything the player could think of.
Despite Encodya plays very well just using a mouse with every required function, it ends up being a mess, when it comes to creating an internal logic. You might accidentally find random items hidden on screen, but when you start looking for them there won't be any, just so that when you thought it was a one off, you suddenly are required to hunt down pixels for almost everything. Once you thought they hit rock bottom, you will have to look for initials in a faulty phone book or remember dates to pass, though the game didn't exactly teach you to keep track of those details before.
Whilst background designs of dystopian Neo-Berlin are actually quite pleasant, the town doesn't exactly appear crowded. Not judging on design choices, though one of the pedestrians is looking like a green army man, thus standing out like a glitch, the few passerbys often cut through the protagonists just as Tina tends to hide her face in Sam's mechanical buttocks.
Also massively playing Arceus and Scarlet, I should be able to live with that, if they just didn't waste time on details like putting an Amiga computer or a floppy into Encodya just as they must have had been asking twens for inevitable references on Twitter, so they could cheer you up naming the Konami code or remind you of Darude's Sandstorm during gameplay without any actual relation to it. Hurray!
What would match an arsenal of relics any lootbox subscription casualty gets indoctrinated as the epitome of nerd culture better than bashing Trump? This might have had a lot more relevance during production and still required an amalgamation with Hitler to legitimate the personified evil presence of Neo-Berlin's Mayor Rumpf, a German word for body or hull, that could also be translated to trunk btw., whilst Rumpf in German wouldn't pronounce as close to Trump as an American accent would allow. A good illustration of the sloppy precision in the making of Encodya, superficially eyeballing tropes as close enough.
The randomness of Asian elements in cyberpunk is actually one of the better references and as a German Encodya possibly made me understand the lack of insight to cultural reality a lot better. Neo-Berlin neither felt as a logical spawn to the Germany I know, nor did it feel like capturing political criticism beyond the level of a pub discussion. Instead, Encodya does a great job in building a world on raising more questions.
I get, that Rumpf uses cyberspace to distract citizens, who cannot disturb his plans when roaming the city like zombies. The more tragical Tina's mother passed as a side-effect of her participation in cyber-activities. During research, we learn that Tina also had a father, whose background crosses with other characters from the story. On the few occasions like when browsing corporate data though we're limited with the excuse of not having enough time, so we can't read deeper into the background optionally.
Instead, the puzzles rather try to distract us from the missing substance of a scenario that could have been played out like Luke Skywalker's heroic journey in the world of Blade Runner and Neuromancer. But maybe Chaosmonger misunderstood the tendency towards an ellipsis and lack of storytelling capabilities of George Lucas as the charme of Star Wars and with the childish angle Encodya turns out to be more like young Anakin within Ready Player One.
This still could have led to a finale of cyberpunk extravaganza, but cyberspace rather appears as an excuse to present simple forest structures for further pixel hunting, avoiding more details about Neo-Berlin other than Tina's father's plans to make the world a more peaceful place. Rumpf attacking this virtual reality is indeed able to increase the thrill, but without real answers up the sleeve ends up being simply dissatisfying.
A lot of these decisions could probably have been avoided by taking the time and having externals looking over it. This could especially be crucial to the success of independent game developers trying to stand out in sharp relief to big companies actually establishing the release of unfinished applications.
With Sam's humor being one of the more positive aspects of the hit and miss voice acting, I would have loved better elaborated dialogues not only playing with cliches, but also increasing the intrinsic motivation to explore the game and help where help is needed, instead of freeing an imprisoned character for the sole reason of a reward put in promise. This could have been a surprise gift solving the puzzle just as well, but with stronger relevance.
Just as I might have spent this time way better with a meta analysis of Return to Monkey Island, I'm rather writing this critique to help you decide if you really want to throw well earned currency after Encodya, preventing you from wasting time and money, whilst you might read a review containing spoilers after the game, so you would already know all the layers Ron Gilbert has to offer, settling off with instant nostalgia based on the campfire tales of those who actually had the experience.
I know, those experiences are taking off as purely individual romanticism parting from the original product, so your impression of genre classics like the Lucas Arts adventures can be entirely different from mine. I wouldn't argue that much, if Encodya was indeed adequate in a sense of presenting processed thoughts I could at least comprehend and appreciate.
What we don't need in the 2020s though is another uninspired cast of the genre, regurgitating phrases thought as fan service as if it were a Disney production. Especially if they don't have the funds to blind us graphically to the fact the game wasn't that brilliant in the first place.
Despite my rant it's not really that Encodya is the worst game ever, it's the addition of missed opportunities to make it stand out as good or even exceptional. As much the blunt puzzles are nerve wracking, it's neither enjoyable from a camp or kitsch point of view, nor would I really categorize it as trash. It's really just upsettingly underdeveloped.
In a section of countless Unity games, Encodya being one of them, the titles often are targeting too well, so browsing for the biggest discount percentage often is the only option to make way through countless offers on search for a potential gem. This time, I had the game marked when it was released to Nintendo's Switch, but mixed reviews could not convince me to pay more than a few Cents when the PC version dropped drastically. It had to wait a little on my pile of shame anyway, but after such a satisfying genre title like Return to Monkey Island, there was room for this experiment.
I might even have been encouraged by Ron Gilbert's next big hit, as so many people discredited him in advance and I must admit that I didn't have much doubt, but definitely thought I'd have to get used to the new graphic style, that turned out to be just wonderfully carrying a more grown up perspective on the franchise. So I really wanted to open up to a game like Encodya and give it all the chances to surprise me.
It actually was astonishing to read a disclaimer before Encodya even started. It confused me a little as use of stereotypes sure is questionable, but if they're really bad, then you avoid them. Or you rock them to underline your statement of course, but then it should be clear enough that it doesn't need an explanation. Sadly it's not the last occasion to make me scratch my head.
First off, I appreciate this Kickstarter backed production at least was unleashed as an edition to pass a percentage to charity, so if you decided to go all in early on, then you at least did something good. Sure, I'm totally in line with that a product should cost what it's worth, but after avoiding financial risks in development I think a digital release does need a good reason to cost as much as the new Monkey Island for instance.
And here's the elephant in the room. Even though Chaosmonger suggest knowing the size of footsteps they're following by having a retro computer store clerk wearing a three-headed monkey on his t-shirt, it doesn't turn out they understood the quality of those classics. Even the excessive pixel hunting in Encodya's hard mode could be rather an accidental revival than a nod to the excessive moon logic exploits Sierra had been notorious for and most of us are quite happy have ceased existing in newer games making them a lot more comfortable.
Luckily, I just thought to have found a way to get stuck, but the solution was always hidden in the background somehow. If you hated spotting that small worm in Discworld for example, you should definitely play easy mode with hot spot highlights and hint system, just like modern point'n'clicks usually feature anyway. Having chosen the iron route, I can only imagine the help taking away most of Encodya's challenge though, but hard mode on the other hand didn't feel like featuring a significant bonus.
From the first awakening on a rooftop over Neo-Berlin the main tasks for 9-year old orphan Tina and robot Sam are teaming up to process lists, sadly. As a tutorial it's actually quite functional to have a roll of daily supplies to find, but then it gets dull over time, especially when to check one item off the protocol the only puzzle is to finish another to-do list first.
Encodya is a very bare bone view on point'n'click adventures and it really emphasizes the impression a basic scenario was merged with random nerd references by drag and drop without elaborating a proper story or an idea how to guide the player through the game via interaction - to the extent an obvious action might have to be triggered through dialogue before it can finally be executed.
It's all about wasting screens to get the protagonists from A to B to C to A, whilst the few possible interactions aren't really rewarding, so I even stopped my usual exploring and testing combinations routine completely and rarely used the "look at" command. Encodya is sort of the antithesis of Jan Müller-Michaelis' brilliant Edna & Harvey, part of his thesis on non-linear gaming, that has a phrase in store for each and everything the player could think of.
Despite Encodya plays very well just using a mouse with every required function, it ends up being a mess, when it comes to creating an internal logic. You might accidentally find random items hidden on screen, but when you start looking for them there won't be any, just so that when you thought it was a one off, you suddenly are required to hunt down pixels for almost everything. Once you thought they hit rock bottom, you will have to look for initials in a faulty phone book or remember dates to pass, though the game didn't exactly teach you to keep track of those details before.
Whilst background designs of dystopian Neo-Berlin are actually quite pleasant, the town doesn't exactly appear crowded. Not judging on design choices, though one of the pedestrians is looking like a green army man, thus standing out like a glitch, the few passerbys often cut through the protagonists just as Tina tends to hide her face in Sam's mechanical buttocks.
Also massively playing Arceus and Scarlet, I should be able to live with that, if they just didn't waste time on details like putting an Amiga computer or a floppy into Encodya just as they must have had been asking twens for inevitable references on Twitter, so they could cheer you up naming the Konami code or remind you of Darude's Sandstorm during gameplay without any actual relation to it. Hurray!
