Well, the idea of pitching this editorial space to other readers didn't work
out too well. Couple this with the greater difficulty that authors have been
having in finding time to contribute articles spells an unfortunate future for
this publication. I always assume that on some level, retrogaming will ALWAYS be
relavent, just as old music and movies will always be relavent to their
respective fields of entertainment.
However, this publication has always clung to its method of presentation.
Some may call it quaint, and others may call it antiquated. The fact is, with
blogs, wikis, and other Web 2.0 methods of presentation available, just about
anyone can carve their own little version Retrogaming Times Monthly into the
web. And that really brings RTM's relavence into question somewhat. Is RTM still
relavent in today's ever expanding and exploding choice of web pages to choose
from?
When RTM began, the notion of several authors contributing to and compiling
their work in a single space was actually quite novel. Not only was it novel, it
was successful. People could find articles of interest to them in one place
without needing to search all over the web (before Google came around).
Nowadays, people have become so efficient at searching for specific material
that they are interested in researching, and blogs have become a way of life for
many journalists, that RTM doesn't seem to offer anything that can't be provided
or obtained in other ways.
Yet whenever I consider the fate of RTM, I just can't seem to find it within
myself to want to part ways with it just yet. There's one thing that RTM has
that the other more fluid and transient methods of web publishing don't have
(yet). Legacy and permanence. These two aspects bless RTM with a uniqueness that
I have yet to find anywhere else. Just as the saying "newer isn't always better"
applies very well to video games, the same could be said of web publishing
formats. No, we don't have blogs. No, we don't have comments. And let's face it,
it's a small pain in the ass for me to compile all of the authors' work into one
page every month, when clearly there is technology out there that can make
collaboritive projects far more automated and streamlined.
However, when it's all said and done and the issue is complete, and I send it
to Alan to publish live online, there is a level of pride that everyone who
contributed to the issue can feel. This issue, like all the others before it,
will be "etched in stone" so to speak. It will contribute to the nearly 130
issues that every contributing author has helped develop, and which Alan has
lovingly archived for every reader's benefit. For that reason alone, I will help
continue the legacy of RTM, and I can only hope that some of the readers who
have not thought of becoming an author will feel inspired to write their first
article, just as Andrew did this month with his "Who'd Win" article, and become
a part of this legacy. Having said all of that, I hope you enjoy the
issue.
In 1984, the same year that
Technos released the first true strategic fighting game, Irem would release the
first side scrolling beat 'em up ever to hit the arcade. Kung-Fu Master put the
player in the role of Thomas, a master of the title Chinese martial art. Thomas'
girlfriend Sylvia has been kidnapped by Mr. X and he has imprisoned her on the
fifth floor of a pagoda, with a different fighting style master guarding passage
to the next floor. In addition, a detachment of henchmen and obstacles have been
dispersed throughout the pagoda to prevent Thomas from reaching the top. The
game is based on the 1984 Jackie Chan film "Wheels on Meals" (also known
overseas as Spartan X), however the pagoda setting and bosses are elements
incorporated from Bruce Lee's unfinished film "The Game of Death." Kung-Fu
Master did well in the arcade and introduced a genre that would become cemented
with games to come such as Double Dragon, Final Fight, last month's NES'cade
subject Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and countless others right up until present
day.
As Thomas climbs higher the enemies become quicker and more diverse.
Simple henchmen known as Grippers first appear on the first floor but are
present throughout the entire game. They attack in large groups and grab onto
Thomas, draining his energy bar until they are shaken off. The best course of
action is to defeat them with a single kick or hit before they get close enough
to cause damage. Knife Throwers are also present throughout the game and appear
on the first floor. They walk toward Thomas but stop before getting too close.
Once stopped they throw a single knife at a time, either high or low, which must
be ducked under or jumped over respectively. Knife Throwers require two hits to
defeat and will throw additional knives shortly after their first. From the
second floor on, small dwarf fighters known as Tom Toms join the battle which
will sometimes flip up and jump on Thomas' head to cause damage. The second
floor introduces falling objects which must either be destroyed or avoided.
