deKay

Asterix (MS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 11/06/2016 Written by deKay

Yes, it’s another 8bit platformer. But you know what? It’s another good one! When I originally played Asterix on an actual Master System (actually, that’s not true – I played it on a Mega Drive with a Power Base Convertor) I remember it being very easy, once you knew the levels, up until the section near the end of the game with the leaf ride in the wind and the spikes. Imagine my surprise when I realised my brain had totally made that level up and it didn’t appear anywhere in my playthrough.

How had I remembered something that didn’t exist? It’s my main memory of the game! That part was so hard that it’s stuck in my head for ever more, and yet it isn’t there. Bizarre.

For this play, I went through entirely as Asterix (aside from level 1-1 where you have to play through as both him and Obelix) as I seem to recall it’s easier and more fun. Mind you, I’d already misremembered a whole level so who knows.

I’m pleased to say that, a bit of slowdown aside, Asterix is still a pretty good platformer. Some levels – mainly forced scrolling ones – are less fun than others, but there’s a lot of secret areas to find and a few levels have alternate routes. It’s very much like the Mickey Mouse …of Illusion games, which I’d not really noticed before, but that’s no bad thing.

Click to view slideshow.

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Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars (MS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 04/06/2016 Written by deKay

I’ve completed two Alex Kidd games before – Miracle World on the Master System, and The Enchanted Castle (which is essentially a remake) on the Mega Drive. Neither were anything special, but they were both reasonably good platformers. I’ve briefly played some other Alex Kidd titles, but never finished them. However, I’d never played The Lost Stars before today.

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars — A couple of pointers

It’s a very simple platformer. Alex Kidd doesn’t have his big punch move, the collision detection is ropey and although the levels are varied none of them are particularly impressive. The graphics are big and chunky and very colourful, so I expect this was a decent show-off title to NES owners back in the day even though it’s nowhere near the same level as things like Super Mario Bros or Duck Tales gameplay-wise. It also suffers from flicker and slowdown a little, although not so much that it bothered me.

Alex runs and jumps through the levels (and swims, in one of them) from left to right mainly avoiding enemies although he can fire a limited number of whirlwinds at them with the right power-up. Other power-ups include a time-limited higher jump and an item that replenishes the health/time bar. Yes, just like Wonder Boy, The Lost Stars has a stupid combined bar which slowly depletes by itself, buy also loses a chunk when you get hit. It was rubbish in Wonder Boy and it’s rubbish here.

Speaking of Wonder Boy, at least one of the levels here appears to be a homage to it. Some of the other levels also seem to borrow from other Sega games – I’m pretty sure there’s a Zillion themed area for one, and there’s an Opa-Opa hiding one of the “miracle balls” you have to collect.

On the final level, which has very low gravity making all the jumps incredibly easy, there’s no miracle ball, but completing it throws you back at the start of the game again. Only, unlike Teddy Boy, the levels become harder and there’s a second set of miracle balls to collect. Only by running through all the levels again (which I did) do you get the True Ending: a black screen with the words “The End” on it. That’s it. Thanks, Sega!

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars is a mediocre game with very little in common with the other Alex Kidd games, it would seem. There are plenty of better Master System platformers (Miracle World, Sonic, Asterix, The Lucky Dime Caper, Castle of Illusion… the list goes on) so there’s very little here to recommend it. Still, it wasn’t terrible, so that’s something? Oh, and the FM sound is lovely, so make sure you use an emulator with that turned on if you do play it.

I’m still confused as to why it’s called The Lost Stars when it’s actually Miracle Balls you have to collect, though.

Click to view slideshow.

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James Pond II: Codename Robocod (MD): COMPLETED!

Posted on 04/06/2016 Written by deKay

Robocod was one of my favourite Mega Drive games in the 90s. I loved the silliness and the stupid things you could collect, the themed levels, and the penguins. Sadly, over the years when Playstation, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS remakes were released, they ruined the memory of a once great game.

Going back to the original (well, the Mega Drive version of the original anyway) I was hoping to show how awful the more recent versions have been, but unfortunately it hasn’t held up too well itself. Of course, it’s still far better than the others, but it isn’t quite as good as I recall. Too many instant unforeseen deaths (things dropping out of nowhere on your head, for example), dodgy collision detection, and even falling through floors – all things I’d either not cared about back then or have forgotten in the meantime.

Robocod is still wonderfully nonsensical though, with creative baddies (busses that spit out grannies being my favourite) and some decent bosses, but it perhaps isn’t the best Mega Drive platformer that isn’t Sonic any more.

It didn’t take very long to complete either, so even though I died a lot clearly there was an abundance of extra lives (not to mention the ten minutes semi-invincibility you get at the start for collecting items in the right order). I got stuck on a level in the “transport” world trying to find a missing penguin, but eventually located it. Most of the rest of the levels were pretty straightforward. Fun but dated.

Click to view slideshow.

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Teddy Boy (MS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 04/06/2016 Written by deKay

Teddy Boy was one of the first Master System games I owned, mainly because it was under ten quid new, but I actually quite liked it. I’d never completed it though, and in fact I didn’t think you could complete it – I just thought it went on forever like arcade games of this sort generally did. However, over on RetroCollect someone posted they’d just completed it and I asked how – and it turns out the levels just loop round after level 50. Technically beating that level would count (to me) as completing the game then.

Way back when, I think a level somewhere in the 40s was about as far as I ever reached, so imagine my surprise when I managed to reach – and finish – level 50 on just my second attempt. On the first attempt I only made it to level 12 or so, but I quickly learned to be slow and cautious where possible, keep an eye out for the crocodiles especially, and always collect the little token things that come out of the baddies when shot otherwise they gobble up the time after a while. And the yellow bread things? You can’t take on more than one at a time.

Click to view slideshow.

I found Teddy Boy to still be fun game, much to my surprise. It’s very jolly and cute, even if very simple.

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Star Fox Zero (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 03/06/2016 Written by deKay

A confession: I’ve never really enjoyed Star Fox games before. The SNES original looked very impressive at the time but it didn’t really interest me, the N64 game bored me, the Not Zelda Honest Gamecube mis-step was awful, and so on. But there was something about the videos for Star Fox Zero which interested me. Not when first announced, of course, as it looked rubbish back then, but when Nintendo came back a few months later with more information my interest was piqued.

And when I came to play it, it was a lot of fun! Not too taxing, and although the dual-controls (on screen and on the pad) are initially confusing, it didn’t take too long to get used to them. I think that most of the time I ended up just relying on the GamePad in the end, but that worked out fine for me.

The levels were surprisingly varied, with standard “on rails” into the screen shooting sections, some bosses where you fly around an area freely, dogfights in space, levels where you have to dodge a load of stuff, some slow paced bits with a robot you deploy and control, and more. In fact, almost every level is different in how you play to those previous.

Now to go back and unlock some of the alternative routes, I think!

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