What would match an arsenal of relics any lootbox subscription casualty gets indoctrinated as the epitome of nerd culture better than bashing Trump? This might have had a lot more relevance during production and still required an amalgamation with Hitler to legitimate the personified evil presence of Neo-Berlin's Mayor Rumpf, a German word for body or hull, that could also be translated to trunk btw., whilst Rumpf in German wouldn't pronounce as close to Trump as an American accent would allow. A good illustration of the sloppy precision in the making of Encodya, superficially eyeballing tropes as close enough.
The randomness of Asian elements in cyberpunk is actually one of the better references and as a German Encodya possibly made me understand the lack of insight to cultural reality a lot better. Neo-Berlin neither felt as a logical spawn to the Germany I know, nor did it feel like capturing political criticism beyond the level of a pub discussion. Instead, Encodya does a great job in building a world on raising more questions.
I get, that Rumpf uses cyberspace to distract citizens, who cannot disturb his plans when roaming the city like zombies. The more tragical Tina's mother passed as a side-effect of her participation in cyber-activities. During research, we learn that Tina also had a father, whose background crosses with other characters from the story. On the few occasions like when browsing corporate data though we're limited with the excuse of not having enough time, so we can't read deeper into the background optionally.
Instead, the puzzles rather try to distract us from the missing substance of a scenario that could have been played out like Luke Skywalker's heroic journey in the world of Blade Runner and Neuromancer. But maybe Chaosmonger misunderstood the tendency towards an ellipsis and lack of storytelling capabilities of George Lucas as the charme of Star Wars and with the childish angle Encodya turns out to be more like young Anakin within Ready Player One.
This still could have led to a finale of cyberpunk extravaganza, but cyberspace rather appears as an excuse to present simple forest structures for further pixel hunting, avoiding more details about Neo-Berlin other than Tina's father's plans to make the world a more peaceful place. Rumpf attacking this virtual reality is indeed able to increase the thrill, but without real answers up the sleeve ends up being simply dissatisfying.
A lot of these decisions could probably have been avoided by taking the time and having externals looking over it. This could especially be crucial to the success of independent game developers trying to stand out in sharp relief to big companies actually establishing the release of unfinished applications.
With Sam's humor being one of the more positive aspects of the hit and miss voice acting, I would have loved better elaborated dialogues not only playing with cliches, but also increasing the intrinsic motivation to explore the game and help where help is needed, instead of freeing an imprisoned character for the sole reason of a reward put in promise. This could have been a surprise gift solving the puzzle just as well, but with stronger relevance.
Just as I might have spent this time way better with a meta analysis of Return to Monkey Island, I'm rather writing this critique to help you decide if you really want to throw well earned currency after Encodya, preventing you from wasting time and money, whilst you might read a review containing spoilers after the game, so you would already know all the layers Ron Gilbert has to offer, settling off with instant nostalgia based on the campfire tales of those who actually had the experience.
I know, those experiences are taking off as purely individual romanticism parting from the original product, so your impression of genre classics like the Lucas Arts adventures can be entirely different from mine. I wouldn't argue that much, if Encodya was indeed adequate in a sense of presenting processed thoughts I could at least comprehend and appreciate.
What we don't need in the 2020s though is another uninspired cast of the genre, regurgitating phrases thought as fan service as if it were a Disney production. Especially if they don't have the funds to blind us graphically to the fact the game wasn't that brilliant in the first place.
Despite my rant it's not really that Encodya is the worst game ever, it's the addition of missed opportunities to make it stand out as good or even exceptional. As much the blunt puzzles are nerve wracking, it's neither enjoyable from a camp or kitsch point of view, nor would I really categorize it as trash. It's really just upsettingly underdeveloped.
You might have nostalgia glasses for Sam & Max Hit the Road, that I simply don't have. But hear me out. The game's alright. It just has some flaws you might not have noticed as much back then.
Sam & Max Hit the Road was released, when I almost exclusively played on SNES. My Amiga days were over and only few friends had a PC where we rarely played, as we just started to see them as gaming machines with Doom, which we discovered in 1994, even though it came out by the end of 1993, the same year Sam & Max hit the shelves, but also Day of the Tentacle. Guess which one was the point'n'click we spent our time with, having warmed up quite a large number of hamsters for Edna before.
Times had been different. I bought 2-4 console magazines a month, but no PC related press. Occasional internet use just started around 1996/1997 for me and even that was at the youth centre or a friend's place. Online resources had potential and changed a lot, but life just wasn't focused around them.
So instead of today, when you abandon a game easily, because the next one is available as swiftly as your next encounter on Tinder, if you played a title like Sam & Max Hit the Road, it probably had a whole different impact and with a narrower selection, you stuck with it differently, just like we enjoyed a random rental tape for details only noticable, because we watched it over and over with friends and family to get our money's worth out of it.
If you couldn't read up on a program, find it at the store or hear word of mouth on the schoolyard, games didn't exist and if there even wasn't a hotline for it, which there weren't as many in Germany as there have been overseas, you might have been lost at something like Sam & Max Hit the Road forever. Often the challenge rather would be how far you'd come this time instead of even thinking about finishing and you might just run around and try out stuff for days.
See, I know all that, I've been there when it happened. But I also just developed a ring for the names Sam & Max over the years, because I noticed them in Lucas Arts ludographies. Little did I know Steve Purcell, brought in the company to work on the cover art of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, got handed over the Sam & Max characters for his birthday after he constantly mocked his kid brother's drawings by writing sarcastic, often self-referencing balloons.
I had no idea Purcell developed the anthropomorphic private investigators Sam & Max further to be released in the college newsletter years before he got to publish his first Sam & Max comic book in 1987. Not having even known Lucas Arts had a printed newsletter back in the day, also the Sam & Max presence on those pages passed my attention naturally.
Apparently Steve Purcell snuck in Sam & Max to internal testing platforms, so the dog and rabbit became an in-house staple, paving a way to follow his comic strips with a full adventure game and with increased attention a cartoon show in the later nineties up until he received an Eisner award for the then revived franchise in 2007. Ignorant me missed all of that.
In conclusion I could at least play Sam & Max Hit the Road with the same knowledge I would have back in 1993. And here the problem begins, I think. We get thrown into the story with a rudimentary introduction of the two characters as a private investigator grotesque. They crash a crime scene, beat the villain and leave the victim unreleased.
I have a heart for film noir and hard boiled detectives, but I also can't stand some of the comedic adaptations. The 1987 movie Dragnet quickly came to mind and I feared I could hate Sam & Max Hit the Road just as much for its absurd decisions. After all, humor is a very individual thing, but loving the Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island franchises, I wanted to trust Lucas Arts for their trademarks.
As I played Sam & Max in its German dub, just as I would have back in the day, I even watched an English walkthrough afterwards just to make sure the German voice for Bart Simpson as Max didn't distract me too much. I still have mixed feelings about the dialogue, but in its day it sure was exceptional to have a fully voiced game, simply shown by the fact Sam & Max Hit the Road still was released on floppy disk in an undubbed version along with the dubbed CD ROM for MS-DOS.
Starting at a worn down office, the setting has potential even for me with my doubts. Sam & Max seem to be a good team with the rabbit bringing in hilarious absurdity the way he retrieves an order from a cat just after handling a guy hanging from a stair railing, playing the hyperactive comic relief to the composed wittiness of the fedora sporting wolfhound.
What Sam & Max Hit the Road lack though is an engaging development instead of just being sequences of cartoonish events even the protagonists show little enthusiasm for. It sure is the gritty humor emerging from the eighties underground to become famous with kids in the nineties, but as much I might have just grown out of it, the game just uses American tourist traps as backdrops for a shallow parody instead of presenting a motivation to draw in the player.
Sam & Max Hit the Road is starting to refine the Scumm engine by incorporating icons rather than text menus, but despite being an improvement to concentrate on the graphical surface, it's also rather clumsy than comfortably intuitive in retrospect. Instead of the Curse of Monkey Island dial we often see today, we need to click through a larger number of commands with the right mouse button and the use of items seems ponderous.
Controlling binoculars for example is not very self explanatory, even after consulting the handbook and a guide. One item to get them running doesn't behave like others, as you can pick it up, but not put them in the inventory. Once you set up the binoculars correctly, you're supposed to control the turning by clicking left or right. What's not said is you have to do that on a switch, not just on the image like you might have thought.
In a featurette about the franchise, the creators have reacted looking back at some puzzles like finding the mood ring as they might have just wanted to fuck up people with it, but I think that still had the typical internal logic of Lucas Arts adventures of the time. Those things just have to be absurdly weird to satisfy the player once solved and as far-fetched some occasions are, I think it's not even a shame to seek help here and there, if the overall experience makes up for it.