Green pots hit the ground and shatter, allowing a contained snake to be released
that will slither along the ground. The snakes can either be jumped over or
defeated with low level attacks. Red lanterns hang from the ceiling and must be
destroyed before they burst into deadly confetti. Lastly, yellow eggs fall to
the ground and hatch into fire-breathing dragons which temporarily block the way
and can be defeated through conventional means, while avoiding their fiery
breath. As with the second floor, the fourth floor contains special enemies,
this time poisonous moths which fly out of openings on the wall. They can either
be dispatched through normal attacks or avoided all together. Most of the time a
combination of both techniques is the best way for Thomas to make his way passed
them.
The staircase guard at the end of each floor has a unique fighting
style, again paying homage to "The Game of Death." The first floor is guarded by
the Stick Master, based upon the Escrima master from the third floor of the
pagoda in "The Game of Death." Floor two leads to a battle with the Boomerang
Fighter who is a unique character to the game. The third floor features Mr. Big,
based upon The Giant who was played by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the film he was
at the top of the pagoda and fought with an unknown free-flowing style which
represented the highest level of martial arts. The Black Magician waits at the
end of the fourth floor and is able to summon a number of projectiles including
the snakes and dragons from the second floor. At the end of the fifth floor
Thomas finally reaches Mr. X, who fights in the same fluid style as Thomas,
basically his equal. After defeating Mr. X, Sylvia is rescued only to be
captured again as the game restarts with increased difficulty.
Eventually the arcade
original would be ported onto the Nintendo Famicom using the Japanese title of
Spartan X. When the Nintendo Entertainment System hit wide release in the USA,
Spartan X was retitled and released as one of the original "black box" launch
titles, dropping Master from the title and simply becoming Kung-Fu. The NES
hardware was one of the first home game systems that could do the beat 'em up
genre proud with detailed visuals and smooth movement. Kung-Fu is no exception.
The backgrounds have been simplified, opting for solid blue opposed to the
detailed purple walls with red pillars and woodwork as seen in the arcade.
Compared to how the lighter colored sprites tend to look washed out against the
detailed arcade background, I actually like the NES crispness against the solid
blue. As for the sprites themselves, they are nicely detailed and representative
of their arcade counterparts. Sprite colors are slightly reworked, more than
likely due to NES palette limitations but again I think they snap off the
background better colored the way they are on the NES.
The floors follow
the same layout as they should with floors two and four offering the falling
objects and moths as they did originally. Grippers, Knife Throwers and Tom Toms
all behave as they should however I find them easier to wiggle away from here
than in the arcade. Each of the bosses put up a good fight and are faithful
recreations, right down to the laughs they have after defeating Thomas. The
staircases aren't anywhere as detailed but considering the NES version lends
itself to more of a straight on viewpoint instead of a slightly isomeric one,
this is quite passable. I do miss the little animation of the door to the
previous level falling down into the floor, blocking access back down that the
arcade had. Aside from the close-up of Thomas reading the note from Mr. X and
the attract screens, the NES version has everything visually and mechanics wise
the arcade does.
Audio is better than the original with the loud battle
cries reworked to be quieter and more appropriate. The notes that loop in the
background as well as the little level introductory and ending tunes are
recreated perfectly. As has been said, the laughing sounds the bosses make if
they defeat Thomas even make it over onto the cartridge, a nice touch. Control
is simple with the directional pad used for movement, the B button for kicks and
the A button for punches. Combinations of directional movement and attack type
result in different attack heights and moves. I've always felt that the over all
control was smoother and more responsive on the NES than in the arcade version,
with quicker feedback. Additionally due to slight perspective differences, the
player has more time to react on the NES as it takes longer for enemies to reach
Thomas. This makes the NES port an all around better game in my opinion as the
player actually has some time to make decisions, rather than just endlessly
twitching back and forth to defeat enemies.
This really is a no-brainer.
Kung-Fu on the NES is a great game, it's a lot of fun if you're looking for a
classic arcade diversion and of all the ports that had come before or after it
stands as my favorite. I feel that while the NES port is scaled down in terms of
graphics, the changes suit the game better and what one is left with is a
tighter package. The visuals feel more memorable and classic on the NES than
they originally did in the arcade. NES owners more than likely have a copy of
this game already or at the very least have played it as it is very common.
However it can sometimes be hard to find as it's a game that doesn't leave
libraries all that often. A sequel to the Famicom version was released under the
title Spartan X 2, however it followed the more conventional beat 'em up formula
and never saw release outside of Japan.
Well, this month's column is a little late
getting into Scott's hands. At the beginning of May, the company I worked for (a
small Internet startup) moved from Foster City (suburb 20 miles away from San
Francisco) to Santa Clara which is in the heart of Silicon Valley. I've had
companies move before, but they were big companies and the employees weren't too
involved with the exception of moving your own stuff. With a startup, you're
involved whether you want to or not. Safe to say, the first two weeks of May
were hectic as my company settled into the new digs. Even after we all settled
into the new place work got busy. I saw Scott's email but it just slipped my
mind and next thing you know it's June! Fortunately, I already knew what I
wanted to talk about this month. Thus, I can do yet another one of my short
turnaround articles.
Last month, I talked about the game
Karateka. As noted last month, Karateka was one of the early martial arts/karate
games and easily one of the most popular games back in the 1980's. However, the
game wasn't perfect. Despite the use of solid graphics and sound (especially for
the Apple II), the amount of moves were a little limited. Also, if you were used
to martial arts movies, you would notice that the original Karateka did not
allow for the use of weapons.
Well, a creative type decided to try and
improve on the original Karateka and created an unofficial sequel called
Karateka II: The Wrath of Dude.
Kareteka II was not a game that could be
played. It was a movie that was created using a 1980's movie production system
called Take-1 (produced by Baudville Software). The movie was so large that it
required both sides of a 5 1/4 Apple II disk.
It's pretty apparent that whoever created
the movie spent a great deal of time on it. The majority of the graphics for the
movie are from the original Karateka. I'm not sure how one would re-use existing
graphics back in the 1980's, but somehow it was done. Given some of the early
splash screens in the movie, someone may have cracked the copy proctection of
the game.
But where this movie shines is in some of the little touches
that differ from the original Karateka. The hero performs some spin kicks in the
air, wields some weapons (spear/boomerang) and there's a lot more blood and guts
spilled during the battles. Given the limitations of Apple II graphics, these
little touches took a lot of time and effort. They were very well
done.
Obviously, the movie looks dated today. But considering it was
created back in the 1980's, the movie holds up fairly well and brought me a few
laughs.
Another month, another slight
tweak in style. This time around: blog style! Yeah, that's the ticket.
These are a little meatier than the earlier entries, but I think it adds
something. So... I hope you enjoy it.
The guide for Aigina no Yogen: From the
Legend of Balubalouk took me a little longer to complete than I had
anticipated. I kind of lost interest in writing about the game about halfway
through because all the walkthrough really consisted of was descriptions of room
after room of largely the same points.
If you've never heard of this
game, don't be surprised at all. It was only released in Japan, and even though
it's pretty much playable by non-Japanese speakers, the gameplay is some of the
most unintuitive around. I'm not sure what inspired the designers, but attacking
the enemies is like a mutated cross between the original Mario Bros. and
Bomberman without the bombs. You see, in order to attack the monsters, you have
to jump up and smash certain platforms with your head. That makes a
bi-directional weapon appear on the platform. Then you have to jump up and stand
in front of the weapon. When an enemy gets in range of where you're standing,
you jump up, triggering the weapon to fire to the left and right. Once you get
the hang of it, it's not that bad. And you will get the hang of it, because you
have to kill 8 or 10 enemies in order to escape from each room. There are other
items that help, but this is how you'll deal with most enemies. Other
less-than-intuitive aspects include the fact that in order to pick up an item,
you must press down while pressing the A button. This one throws a lot of people
because they can't understand why they managed to unlock a treasure chest, but
they can't collect the contents.
A speed run of the game takes only 33
minutes, but there is particularly funny video of a player with a particularly
bad microphone, demonstrating how some people just don't get the game. You can
catch it from this
link.
Mappy-Land seems to have been
an attempt to mix the arcade style gameplay of Mappy (which you can find quite
commonly on many Namco Museum compilations) with the successful contemporary
Super Mario Bros. formula. But it doesn't get the mix quite right.
In
Mappy-Land, the player must collect 6 items from 8 differently themed stages in
4 different worlds. Each world features a different item that Mappy must
collect. This means that one of the more interesting gameplay features from the
arcade is missing. In the original, there were pairs of items, and you could
drastically increase your score by collecting the items in pair order. In
Mappy-Land, one pre-determined item will grant you a 5x multiplier for the
remaining items on the stage, but only if you collect it first.