What fucked me up a lot more was in situations like when I clearly wanted to enter an elevator and Sam comments on it one should rather "use" it. Having read up on Sam & Max history I now understand it matches the mocking kid humor the franchise spawned from, but it doesn't change that sometimes being too picky on what command to use for a simple movement action interrupts the game's flow.
In a balanced combination of trying things until I got stuck too long and reading up hints to help me speed up the process of roaming around cluelessly until I finally manage to find a solution by accident, I barely needed five and a half hours to finish. Compared to a rather short The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road still simply doesn't feel at the same epic proportions due to its comic strip nature, but we might also have to factor in that additional effort for complete voice dubs had been new to the industry.
On the other hand, please count in the only exposure I had to the elements of American culture Sam & Max Hit the Road parodies was through media, for the plot offered the time I spent was fairly enough. In the end there's probably a limitation on what you could draw from a Yeti missing from a Hall of Oddities and Sam & Max seems to have maxed that out quite well.
The inclusion of minigames on the other hand could be taken as evidence the creators knew how little they had in store just as much as assuming their overflow in creativity. I see it as a nice gesture to offer something that is playable should you not get any further, just as much as it is good you only really have to play the quite entertaining Wak-a-Rat to receive an item. Being able to shoot R2-D2 in the credits is a bonus, but I couldn't care less for most of the minigames, maybe except for the battleships adaption, which was fun for a one off.
Basically I ended on a note like: "Ok, I played it now." And that may be worse for Sam & Max Hit the Road than hating it for whatever reasons. As I said, there are a lot of factors for it to have been intriguing at its time and I can totally understand if you remember it that way, but the reception of art and media is always part of a personal journey and this time, I might have entered the boat too late to enjoy the ride enough to be interested for more. Not only that games are technically designed better these days, the presentation of edgy jokes just isn't enough for me.
For its time, meaning the resolution isn't the highest, Sam & Max Hit the Road uses beautifully drawn backdrop and character designs, but as intentional sloppy a game like Edna & Harvey looks, though it is clearly inspired by the Maniac Mansion Franchise and Sam & Max, it is so much more elaborated when it comes to guiding the player through its puzzles, whilst simultaneously allowing for more freedom of exploring.
Even though I tend to be nostalgic myself as much as I agree on unreasonable nostalgia criticized by The Return to Monkey Island validated by the backlash its announcement produced before anybody had seen more than a few snippets, I like to return to most old games despite their flaws for the familiarity with the characters and the adventure we've already been through. Playing old games often is trying to recapture a memory, but dismantling transfiguration in the end.
So if you haven't played Sam & Max Hit the Road at all, it might not be your first choice if you're not playing the Lucas Arts games chronologically or have enjoyed enough old point'n'click adventures recently to have an idea how to categorize the game.
If you loved Sam & Max back in the day and you enjoy newer point'n'clicks, you might want to think twice if it's not better to remember it as you do. You might have grown out of it and might be used to more comfortable gameplay.
As a newbie, I can appreciate its values from a historical position, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked to. Sam & Max Hit the Road didn't age too well and simultaneously I progressed out of the target group it seems. It just wasn't meant to be, but it's ok.
Sam & Max Hit the Road was released, when I almost exclusively played on SNES. My Amiga days were over and only few friends had a PC where we rarely played, as we just started to see them as gaming machines with Doom, which we discovered in 1994, even though it came out by the end of 1993, the same year Sam & Max hit the shelves, but also Day of the Tentacle. Guess which one was the point'n'click we spent our time with, having warmed up quite a large number of hamsters for Edna before.
Times had been different. I bought 2-4 console magazines a month, but no PC related press. Occasional internet use just started around 1996/1997 for me and even that was at the youth centre or a friend's place. Online resources had potential and changed a lot, but life just wasn't focused around them.
So instead of today, when you abandon a game easily, because the next one is available as swiftly as your next encounter on Tinder, if you played a title like Sam & Max Hit the Road, it probably had a whole different impact and with a narrower selection, you stuck with it differently, just like we enjoyed a random rental tape for details only noticable, because we watched it over and over with friends and family to get our money's worth out of it.
If you couldn't read up on a program, find it at the store or hear word of mouth on the schoolyard, games didn't exist and if there even wasn't a hotline for it, which there weren't as many in Germany as there have been overseas, you might have been lost at something like Sam & Max Hit the Road forever. Often the challenge rather would be how far you'd come this time instead of even thinking about finishing and you might just run around and try out stuff for days.
See, I know all that, I've been there when it happened. But I also just developed a ring for the names Sam & Max over the years, because I noticed them in Lucas Arts ludographies. Little did I know Steve Purcell, brought in the company to work on the cover art of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, got handed over the Sam & Max characters for his birthday after he constantly mocked his kid brother's drawings by writing sarcastic, often self-referencing balloons.
I had no idea Purcell developed the anthropomorphic private investigators Sam & Max further to be released in the college newsletter years before he got to publish his first Sam & Max comic book in 1987. Not having even known Lucas Arts had a printed newsletter back in the day, also the Sam & Max presence on those pages passed my attention naturally.
Apparently Steve Purcell snuck in Sam & Max to internal testing platforms, so the dog and rabbit became an in-house staple, paving a way to follow his comic strips with a full adventure game and with increased attention a cartoon show in the later nineties up until he received an Eisner award for the then revived franchise in 2007. Ignorant me missed all of that.
In conclusion I could at least play Sam & Max Hit the Road with the same knowledge I would have back in 1993. And here the problem begins, I think. We get thrown into the story with a rudimentary introduction of the two characters as a private investigator grotesque. They crash a crime scene, beat the villain and leave the victim unreleased.
I have a heart for film noir and hard boiled detectives, but I also can't stand some of the comedic adaptations. The 1987 movie Dragnet quickly came to mind and I feared I could hate Sam & Max Hit the Road just as much for its absurd decisions. After all, humor is a very individual thing, but loving the Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island franchises, I wanted to trust Lucas Arts for their trademarks.
As I played Sam & Max in its German dub, just as I would have back in the day, I even watched an English walkthrough afterwards just to make sure the German voice for Bart Simpson as Max didn't distract me too much. I still have mixed feelings about the dialogue, but in its day it sure was exceptional to have a fully voiced game, simply shown by the fact Sam & Max Hit the Road still was released on floppy disk in an undubbed version along with the dubbed CD ROM for MS-DOS.
Starting at a worn down office, the setting has potential even for me with my doubts. Sam & Max seem to be a good team with the rabbit bringing in hilarious absurdity the way he retrieves an order from a cat just after handling a guy hanging from a stair railing, playing the hyperactive comic relief to the composed wittiness of the fedora sporting wolfhound.
What Sam & Max Hit the Road lack though is an engaging development instead of just being sequences of cartoonish events even the protagonists show little enthusiasm for. It sure is the gritty humor emerging from the eighties underground to become famous with kids in the nineties, but as much I might have just grown out of it, the game just uses American tourist traps as backdrops for a shallow parody instead of presenting a motivation to draw in the player.
Sam & Max Hit the Road is starting to refine the Scumm engine by incorporating icons rather than text menus, but despite being an improvement to concentrate on the graphical surface, it's also rather clumsy than comfortably intuitive in retrospect. Instead of the Curse of Monkey Island dial we often see today, we need to click through a larger number of commands with the right mouse button and the use of items seems ponderous.
Controlling binoculars for example is not very self explanatory, even after consulting the handbook and a guide. One item to get them running doesn't behave like others, as you can pick it up, but not put them in the inventory. Once you set up the binoculars correctly, you're supposed to control the turning by clicking left or right. What's not said is you have to do that on a switch, not just on the image like you might have thought.
In a featurette about the franchise, the creators have reacted looking back at some puzzles like finding the mood ring as they might have just wanted to fuck up people with it, but I think that still had the typical internal logic of Lucas Arts adventures of the time. Those things just have to be absurdly weird to satisfy the player once solved and as far-fetched some occasions are, I think it's not even a shame to seek help here and there, if the overall experience makes up for it.
What fucked me up a lot more was in situations like when I clearly wanted to enter an elevator and Sam comments on it one should rather "use" it. Having read up on Sam & Max history I now understand it matches the mocking kid humor the franchise spawned from, but it doesn't change that sometimes being too picky on what command to use for a simple movement action interrupts the game's flow.
In a balanced combination of trying things until I got stuck too long and reading up hints to help me speed up the process of roaming around cluelessly until I finally manage to find a solution by accident, I barely needed five and a half hours to finish. Compared to a rather short The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road still simply doesn't feel at the same epic proportions due to its comic strip nature, but we might also have to factor in that additional effort for complete voice dubs had been new to the industry.
On the other hand, please count in the only exposure I had to the elements of American culture Sam & Max Hit the Road parodies was through media, for the plot offered the time I spent was fairly enough. In the end there's probably a limitation on what you could draw from a Yeti missing from a Hall of Oddities and Sam & Max seems to have maxed that out quite well.