The
different themes are definitely skewed to a younger crowd... Railroad Town,
Western World, Pirate World, etc. Each theme provides a different object to
utilize in order to attack the gang of cats that are seeking to end Mappy's
quest for happiness. If you can't attack the cats in a particular location, you
can employ one of the four distractions that you can collect throughout the
game. For example, deploying a cat toy will cause the small Meowky cats to dance
around the toy and forget all about Mappy.
Naturally, trampolines are
part of this console only sequel. In addition to moving between platform levels
by bouncing on trampolines, the game also features climbable objects like
ladders and vines, but you'll mostly be dealing with the trampolines. The game
does not allow Mappy to fall to another platform unless Mappy uses a trampoline
to jump off of first.
The biggest challenge of the game is to determine
what alternate methods are required to leave certain stages. Most stages in the
beginning allow you to collect six items and immediately leave. As the game
progresses, you will need to enter buildings to find and collect special items
that are required to exit the stage. The worst way to die is to reach the exit,
only to find out that you can't leave, and you're trapped in by cats. One of the
alternate interiors is a replica of the original Mappy arcade
game.
I'll be honest, the Ikari Warriors guide
isn't exactly finished. And the truth is, I don't really plan to finish it. The
reason? I just refuse to do a walkthrough for that game. And I'm just talking
about the single stage of the arcade version. Forget the NES version and it's
four stages of pure torture.
Did everybody love this game in 1986? Hell
yes. It was raw, it was gritty, it let you fire and walk in totally different
directions. Letters appeared from dead soldiers bodies for no reason, and they
powered you up. Everything exploded; your grenades, the tanks, the turrets, the
gates, and probably a whole bunch of other things I can't remember. You could
run out of bullets but unless you were retarded, you probably didn't. You could
play at the same time as your buddy. Look, you could get inside the tank and run
your enemies over. The tank even TOLD you to get inside. Commando never had that
much power.
But what about today? Do you think you would see this thing
on Xbox Live or the Wii's VC? Not if whoever is in charge of these decisions has
a brain. Now, I know I will get shot for saying that, especially from all the
SNK lovers, but let's face it. This is one extraordinary example of a game that
was beyond hot in it's day, but simply hasn't stood the test of time. And to
make matters worse, most of you will probably remember the NES version, not the
original arcade version.
What went wrong here? Yes, the NES didn't have a
rotary controller, so yes, the NES had to change the control scheme. But forcing
the player to turn through every angle before facing the desired direction was
like putting a "kick me" sign on the back of the player. Everything moved
soooooo sloooooowly. The Atari 7800 version of the game was better, and that's
not something you hear people say every day. (And the Atari 2600 version... what
were they smoking when they green-lighted that project?)
So who was to
blame for that monstrosity of unfortunatude? Not SNK actually. The game was done
by a group called Micronics , the same group responsible for the NES conversion
of Athena, and the abominable Super Pitfall. Now, not all of Micronics works
were terrible. 1942 and Ghost n' Goblins stood the test of time alright, if you
can overlook the cruel difficulty factor that makes beating the game without an
emulator and save states virtually impossible. Thank goodness for that super
quick and easy A, B, B, A continue code they added to Ikari Warriors. If not for
that, I don't think most people would have made it out of the first stage before
realizing that the game wasn't over and they had to do another level. I think
most people turned it off at that point.
Thank goodness Ralf and Clark
have moved on to bigger and better things, like competing in nearly every King
of Fighters tournament for no apparent reason, and guest staring in the latest
Metal Slug games. So if anyone is really still in love with this game, and would
like to write a walkthrough for it, please be my guest. I just can't put myself
through that kind of pain.
Next up is Dragon Ball:
Shenron no Nazo, better known in the United States as Dargon Power. Many
people believe that this was the first Dragon Ball game ever made for a home
console. In fact it is the second. But the first one was an arcade style
vertical shooter made for the Epoch Cassette Vision, a system that you have to
be so Japanese to even remember. So for all intent purposes, it's definitely the
first Dragon Ball game that American players have access to.
Many people
(or at least many Dragon Ball fans) also know that this was one of the only
Dragon Ball games to be released in the United States for many many years, even
though it was horribly localized and transformed into Dragon Power. The "why" in
the decision is fairly obvious; no one in the United States had any clue what
Dragon Ball was in 1987. The "how" is another story. Taking a character like Son
Goku, and making him resemble more of a monkey-boy might make a little sense to
some people, but changing the appearance of Master Roshi from the turtle shell
totting pervert he is to, well, Gandolf the Wizard, was questionable at
best.
(Ironically, Europe got the original game translated into French
and unaltered graphically, but many years later when Dragon Ball had taken
off).
Naturally, quite a bit of censorship took place, which is to be
expected when the Japanese storyline involves bribing old men with a glimpse at
a girl's panties, or touching a girl's chest (shirt on, of course). To prevent
corrupting American children's youth, these bribes were changed to giving the
old man a sandwich (which happened to be the panties graphic turned upside
down), which of course made the whole joke about Bulma asking the shape-shifting
pig Oolong to transform into her and fulfill the bribe make no
sense.
Despite those criticisms, the game is... playable. As an early 80s
license game, it does a surprisingly outstanding job capturing the spirit of the
first set of episodes of the cartoon series. Although a few changes were made to
the story for the sake of motivating the player to get through certain sections,
character portrayals are amazingly accurate, and the graphics capture the
emotions and attitudes that are typical of each personality.
The game
plays a little similar to the Legend of Zelda in terms of the overhead fighting
aspect, but it has a few flaws. The most serious flaw of all is the constantly
depleting life force. Throughout the game, Goku is losing about one unit of
health every two seconds. Normally, he will max out at 150 units, although you
can upgrade to 250 if you choose the best wish for your first of two wish
selections. But this creates a serious problem since you do not receive more
health for completing a stage, which usually concludes with a boss battle (which
is played from the side view perspective), and health restoring items are
presented pretty much randomly.
To make matters worse, normally you can
continue where you left off, except for the last four stages. So if you manage
to make it all the way to the final stage with only a few units of health left,
you are inevitably going to have to repeat the last three stages over again just
to make it back to the end. This has left a ton of players defeated and
unmotivated to continue and beat the game. Emulators and save states can go a
long way to making the game more playable, but it's a shame that you have to
"cheat" in order to enjoy a single play through of the title.
All in all,
the game will only appeal to die hard fans of the series. The official English
translation is riddled with problems, but if you can't read Japanese, you only
have one other choice: a ROM translation that converts the game into English,
albeit just as poorly, if not worse than the official translation, but it does
keep all of the original Dragon Ball references and context.
I know that the Gradius series holds a special
place in peoples' hearts, but Zanac is one of those
underappreciated gems that just has to be written about. I write guides for a
lot of games these days. Some I like, and some I don't. I know that a game is
really good when I push myself to keep adding pages to a guide, and with Zanac
clocking in at 24 pages... yeah, I liked it a lot.
So what is it about
Zanac that makes me think it deserves such a title as the best shmup e ver made
for the NES? Well, first off, let's start with the technology. When the Famicom
was designed, it was engineered to push as many sprites as possible, and support
scrolling to some extent at a hardware level. So any game developer can move
little characters and scroll the background with ease. But what Compile, known
today as one of the most legendary development house of all time, managed to do
with that system was amazing. Bleeding fast scrolling, and tremendous amounts of
moving on-screen sprites. If it weren't for the palette limitations, one might
easily be convinced that the game was made for the Genesis or even the SNES. And
all before November of 1986, when the game was first released for the Famicom
Disk System.
Today, we live in a world of Ikarugas, Triggerheart
Exelicas, and one of my personal favs, Ibara. These games, and even some earlier
efforts like GigaWing 2, Mars Matrix, and DoDonPachi have pushed 2D scrolling
shooters to their artistic limits, far outpacing what the humble NES is capable
of. And yet, in many ways, Zanac still captures the intense spirit of these more
advanced games. In fact, Zanac may outdo some of them in terms of opportunities
and strategy variations.
Let's compare Zanac to Ikaruga. Not exactly
apples to apples, I know, but just for the sake of illustration. Ikaruga is not
really built on the same kind of power-up system that Zanac is. But looking
strictly at the gameplay, you have three essential strategies to employ; stay
mostly white, stay mostly black, or play as a even mix of both, whichever color
best suits the situation. The rest of your brainpower is dedicated to dodging
and surviving. Now look at Zanac.