The inclusion of minigames on the other hand could be taken as evidence the creators knew how little they had in store just as much as assuming their overflow in creativity. I see it as a nice gesture to offer something that is playable should you not get any further, just as much as it is good you only really have to play the quite entertaining Wak-a-Rat to receive an item. Being able to shoot R2-D2 in the credits is a bonus, but I couldn't care less for most of the minigames, maybe except for the battleships adaption, which was fun for a one off.
Basically I ended on a note like: "Ok, I played it now." And that may be worse for Sam & Max Hit the Road than hating it for whatever reasons. As I said, there are a lot of factors for it to have been intriguing at its time and I can totally understand if you remember it that way, but the reception of art and media is always part of a personal journey and this time, I might have entered the boat too late to enjoy the ride enough to be interested for more. Not only that games are technically designed better these days, the presentation of edgy jokes just isn't enough for me.
For its time, meaning the resolution isn't the highest, Sam & Max Hit the Road uses beautifully drawn backdrop and character designs, but as intentional sloppy a game like Edna & Harvey looks, though it is clearly inspired by the Maniac Mansion Franchise and Sam & Max, it is so much more elaborated when it comes to guiding the player through its puzzles, whilst simultaneously allowing for more freedom of exploring.
Even though I tend to be nostalgic myself as much as I agree on unreasonable nostalgia criticized by The Return to Monkey Island validated by the backlash its announcement produced before anybody had seen more than a few snippets, I like to return to most old games despite their flaws for the familiarity with the characters and the adventure we've already been through. Playing old games often is trying to recapture a memory, but dismantling transfiguration in the end.
So if you haven't played Sam & Max Hit the Road at all, it might not be your first choice if you're not playing the Lucas Arts games chronologically or have enjoyed enough old point'n'click adventures recently to have an idea how to categorize the game.
If you loved Sam & Max back in the day and you enjoy newer point'n'clicks, you might want to think twice if it's not better to remember it as you do. You might have grown out of it and might be used to more comfortable gameplay.
As a newbie, I can appreciate its values from a historical position, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked to. Sam & Max Hit the Road didn't age too well and simultaneously I progressed out of the target group it seems. It just wasn't meant to be, but it's ok.
2017
Video games have evolved since they've just been simple arcade novelties, simulations of ping pong or trying to shoot random objects, but Lydia has nothing to do with the realms of highly elaborated AAA productions. Instead, it's part of an independent movement, experimenting with what else those programs can actually accomplish and being on a shoestring budget can lead to swerve to new forms of creativity.
Technically, Lydia isn't really worth mentioning. Shadowy scribbled b/w drawings complement mumbled, but subtitled, dialogues to mostly a visual novel. You can sometimes pick the type of your answer or sluggishly roam the screen to basically fall into the next conversation. There is no real option it seems and no challenging puzzle.
Instead, the vestigial participation supports caring for Lydia, a kid lost in the somber void of a deranged family. The chapters jump a little back and forth in time to barely create more than a superficial Rorschach representation of imaginative escapism and facing bitter actuality, yet it is maybe even easier to relate that way.
Every family has its dysfunctionalities and if you managed to grow up with the smallest collateral damage, then you at least witnessed enough comparable scenes at friend's houses or on the playground. Lydia on the other hand presents an hour of downfall to fill you with sustaining consternation for a reason.
In addition to this little game you have the option to buy the #Lydiadonation DLC, that will unlock a coloring book for Lydia and raise funds for charity. I keep it like this is true, as I can't confirm, but after games rather got abused for commercials or promoting an agenda for years, I think the intention of doing something good is refreshing. As an interactive storybook with a similar theme though I'd recommend Little Misfortune instead.
Technically, Lydia isn't really worth mentioning. Shadowy scribbled b/w drawings complement mumbled, but subtitled, dialogues to mostly a visual novel. You can sometimes pick the type of your answer or sluggishly roam the screen to basically fall into the next conversation. There is no real option it seems and no challenging puzzle.
Instead, the vestigial participation supports caring for Lydia, a kid lost in the somber void of a deranged family. The chapters jump a little back and forth in time to barely create more than a superficial Rorschach representation of imaginative escapism and facing bitter actuality, yet it is maybe even easier to relate that way.
Every family has its dysfunctionalities and if you managed to grow up with the smallest collateral damage, then you at least witnessed enough comparable scenes at friend's houses or on the playground. Lydia on the other hand presents an hour of downfall to fill you with sustaining consternation for a reason.
In addition to this little game you have the option to buy the #Lydiadonation DLC, that will unlock a coloring book for Lydia and raise funds for charity. I keep it like this is true, as I can't confirm, but after games rather got abused for commercials or promoting an agenda for years, I think the intention of doing something good is refreshing. As an interactive storybook with a similar theme though I'd recommend Little Misfortune instead.
2020
I really appreciate Stilstand as a piece of art. It's about an hour of hatched panels interrupted by small minigames like a Flappy Bird adaptation and it's about the depression, anxiety and loneliness of a woman in Copenhagen.
In a way, I can relate to this stasis, reducing life to few controllable rituals, whilst outside is like a torrent passing by too quickly to keep up. In general it's probably something that needs to be addressed, as it's happening everywhere around us and it's challenging for the affected to escape that maelstrom.
The bitter taste left by Stilstand though is, that involvement of the player is rather an excuse, as there's no difference to the animation or story, if you click a single highlighted area or anywhere else to proceed, if you move the arm to drink and smoke or let it just happen or if you start with one or another of three outfits, when you go through all of them anyway.
I couldn't make any change by picking other dialogue options as well. Stilstand always ends up the same.
Now, it's possible that it's quite a reasonable representation of helplessness with depressed people, as they're not just sad and can't just cheer up, like some might like them to. Maybe just like with the visual novel Lydia the rudimentary interaction is rather meant to integrate the player emotionally than keeping you awake. Stilstand will sure keep you up with ruminative thoughts.
I'm just not sure the game brought me any further. It's literally Stilstand. I didn't learn much from it, that I didn't know and there was no positive release or advice to work from. As a depiction of the problem Stilstand might actually be insightful to the uninitiated and maybe for some it's a nice signal they're not alone or they might be able to paraphrase shown symptoms to break their circle, but if not offering more interactive perspectives like in One Night Stand for instance, I would at least have expected a little encouragement.
It's possible I'm mixing up artist and artisan, because as a work of art in its sheer existence Stilstand is not in question. But on a gaming platform, like the Nintendo Switch in my case, a program should also be measured by its functionality.
In a way, I can relate to this stasis, reducing life to few controllable rituals, whilst outside is like a torrent passing by too quickly to keep up. In general it's probably something that needs to be addressed, as it's happening everywhere around us and it's challenging for the affected to escape that maelstrom.
The bitter taste left by Stilstand though is, that involvement of the player is rather an excuse, as there's no difference to the animation or story, if you click a single highlighted area or anywhere else to proceed, if you move the arm to drink and smoke or let it just happen or if you start with one or another of three outfits, when you go through all of them anyway.
I couldn't make any change by picking other dialogue options as well. Stilstand always ends up the same.
Now, it's possible that it's quite a reasonable representation of helplessness with depressed people, as they're not just sad and can't just cheer up, like some might like them to. Maybe just like with the visual novel Lydia the rudimentary interaction is rather meant to integrate the player emotionally than keeping you awake. Stilstand will sure keep you up with ruminative thoughts.
I'm just not sure the game brought me any further. It's literally Stilstand. I didn't learn much from it, that I didn't know and there was no positive release or advice to work from. As a depiction of the problem Stilstand might actually be insightful to the uninitiated and maybe for some it's a nice signal they're not alone or they might be able to paraphrase shown symptoms to break their circle, but if not offering more interactive perspectives like in One Night Stand for instance, I would at least have expected a little encouragement.
It's possible I'm mixing up artist and artisan, because as a work of art in its sheer existence Stilstand is not in question. But on a gaming platform, like the Nintendo Switch in my case, a program should also be measured by its functionality.
1988
I have a heart for arcade oddities that never got a port for home consoles. Being a weird brawler/shmup mashup with rather decent large sprites for 1988, Taito's Superman sure falls into that category.
Back then, I remember, having bought a couple of Superman comic books, so I would probably have played the game as well, should I've been stumbling over it. It was my orientation phase for American superheroes after European and Disney comics and sadly the newsstands in the German countryside only offered a few examples, which also had to do with how those books had been distributed over here.
Anyway, it sure wasn't the best time to grow up on the Man of Steel and complemented by the Spider-Man cartoon show, the webslinger soon became my favorite series instead. Sups on the other hand, don't know if there is really a majority of fans for the late eighties books, had gone downhill from the rather decent Richard Donner movie to some of the rushed fails of Cannon, who broke our small hearts as well with Masters of the Universe in 1987.
The nineties would have something different in store. Manga, Image comics or even real underground splatter comics had been a lot more interesting to my adolescent self than the Lois & Clark soap opera, so please excuse Superman never continued playing a role in my life, especially after discovering Batman through Tim Burton, whose retro-futuristic design framed me to look for somber sides of the eighties Dark Knight and The Killing Joke became one of my most beloved graphic novels.
Decades later, I sure have no memory left for any contemporary Superman characters, but I remember the movie theme Taito used extensively here. The odd inverted color Superman for player 2 isn't canon, I suppose. The creators also decided on a weird gameplay crossover, maybe forgivable in context with the Man of Steel exclusively, because Superman can actually do these things.
1988 isn't exactly the peak for brawlers either. You'd rather still have found run and gun games of varying quality or platformers with sometimes astonishingly wicked physics. Just remember how you've been practically standing in the air to get a jump in Nastar done.
I can only surmise for that reason it might have been less of a surprise at the time, when you realize by pressing up you rise into the air instead of being forced to walk down the alley like you would in any ordinary brawler. You still could do that. In fact to unlock some of the few power up items you also have to destroy objects based on the ground, but as the enemies can fly, you should too.
Whilst you don't use a jump button, the two triggers are punch and kick for both the horizontal ground and the usually following vertical flying passage. But then suddenly Superman speeds up in the air, horizontally again, being able to punch and shoot laser beams. You better use it, as meteorites and missiles are rushing towards you. In higher levels different obstacles are added.
It's a game play's fever dream actually. One moment it's Asteroids and a war game at the same time, then you're dodging boss fire like in R-Type, just that it lacks variable weaponry. In fact, you can only collect some life up, a single projectile shot you don't have to charge for, or a nuke. It might have been a little better, had I known from the beginning you can as well charge a shot by holding punch. I was too busy blasting two finger triplets on the fire button instead.
Just from the looks Superman might have been released in 1991 and still wouldn't have stood out negatively too much. I could also very well imagine though it could have been easily ported to the Amiga 500 and even more so the Sega Mega Drive, allowing for use of both action buttons.
Both systems had enough programs being just as redundant in enemy design and the quite linear formations shouldn't have been much of an issue either. It's possible the license just didn't allow it, as sometimes it feels like arcade producers of the late eighties didn't expect much from a home console port and so they went for just the one option.
Superman though also isn't an exception from typical arcade mechanics, throwing stuff at you in a way to obviously make sure you have to keep feeding coins to the machine. In this case especially enemies catching you in a spider's web or simply clinging to you can be a huge pain in the ass.
As innovative as Superman seems to be at first sight, the novelty shine wears off quickly and the 30-45 minutes playtime is the absolute maximum you'd want to invest. Taito actually gave a good impression of how little was made from the franchise's potential at the time in general, even though it has its moments and might still be the best Superman arcade game ever produced.
They were clearly looking for something different. It might even just have been a year or two too early to come up with a concept like that. The shmup part, gameplay that was well established since the mid 80ies, actually works better than the brawling part, a genre whose epitome was emerging between 1989 and 1991, in my opinion.
Having received rather mixed than good reviews, Superman is quoted to be amongst the most successful machines in Japan for at least a month and so it might have raised some attention with its fresh composition of elements. I find it a little hard to appreciate the game from a contemporary perspective as so much happened in-between. There are so many games I'd prefer to Superman, though it still fascinates me for what it did.
Back then, I remember, having bought a couple of Superman comic books, so I would probably have played the game as well, should I've been stumbling over it. It was my orientation phase for American superheroes after European and Disney comics and sadly the newsstands in the German countryside only offered a few examples, which also had to do with how those books had been distributed over here.
Anyway, it sure wasn't the best time to grow up on the Man of Steel and complemented by the Spider-Man cartoon show, the webslinger soon became my favorite series instead. Sups on the other hand, don't know if there is really a majority of fans for the late eighties books, had gone downhill from the rather decent Richard Donner movie to some of the rushed fails of Cannon, who broke our small hearts as well with Masters of the Universe in 1987.
The nineties would have something different in store. Manga, Image comics or even real underground splatter comics had been a lot more interesting to my adolescent self than the Lois & Clark soap opera, so please excuse Superman never continued playing a role in my life, especially after discovering Batman through Tim Burton, whose retro-futuristic design framed me to look for somber sides of the eighties Dark Knight and The Killing Joke became one of my most beloved graphic novels.
Decades later, I sure have no memory left for any contemporary Superman characters, but I remember the movie theme Taito used extensively here. The odd inverted color Superman for player 2 isn't canon, I suppose. The creators also decided on a weird gameplay crossover, maybe forgivable in context with the Man of Steel exclusively, because Superman can actually do these things.
1988 isn't exactly the peak for brawlers either. You'd rather still have found run and gun games of varying quality or platformers with sometimes astonishingly wicked physics. Just remember how you've been practically standing in the air to get a jump in Nastar done.
I can only surmise for that reason it might have been less of a surprise at the time, when you realize by pressing up you rise into the air instead of being forced to walk down the alley like you would in any ordinary brawler. You still could do that. In fact to unlock some of the few power up items you also have to destroy objects based on the ground, but as the enemies can fly, you should too.
Whilst you don't use a jump button, the two triggers are punch and kick for both the horizontal ground and the usually following vertical flying passage. But then suddenly Superman speeds up in the air, horizontally again, being able to punch and shoot laser beams. You better use it, as meteorites and missiles are rushing towards you. In higher levels different obstacles are added.
It's a game play's fever dream actually. One moment it's Asteroids and a war game at the same time, then you're dodging boss fire like in R-Type, just that it lacks variable weaponry. In fact, you can only collect some life up, a single projectile shot you don't have to charge for, or a nuke. It might have been a little better, had I known from the beginning you can as well charge a shot by holding punch. I was too busy blasting two finger triplets on the fire button instead.
Just from the looks Superman might have been released in 1991 and still wouldn't have stood out negatively too much. I could also very well imagine though it could have been easily ported to the Amiga 500 and even more so the Sega Mega Drive, allowing for use of both action buttons.
Both systems had enough programs being just as redundant in enemy design and the quite linear formations shouldn't have been much of an issue either. It's possible the license just didn't allow it, as sometimes it feels like arcade producers of the late eighties didn't expect much from a home console port and so they went for just the one option.
Superman though also isn't an exception from typical arcade mechanics, throwing stuff at you in a way to obviously make sure you have to keep feeding coins to the machine. In this case especially enemies catching you in a spider's web or simply clinging to you can be a huge pain in the ass.
As innovative as Superman seems to be at first sight, the novelty shine wears off quickly and the 30-45 minutes playtime is the absolute maximum you'd want to invest. Taito actually gave a good impression of how little was made from the franchise's potential at the time in general, even though it has its moments and might still be the best Superman arcade game ever produced.
They were clearly looking for something different. It might even just have been a year or two too early to come up with a concept like that. The shmup part, gameplay that was well established since the mid 80ies, actually works better than the brawling part, a genre whose epitome was emerging between 1989 and 1991, in my opinion.
Having received rather mixed than good reviews, Superman is quoted to be amongst the most successful machines in Japan for at least a month and so it might have raised some attention with its fresh composition of elements. I find it a little hard to appreciate the game from a contemporary perspective as so much happened in-between. There are so many games I'd prefer to Superman, though it still fascinates me for what it did.
1990
Konami was one of the major video game developers in the eighties and nineties, but a prosperity in amaranthines is usually backed by mediocre titles to fill up the roster. A workhorse in the case of Konami would possibly be seen as a runner in other circumstances, but that didn't prevent them from the occasional odd decision.
I mean, yeah, just as on other games like R-Type back in 1987, H.R.Giger's designs had a significant influence on Contra, so Konami probably liked Aliens, but licensing a movie four years after its release?
I admit, things had been going slower in the eighties. It took quite a while for motion pictures to be distributed internationally and availability of rental tapes was a snail operation. You then often had to wait more than a year until you could actually buy the VHS finally and catching something on TV took ages till it happened. The target group probably was just discovering the movies and meanwhile, the Alien franchise was kept alive in pop culture by the Dark Horse comic books.
One thing though caught my attention, as I was previously researching on Konami's 1992 X-Men Beat'em'up, that somehow was peculiar, too. Marvel had its ups and downs at the time and despite action figures have played a role in their survival, there firstly was a quite popular X-Men cartoon shortly after the brawler got released, though it had nothing in common with the game.
In fact, the brawler was based upon the pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men that didn't convince enough with another baffling choice, the use of designs from a more successful X-Men era around 1980. Probably the writing wasn't the best either. But was it just a cheap license for Konami back then, or did they forecast the X-Men heralding a new era?
Filming for Alien³ finally started in January 1991, after several drafts had been pitched since 1987. Konami could have actually speculated on the revival and echo. If you experienced Batmania around 89/90, you knew movies could still have an impact of enormous proportions and it was then, when Konami's business with western licenses such as Turtles, Simpsons, G.I. Joe or Asterix flourished.