In addition to the standard guns that
Zanac provides you with, you may also employ one of eight different special
weapons, all of which start out somewhat weak but still have their advantages,
and most of which evolve into tremendous power-house weapons. This provides you
with so many different ways to traverse through the game. You can stick to
Special Weapon 0 and continue to collect Power Chips until you standard weapon
maxes out with the Super Guns. You can level up Special Weapon 6 until you reach
the point where when you fire it, it turns every enemy and bullet into an extra
life and drops you back to Special Weapon 0. You can max out Special Weapon 7
which, even at it's lowest level, rips through enemies and bullets. Or you can
suffer through trying to max out Special Weapon 5 which, as a laser, can rip
through the mini-boss ships, but takes ages to evolve, and sucks in the
process.
Many games that are built around power-up systems (such as
Gradius or R-Type) really make you suffer if you ever build up your power to
extreme levels, and then crash only to lose every bit of it. Zanac is not very
different in this respect, except that it does sort of encourage you to keep
trying. Extra lives are given out in heaps, so even if you lose a life, and you
die five times trying to get back on your feet, you still have a good amount of
lives to continue with. Even at your lowest level, you're still somewhat
powerful enough to deal with what the game throws at you. Speaking of which, the
game has always been praised for its "unique" A.I. and aggression system which
ups the difficult the more aggressively you play. This was done before, way back
in 1983 with Xevious, and it's something that we all take for granted today as
something a game should do.
Zanac is still available today in a couple of
formats, most notably on the Wii VC. However, if you can manage to find a copy
of Zanac X Zanac for the PlayStation (only released in Japan), you'll get a
fully emulated version of the game, plus it's graphically upgraded sequel. The
Guardian Legend for the NES was also loosely tied to Zanac, in that it takes
place in the same universe.
Old Wine in New Bottles: Retrogaming on Modern Hardware
It has been an adventure-filled
six-months or so since my last column for RTM. Amongst my other adventures, I
have acquired a PlayStation 2 console so there is a whole new world of
retrogaming compilations to explore (and review).
The compilation of the
month, therefore is the Sega Genesis Collection for the PS 2. This includes 28
games, most of which were originally released on the Genesis. A few of the
titles (e.g. Golden Axe III, Ristar) are Megadrive games that were never
released in cartridge form in North America.
The collection skews very
heavily towards action games and platformers, but there are a few RPGs -
Phantasy Star II, III, IV, and Sword of Vermillion. The only really glaring
omissions are Sonic and Knuckles (though this title appears in another PS 2
Sonic compilation) and the Shining Force strategy-RPG game. While Genesis sports
games are ubiquitous at thrift shops, thankfully there are none included in this
compilation.
In addition to the games, there is lots of bonus content,
both open and unlockable. For each game, there is a brief history available, as
well as photographs of the original boxes (including Megadrive versions), and
some game-play tips. The unlockable content includes several original Sega
arcade games (including Zaxxon, Tac/Scan, and Future Spy) as well as programmer
interviews (in Japanese, with English subtitles), and a trailer for the (then)
forthcoming Phantasy Star Universe. Most of the content is easily unlocked; some
is a bit more challenging.
I have almost no experience with the original
Genesis, so I have no comment on how accurate the emulation is. All of the
cheats and tricks from the original games still work. Happily the emulator
allows players to save anytime, even in games where there was originally no save
function implemented.
As with many retro compilations, the biggest
weakness is the documentation. While that is not much of an issue for the
simpler games like Golden Axe or Sonic the Hedgehog, it makes the RPGs much more
difficult. Fortunately, all of the original manuals and other documentation can
be found online.
Next month, we will review Midway Arcade Treasures
(volume 1). Feedback on this column is always welcome; special thanks to
everyone who have their sent comments and question. Please send e-mail to
jhd@interbaun.com.
My name is Andrew
Vrba, I'm 29 years old, and I've been gaming since 1984, I'm new here at RTM.
This section called "Who'd Win" is also new! Since this is the first time around
for me, I'm sure this inaugural issue won't have as much polish on it as
sections like "The many faces of...", which is my personal favorite. If you have
any suggestions for this section, feel free to email me at
avrba@centurytel.net
"Who'd win?" is a comparative review of sorts. Each
month I'll pit two similar games from the same time period, usually on the same
system. This month I'll be looking at two of 1983's finest war games. The 2600
home port of Atari's own "Battlezone" vs. Activision's "Robot Tank", also on the
2600.