But why then was the game released a whole year before the new movie even was shot? Was there enough anticipation to be exploited before a possible Alien³ license game came out? Did Konami intend to apply for a follow up license or was that already gone to Probe for development of home versions? With Sega's rail shooter Alien³: The Gun hitting the arcades not earlier than 1993, there might have still been an open slot. I rarely have so many unanswered questions about a game.
But back to Aliens. After a few not so noteworthy adaptations on home computers, none other than Square had obtained an Aliens sublicense from Activision to program Aliens: Alien 2 for the MSX in 1987. So there was an actual Run and Gun game before, that kinda stayed true to the movie.
Well, you were clearing areas filled with roaming Facehuggers, Chestbursters and Warriors with the Queen as boss for each stage. Some victims had been woven in the background and some Xenomorph heads and bodies were attached to the walls.
Konami built upon that, loosely adapting the patterns with their formidably matching routines of corridors, shafts, sewers and the random elevator of course. Though digitized images from the movie set the mood as an intro, they supposedly didn't license the actor likenesses for Ripley (player 1) and Hicks (player 2).
We immediately notice one major difference to the Square version, as the characters don't jump, which is realistic, due to the large rifle, but plays counter intuitively within the genre. This sure is neither the next Contra nor your average brawler. You have one action button for a standing and another for a crouched shot.
As you need the hunkered position for the feebles, but will also hit most large critters with it, it is more likely you keep walking stages firing like an epileptic crab, which indeed plays as awkward as it sounds. Also for boss patterns it is therefore more relaxing to team up, just as games like Aliens are intended for.
Konami have made a few additions that I'd like to focus on following the exposition. Aliens was a change for the franchise as it wasn't suspenseful survival inspired by movies like The Thing From Another World, Forbidden World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space or Planet of the Vampires anymore. After we've seen the threat, the theme could easily be transferred into dark eighties action horror. A perfect scenario for a shooter.
But do you remember 1990? Things had been intense primary or neon colors back then, heavy metal has drifted away from being evil and most horror films were comedies. R-Rated movie franchises like Rambo or Robocop had branched out as cartoons aimed at children.
Kenner, known for their Star Wars toys, had already tried to follow the success with the Alien brand in 1979, though it remained a short-lived experiment due to massive resistance against those horror creatures. But we know today that in 1992, Aliens returned to become their next top seller for a couple of waves.
Remember I was mentioning that canceled X-Men show? Well, Kenner came up with the idea to promote their Alien toys as a multimedia brand named Operation: Aliens. Whilst few products got in circulation, the planned cartoon under the same moniker got dumped under mysterious circumstances.
You can speculate it had something to do with the wild production history of Alien³ the line was supposed to complement. Another reason might be Fox thought of the concept as too gruesome, especially after a renewed act for children's TV, that was affecting marketing strategies as well.
The fascinating point is, that we don't know the role Konami played between all that, as their Aliens game seemingly precedes that schedule by roughly two years.
Konami and Kenner, the latter then decided to still release the toys under the Aliens banner, had been facing the same problem: The Alien beastiary at the time was quite limited. So just as Kenner decided to imaginatively create Xenomorphs in motley images of the former lifeform they infested, Konami brought in new organism variants.
Though stage boss designs merged with video game tropes, especially other minions got mocked for their supposedly non-canonical appearance. I'd argue that ideas have been nicked from other Post-Alien media like Carpenter's The Thing, so that a spider, a gargoyle or a zombie can be seen as genre typical embellishment.
The more interesting question to me is, was it just Konami hitting Zeitgeist or was there an actual interaction between creators? Was the more colorful approach a well of ideas to Kenner in the end?
Despite the cinematic ending, Konami's Aliens is otherwise to me nothing but light entertainment within a genre I like and based on a franchise I love. It's good for half an hour of fun every other year, especially accompanied by a good friend.
In my opinion though you're lucky finding a machine based on the Japanese version, that compared to the US cabinet isn't only having the more accurate color palette, but also appears more balanced by omitting the unwieldy vertical vehicle passage.
If it wasn't for the franchise then that version would have to be compared to the contemporary Alien Storm, whose Shinobi inspired cross hairs passages might be from a more static position, but still turns out as the more dynamic (and playable) alternative.
Direct competition might just as well have been a reason Aliens hadn't been unleashed to the Mega Drive, though it could have been released for the SNES that first became available by the end of November 1990 in Japan. On the other hand, Konami had to prioritize their own franchises as well, starting with Gradius III, and as far as I remember Nintendo still limited releases to keep a higher level of quality either.
Based upon those factors Konami might have even decided to only license the movie rights for a one off not to be adapted on other platforms. Before mentioned X-Men is another one of those odd licenses maintaining exclusivity to the arcades, that got challenged by the increasing technical quality of home consoles of course.
On the other hand, Aliens isn't exactly the game I would have picked to be amongst the five or six titles I could afford in a year as a kid. Maybe it's just perfect the way it went. Between a few hidden gems and the classics available on numerous compilations anyway, we still need a couple of programs at recent arcades or video game museums, that we can enjoy without regrets about that we can't really take them home.
As most players will not rush through on a single credit at first try, but the motivation for constant replays isn't all that high in my opinion, Aliens might actually be one of the machines you could be able to quickly set a new high score at your local arcade. That's one more reason to waste some change on a not more than decent license game, whose selling points aren't too strong individually, but add up to compensate for its deficiencies.
I mean, yeah, just as on other games like R-Type back in 1987, H.R.Giger's designs had a significant influence on Contra, so Konami probably liked Aliens, but licensing a movie four years after its release?
I admit, things had been going slower in the eighties. It took quite a while for motion pictures to be distributed internationally and availability of rental tapes was a snail operation. You then often had to wait more than a year until you could actually buy the VHS finally and catching something on TV took ages till it happened. The target group probably was just discovering the movies and meanwhile, the Alien franchise was kept alive in pop culture by the Dark Horse comic books.
One thing though caught my attention, as I was previously researching on Konami's 1992 X-Men Beat'em'up, that somehow was peculiar, too. Marvel had its ups and downs at the time and despite action figures have played a role in their survival, there firstly was a quite popular X-Men cartoon shortly after the brawler got released, though it had nothing in common with the game.
In fact, the brawler was based upon the pilot X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men that didn't convince enough with another baffling choice, the use of designs from a more successful X-Men era around 1980. Probably the writing wasn't the best either. But was it just a cheap license for Konami back then, or did they forecast the X-Men heralding a new era?
Filming for Alien³ finally started in January 1991, after several drafts had been pitched since 1987. Konami could have actually speculated on the revival and echo. If you experienced Batmania around 89/90, you knew movies could still have an impact of enormous proportions and it was then, when Konami's business with western licenses such as Turtles, Simpsons, G.I. Joe or Asterix flourished.
But why then was the game released a whole year before the new movie even was shot? Was there enough anticipation to be exploited before a possible Alien³ license game came out? Did Konami intend to apply for a follow up license or was that already gone to Probe for development of home versions? With Sega's rail shooter Alien³: The Gun hitting the arcades not earlier than 1993, there might have still been an open slot. I rarely have so many unanswered questions about a game.
But back to Aliens. After a few not so noteworthy adaptations on home computers, none other than Square had obtained an Aliens sublicense from Activision to program Aliens: Alien 2 for the MSX in 1987. So there was an actual Run and Gun game before, that kinda stayed true to the movie.
Well, you were clearing areas filled with roaming Facehuggers, Chestbursters and Warriors with the Queen as boss for each stage. Some victims had been woven in the background and some Xenomorph heads and bodies were attached to the walls.
Konami built upon that, loosely adapting the patterns with their formidably matching routines of corridors, shafts, sewers and the random elevator of course. Though digitized images from the movie set the mood as an intro, they supposedly didn't license the actor likenesses for Ripley (player 1) and Hicks (player 2).
We immediately notice one major difference to the Square version, as the characters don't jump, which is realistic, due to the large rifle, but plays counter intuitively within the genre. This sure is neither the next Contra nor your average brawler. You have one action button for a standing and another for a crouched shot.
As you need the hunkered position for the feebles, but will also hit most large critters with it, it is more likely you keep walking stages firing like an epileptic crab, which indeed plays as awkward as it sounds. Also for boss patterns it is therefore more relaxing to team up, just as games like Aliens are intended for.
Konami have made a few additions that I'd like to focus on following the exposition. Aliens was a change for the franchise as it wasn't suspenseful survival inspired by movies like The Thing From Another World, Forbidden World, It! The Terror From Beyond Space or Planet of the Vampires anymore. After we've seen the threat, the theme could easily be transferred into dark eighties action horror. A perfect scenario for a shooter.
But do you remember 1990? Things had been intense primary or neon colors back then, heavy metal has drifted away from being evil and most horror films were comedies. R-Rated movie franchises like Rambo or Robocop had branched out as cartoons aimed at children.
Kenner, known for their Star Wars toys, had already tried to follow the success with the Alien brand in 1979, though it remained a short-lived experiment due to massive resistance against those horror creatures. But we know today that in 1992, Aliens returned to become their next top seller for a couple of waves.
Remember I was mentioning that canceled X-Men show? Well, Kenner came up with the idea to promote their Alien toys as a multimedia brand named Operation: Aliens. Whilst few products got in circulation, the planned cartoon under the same moniker got dumped under mysterious circumstances.
You can speculate it had something to do with the wild production history of Alien³ the line was supposed to complement. Another reason might be Fox thought of the concept as too gruesome, especially after a renewed act for children's TV, that was affecting marketing strategies as well.
The fascinating point is, that we don't know the role Konami played between all that, as their Aliens game seemingly precedes that schedule by roughly two years.
Konami and Kenner, the latter then decided to still release the toys under the Aliens banner, had been facing the same problem: The Alien beastiary at the time was quite limited. So just as Kenner decided to imaginatively create Xenomorphs in motley images of the former lifeform they infested, Konami brought in new organism variants.
Though stage boss designs merged with video game tropes, especially other minions got mocked for their supposedly non-canonical appearance. I'd argue that ideas have been nicked from other Post-Alien media like Carpenter's The Thing, so that a spider, a gargoyle or a zombie can be seen as genre typical embellishment.
The more interesting question to me is, was it just Konami hitting Zeitgeist or was there an actual interaction between creators? Was the more colorful approach a well of ideas to Kenner in the end?
Despite the cinematic ending, Konami's Aliens is otherwise to me nothing but light entertainment within a genre I like and based on a franchise I love. It's good for half an hour of fun every other year, especially accompanied by a good friend.
In my opinion though you're lucky finding a machine based on the Japanese version, that compared to the US cabinet isn't only having the more accurate color palette, but also appears more balanced by omitting the unwieldy vertical vehicle passage.
If it wasn't for the franchise then that version would have to be compared to the contemporary Alien Storm, whose Shinobi inspired cross hairs passages might be from a more static position, but still turns out as the more dynamic (and playable) alternative.
Direct competition might just as well have been a reason Aliens hadn't been unleashed to the Mega Drive, though it could have been released for the SNES that first became available by the end of November 1990 in Japan. On the other hand, Konami had to prioritize their own franchises as well, starting with Gradius III, and as far as I remember Nintendo still limited releases to keep a higher level of quality either.
Based upon those factors Konami might have even decided to only license the movie rights for a one off not to be adapted on other platforms. Before mentioned X-Men is another one of those odd licenses maintaining exclusivity to the arcades, that got challenged by the increasing technical quality of home consoles of course.
On the other hand, Aliens isn't exactly the game I would have picked to be amongst the five or six titles I could afford in a year as a kid. Maybe it's just perfect the way it went. Between a few hidden gems and the classics available on numerous compilations anyway, we still need a couple of programs at recent arcades or video game museums, that we can enjoy without regrets about that we can't really take them home.
As most players will not rush through on a single credit at first try, but the motivation for constant replays isn't all that high in my opinion, Aliens might actually be one of the machines you could be able to quickly set a new high score at your local arcade. That's one more reason to waste some change on a not more than decent license game, whose selling points aren't too strong individually, but add up to compensate for its deficiencies.
1997
You know the drill. The arcade is crowded, but there's one vacant machine banned to a remote corner. It's just another vertical Shmup, one like many. This one is called Stagger I or Red Hawk. It might be named anything else. Who really cares?
The characters look like drawings from an eighties bootleg game, but the attract mode shows some adequate gameplay. Why not waste some change on that one?
Once familiar with the charge blast things get easier. Stagger I is not exactly bullet hell, but nonetheless requires a fair amount of dodging abilities for sure. You have a chance to memorize opponent behavior as there's not much variability, but the game will also try to fuck you up at moderate occasions. As long as you feed the machine, it will let you pick up at the exact same spot, though.
Your shot patterns are different depending on the character you pick, just like the three bombs you shouldn't hold back and go wasted as you die. You're not about to 1cc Stagger I the first instant, though it was fairly easy to finish on a budget, even for me, returning to the genre after a long hiatus from mostly horizontals like R-Type or Darius.
With my sporadic encounters at arcades and some retro collections plus my recent catching up on vertical Shmups I won't be able to tell you what pioneers exactly inspired each and every detail of Stagger I, but I can tell you quite sincerely, Afega, who appear like spezializing on Korean knock offs on first sight, ungracefully nicked a fair share of tropes and good mechanics to combine them in a game that ain't really convincing or special.
The digitized crew pictures in the credit sequence kinda underline this impression, screaming Agefa had not at all been on par with the industry, rather acting on a stale level of at least five years too late. But even that didn't prevent me from rushing into a second playthrough of Stagger I right after the first one.
Once you have collected enough power ups to rely on satellites backing you up and your shots are filling the screen to clear what a possible second player would have helped you out with, Stagger I is actually not the big deal except for the more resilient enemies. The more saddening it is, should you make a mistake and have to build again from the beginning.
Of course the futuristic military theme is nothing groundbreaking and the score hits a spot between catchy and nerve wracking, but in that introductory scenario of Stagger I or nothing, I wouldn't expect genre aficionados to be completely disappointed and casuals might not even notice in retrospect it's only a substitute. There are worse ways to spend 25 minutes, like figuring out why the hell they thought we needed cut scenes of picking up oil after every stage.
The characters look like drawings from an eighties bootleg game, but the attract mode shows some adequate gameplay. Why not waste some change on that one?
Once familiar with the charge blast things get easier. Stagger I is not exactly bullet hell, but nonetheless requires a fair amount of dodging abilities for sure. You have a chance to memorize opponent behavior as there's not much variability, but the game will also try to fuck you up at moderate occasions. As long as you feed the machine, it will let you pick up at the exact same spot, though.
Your shot patterns are different depending on the character you pick, just like the three bombs you shouldn't hold back and go wasted as you die. You're not about to 1cc Stagger I the first instant, though it was fairly easy to finish on a budget, even for me, returning to the genre after a long hiatus from mostly horizontals like R-Type or Darius.
With my sporadic encounters at arcades and some retro collections plus my recent catching up on vertical Shmups I won't be able to tell you what pioneers exactly inspired each and every detail of Stagger I, but I can tell you quite sincerely, Afega, who appear like spezializing on Korean knock offs on first sight, ungracefully nicked a fair share of tropes and good mechanics to combine them in a game that ain't really convincing or special.
The digitized crew pictures in the credit sequence kinda underline this impression, screaming Agefa had not at all been on par with the industry, rather acting on a stale level of at least five years too late. But even that didn't prevent me from rushing into a second playthrough of Stagger I right after the first one.
Once you have collected enough power ups to rely on satellites backing you up and your shots are filling the screen to clear what a possible second player would have helped you out with, Stagger I is actually not the big deal except for the more resilient enemies. The more saddening it is, should you make a mistake and have to build again from the beginning.
Of course the futuristic military theme is nothing groundbreaking and the score hits a spot between catchy and nerve wracking, but in that introductory scenario of Stagger I or nothing, I wouldn't expect genre aficionados to be completely disappointed and casuals might not even notice in retrospect it's only a substitute. There are worse ways to spend 25 minutes, like figuring out why the hell they thought we needed cut scenes of picking up oil after every stage.
1995
So I don't know Japanese or Pachinko, but I was curious how that's like, cause it has quite similar origins to Pinball. Anyway, there's that gambling hall in Pachinko Challenger and the machines seem to incorporate slot mechanics here. I started with 5000 balls and managed to make over 51k out of them. Could play any machine just once, but didn't try all cause they're all the same it seems. The guy at the stairs let me pass to the next floor but the first machine with its different design sucked thousands from me and I realized I almost spent two hours watching flickering stuff that doesn't make much sense to me, so I quit. I'm probably more the hold em guy when it comes to gambling. This is very passive, even though you can control the intensity of how balls are pushed into the machine. Then they just hit stuff on their way down, hopefully increasing your score represented by your stock of balls. Could be more fun should it have deeper RPG elements, but since I can't read what the other characters are saying, it doesn't add to the experience. I'm wondering why the hall is that empty anyway. Those places seem to be packed in Japan travel videos on YouTube. The two different kinds of machines I played don't look bad though simplistic, but aren't at all as fascinating as a Pinball table can be. If there is a similar attraction in Pachinko, the game failed at transporting that via the simulation. If there's something else Pachinko Challenger offers I totally missed that due to language problems. I would have kept this crude comment part of my log, but as this is rather special interest it might be the only piece of information ever posted on these pages and I doubt you want to put in the effort to change that. But if you do, I'd like to learn what I might have not understood.
1992
When I recently reviewed Irem's rather disappointing Blade Master, I was thinking Hack'n'Slash or Brawlers in general might just not be their thing. Well, with Undercover Cops it turns out that might actually be the case.