The sights:
Both of the
games look good, while Robot Tank gives you more technically impressive feats,
like an organized user interface, weather effects, and fog. Battlezone's
graphics are just plain prettier looking! More impressive still is the fact that
your tank's treads are animated properly! If you turn one tread will go forward
and the other backwards! Atari sure made up for the fact that the system can't
do vector graphics with this one!
The sounds:
Good sound design is
much more evident in Battlezone. There's a little tune that plays when you start
the game, the engine noise sounds better, there's even a "blip!" sound on your
radar when a new enemy appears. Robot tank's sound design is very flat, and
minimalistic. It's a bit hard on the ears as well, as most of the sound effects
remind me of loud crashes of static.
The substance:
It's been a
one sided fight thus far, but game play is where Robot Tank starts to really
fight back! While Battlezone is your standard one-hit-you-lose-a-life affair,
Robot Tank feels more like a simulator, in that you don't always die when you
get shot. Sometimes you lose your radar, the main view screen, or your tank gets
slowed down. You can still limp along though! I've beaten an entire wave before
just going by the radar alone!
The cartridge:
One of the things I
love about that by-gone era of gaming is the all of the pretty hand drawn
artwork that graced the cartridges, manuals, and boxes.
Battlezone's cart has a really
impressively drawn tank blasting something to kingdom come. Whereas the Robot
Tank cart has a dinky screenshot, not that exciting...
Who'd win? Robot
Tank.
While Battlezone is prettier then Robot Tank in every possible way,
Robot tank is more impressive on a technical level. It does things that other
games just weren't doing! What it lacks in flash, it more than makes up for in
substance. Battlezone would probably take the first shot, but Robot Tank would
get its second wind, and blast Battlezone into shouldering scrap.
Next
month will be a battle that no self-respecting geek should miss! The arcade
versions of Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator vs. Star Wars: The Arcade
Game!
I'd like to Thank to Alan Hewston for encouraging me to write this,
and giving me some pointers, as well as suggesting the title for the section!
And to also thank the folks at Retrogaming Times Monthly, for adding it to the
publication!
Game Over
This is unusual, but I'm going to give myself a pat
on the back this month for finally going through this file by hand and cleaning
the HTML up manually. WYSIWYG is great when you have to edit large pieces of web
pages, but I can't believe how bad some editors are. Enjoy the leaner, cleaner
RTM! See you next month.
Last month, I talked about the game
Karateka. As noted last month, Karateka was one of the early martial arts/karate
games and easily one of the most popular games back in the 1980's. However, the
game wasn't perfect. Despite the use of solid graphics and sound (especially for
the Apple II), the amount of moves were a little limited. Also, if you were used
to martial arts movies, you would notice that the original Karateka did not
allow for the use of weapons.
The guide for Aigina no Yogen: From the
Legend of Balubalouk took me a little longer to complete than I had
anticipated. I kind of lost interest in writing about the game about halfway
through because all the walkthrough really consisted of was descriptions of room
after room of largely the same points.
Mappy-Land seems to have been
an attempt to mix the arcade style gameplay of Mappy (which you can find quite
commonly on many Namco Museum compilations) with the successful contemporary
Super Mario Bros. formula. But it doesn't get the mix quite right.
I'll be honest, the Ikari Warriors guide
isn't exactly finished. And the truth is, I don't really plan to finish it. The
reason? I just refuse to do a walkthrough for that game. And I'm just talking
about the single stage of the arcade version. Forget the NES version and it's
four stages of pure torture.
Next up is Dragon Ball:
Shenron no Nazo, better known in the United States as Dargon Power. Many
people believe that this was the first Dragon Ball game ever made for a home
console. In fact it is the second. But the first one was an arcade style
vertical shooter made for the Epoch Cassette Vision, a system that you have to
be so Japanese to even remember. So for all intent purposes, it's definitely the
first Dragon Ball game that American players have access to.
I know that the Gradius series holds a special
place in peoples' hearts, but Zanac is one of those
underappreciated gems that just has to be written about. I write guides for a
lot of games these days. Some I like, and some I don't. I know that a game is
really good when I push myself to keep adding pages to a guide, and with Zanac
clocking in at 24 pages... yeah, I liked it a lot.
It has been an adventure-filled
six-months or so since my last column for RTM. Amongst my other adventures, I
have acquired a PlayStation 2 console so there is a whole new world of
retrogaming compilations to explore (and review).
Copyright
© 2008 Alan Hewston & Scott Jacobi. All related copyrights and trademarks
are acknowledged.