Sure, I had expectations, due to the information the Undercover Cops score had been physically released and there had been two Manga issues dedicated to the Beat'em'up as well. You don't see that too often!
Having read Undercover Cops is Streets of Rage vs. Metal Slug wasn't the best introduction either, to be truthfully honest. There is a point in that description, but it's nothing like at least I would have imagined that at all.
It is true, depending on the cabinet, up to two or three players can pick amongst three more or less futuristic law enforcers with random two lines of backstory and it so happens two are male and one is female. And it's a generic Brawler, so it must be declared as Streets of Rage, right?
The team behind Undercover Cops is supposed to have moved on to form Nazca and made Metal Slug. I wouldn't say you see that directly in the art style, because here you don't have the comical cute characters, but the colors actually are from a quite similar palette.
With all the small animals to pick up and especially the vehicles of Undercover Cops you wouldn't necessarily say it's the same world as in Metal Slug, but looking back you kinda see sort of a handwriting. It's just a whole different blueprint.
I wouldn't compare Undercover Cops too much with Blade Master as well, by the way, because the Hack'n'slash, even though you are fighting monsters rather than human enemies in both, was rooting in that Sword and Sorcery aesthetics enough to make it enjoyable for its designs. Details that get lost a lot in the muted, earthy tones of Undercover Cops.
It's true this palette sets the Brawler apart from most of its contemporary rivals and may the remote spray of blood not really make a huge impact, some stages are almost an ossuary with plentiful skeletons and swarms of ravens just there to set the mood. A huge pot of blood stew might have been the most horror you would have been able to get out of a Beat'em'up of its day.
The problem is this doesn't make a game. Undercover Cops uses one button for jump, one for attack and as often pressing the two results in an escape or rescue super move, the kind that draws from your life bar. You can dash or dash attack, which can be helpful at times. Nothing really astonishing.
The reason Brawler aficionados return to those games is a miracle on its own. There seems to be a fascination about getting into the zone, beating along with the score's rhythm, taking an elevator or two and not wasting too many credits. Those games are most pleasant in co-op of course, especially with good friends and maybe playing Undercover Cops on my own was a mistake for exactly that reason.
What Undercover Cops has in common with both Irem games and the Metal Slug it was compared to is being merciless. It begins with not allowing you to approach the enemy from below, so your attacks would more likely hit before you're getting smacked. Keeping the opponents under control is difficult in general.
We are used to face multiple doubles of enemy characters in a Brawler, but Undercover Cops is relentless in introducing one type and then either immediately increasing the wave of the same face until you're definitely fucked, or it pushes the quality of the character's attacks first and then throws six and eight more at you.
It doesn't stop there. You think a cyborg with an arm telescoping over half the screen is a bitch, because if you don't immediately throw it down a trash compactor to kill it, it will do exactly that to you? Again and again? Well, congratulations, you will meet that bastard again a couple of times to have him throw you into the abyss from a helicopter and as you'd instantly lose a life then, you better use your rescue move.
You might want to call that challenging, but this, despite surprises like a screen filling carpet attack from the off, is the basic principle of Undercover Cops. So it may be fun to pick up complete pillars and i-beams as weapons, if all that the game does is swarming you more and more, obviously with the intention to collect your money for more credits, I don't think it's really satisfying.
You might miss to stop the bomb by a simple attack along the way on your first playthrough and realize you could only trigger the bad ending like I did. I don't know how encouraging this would be, if you didn't notice what you did wrong and there was no internet to research, but after my second beating of the game I can tell you it's more like calming my OCD than it was enough of a difference to legitimate another twenty or so credits (luckily played on a flatrate).
By the way, I've played the Undercover Cops Alpha Renewal Version and having compared it to excerpts from both the regular World and Japanese versions I don't think any of them would be worse or more fun than the other. It's basically the same bland game without enough modification (if at all) to make one version more special than the other. I'd especially have replaced the almost loungy score completely to complement the action instead of toning it down.
It's totally possible it's just not for me or maybe I'm just not good enough to find joy in Undercover Cops. I mean, there must be a reason others gave it five stars, right? I can just assume how I would have reacted back in the day.
But since before mentioned Streets of Rage had been out, Final Fight anyway, that kinda finally spawned that Beat'em'up mania originating in Double Dragon and the likes, Violent Storm was just about to be released and games like Vendetta offered the comical fun that is so omitted in the somewhat serious Undercover Cops, I just don't see a huge window in that Irem's game would have had a realistic chance with me.
Sure, I had expectations, due to the information the Undercover Cops score had been physically released and there had been two Manga issues dedicated to the Beat'em'up as well. You don't see that too often!
Having read Undercover Cops is Streets of Rage vs. Metal Slug wasn't the best introduction either, to be truthfully honest. There is a point in that description, but it's nothing like at least I would have imagined that at all.
It is true, depending on the cabinet, up to two or three players can pick amongst three more or less futuristic law enforcers with random two lines of backstory and it so happens two are male and one is female. And it's a generic Brawler, so it must be declared as Streets of Rage, right?
The team behind Undercover Cops is supposed to have moved on to form Nazca and made Metal Slug. I wouldn't say you see that directly in the art style, because here you don't have the comical cute characters, but the colors actually are from a quite similar palette.
With all the small animals to pick up and especially the vehicles of Undercover Cops you wouldn't necessarily say it's the same world as in Metal Slug, but looking back you kinda see sort of a handwriting. It's just a whole different blueprint.
I wouldn't compare Undercover Cops too much with Blade Master as well, by the way, because the Hack'n'slash, even though you are fighting monsters rather than human enemies in both, was rooting in that Sword and Sorcery aesthetics enough to make it enjoyable for its designs. Details that get lost a lot in the muted, earthy tones of Undercover Cops.
It's true this palette sets the Brawler apart from most of its contemporary rivals and may the remote spray of blood not really make a huge impact, some stages are almost an ossuary with plentiful skeletons and swarms of ravens just there to set the mood. A huge pot of blood stew might have been the most horror you would have been able to get out of a Beat'em'up of its day.
The problem is this doesn't make a game. Undercover Cops uses one button for jump, one for attack and as often pressing the two results in an escape or rescue super move, the kind that draws from your life bar. You can dash or dash attack, which can be helpful at times. Nothing really astonishing.
The reason Brawler aficionados return to those games is a miracle on its own. There seems to be a fascination about getting into the zone, beating along with the score's rhythm, taking an elevator or two and not wasting too many credits. Those games are most pleasant in co-op of course, especially with good friends and maybe playing Undercover Cops on my own was a mistake for exactly that reason.
What Undercover Cops has in common with both Irem games and the Metal Slug it was compared to is being merciless. It begins with not allowing you to approach the enemy from below, so your attacks would more likely hit before you're getting smacked. Keeping the opponents under control is difficult in general.
We are used to face multiple doubles of enemy characters in a Brawler, but Undercover Cops is relentless in introducing one type and then either immediately increasing the wave of the same face until you're definitely fucked, or it pushes the quality of the character's attacks first and then throws six and eight more at you.
It doesn't stop there. You think a cyborg with an arm telescoping over half the screen is a bitch, because if you don't immediately throw it down a trash compactor to kill it, it will do exactly that to you? Again and again? Well, congratulations, you will meet that bastard again a couple of times to have him throw you into the abyss from a helicopter and as you'd instantly lose a life then, you better use your rescue move.
You might want to call that challenging, but this, despite surprises like a screen filling carpet attack from the off, is the basic principle of Undercover Cops. So it may be fun to pick up complete pillars and i-beams as weapons, if all that the game does is swarming you more and more, obviously with the intention to collect your money for more credits, I don't think it's really satisfying.
You might miss to stop the bomb by a simple attack along the way on your first playthrough and realize you could only trigger the bad ending like I did. I don't know how encouraging this would be, if you didn't notice what you did wrong and there was no internet to research, but after my second beating of the game I can tell you it's more like calming my OCD than it was enough of a difference to legitimate another twenty or so credits (luckily played on a flatrate).
By the way, I've played the Undercover Cops Alpha Renewal Version and having compared it to excerpts from both the regular World and Japanese versions I don't think any of them would be worse or more fun than the other. It's basically the same bland game without enough modification (if at all) to make one version more special than the other. I'd especially have replaced the almost loungy score completely to complement the action instead of toning it down.
It's totally possible it's just not for me or maybe I'm just not good enough to find joy in Undercover Cops. I mean, there must be a reason others gave it five stars, right? I can just assume how I would have reacted back in the day.
But since before mentioned Streets of Rage had been out, Final Fight anyway, that kinda finally spawned that Beat'em'up mania originating in Double Dragon and the likes, Violent Storm was just about to be released and games like Vendetta offered the comical fun that is so omitted in the somewhat serious Undercover Cops, I just don't see a huge window in that Irem's game would have had a realistic chance with me.