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Kolibri: eaten by a frog

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Kolibri is certainly colourful, fast, and with plenty of sprites flying around the screen. Flying being a key word – as a hummingbird, everything takes place in the air, with very occasional ground-based enemies. Frustratingly the development team have obviously seen nature videos where the hummingbirds move around slightly in the air, because they’ve implemented that here – my bird was shifting around a little when I really wanted it to just stay still and let a projective pass.

It is a bit of a frustrating game in places. In order for the game to look as natural as possible, they have dispensed with an on-screen display. You can’t see how much health you have left unless you get hit or collect an energy ball, at which point one, two, three or four little hummingbirds appear around you to show you how many hits you can absorb. You also can’t easily see what weapon you are holding, though of course that can be fixed by firing it. I think that your bird colour changes depending on the weapon as well, but I’m not entirely sure.

I’ve played through the first five or six levels now, and there’s a bit of variety there. In Aero the Acro-Bat, you were given some instructions when you started each level on what the goal was – jump on certain platforms, or defeat a certain number of specific enemies – but here you just need to work out what’s going on before you die. Not always possible, but at least there appear to be infinite lives; you just start again at the beginning of the level you died on.

[A side note: screenshots taken on this emulator often come out a bit odd, I think because of the way the Mega Drive and 32X outputs are being combined. The third screenshot here, for example, only has the background on the upper half the screen, whereas actually there was a hill there.]

The other issue is that the powerups are a bit too similar to each other and easy to pick up. Normally ease of collection would be a good thing, but here there are about six or seven weapons and you can collect the powerup for the one you want. I am particularly fond of the homing energy balls, or the lasers, but often find that I’m accidentally collecting other weapons instead. Homing weapons are useful because enemies can come from both sides, and the controls are a bit picky in terms of turning around.

It’s a breath of fresh air for horizontal shooters – look, no spaceships! – but it’s a little frustrating to control, which ruins it somewhat.

Aero the Acro-Bat: completed!

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The museum turned out to be the last level, and it was indeed significantly more difficult than the rest of the game. Much of this difficulty came in the narrowing of platforms, which would ordinarily be easy to land on but required the awful diagonal jumps to get high enough. It reminded me of the Dizzy games, where you had to work out which pixel to jump off in order to land in the right place, except more frantic and (often) with death awaiting if you fell.

Despite the setting and the increased difficulty, there were few innovations which set apart the last levels. There was an annoying obstacle which saw a laser shooting around a frame which you had to avoid, and flames shooting out of gargoyles at seemingly random intervals, and circular saws embedded in many platforms. Some of the enemies were immune to my diagonal attacks, or rather were sometimes immune (but at other times they popped, for no discernible reason). It was getting a bit frustrating and boring.

I quickly realised that it was pointless spending hours waiting for appropriate windows in obstacle attacks, since there were normally multiple life pickups – the As in the bottom-right corner – following any difficult section. As a result I often just barrelled straight through and dealt with healing afterwards. This wasn’t always the case, but due to the beauty of regular save states I had sixty-odd lives available anyway.

And then I got to the final level. The boss came in three stages, and before each battle there was a frantic vertical platforming section, with an ever-rising laser beam ready to cut the climb short. This took a fair while to do, even with saving, because of the awkward placement of platforms and the inaccuracy of Aero’s jumping. In the third section there were countless spikes and other enemies to avoid while also trying to land on minute platforms. Whenever I caught up with the boss, there was fight where he put out floating clowns to get in the way, and also streams of water coming from his giant clown face flying vehicle; while I tried to know his jaw off.

At the end of the second fight, the lower jaw came off, but that didn’t stop him from spawning clowns and generally being a pain the posterior. Instead of the jaw I had to hit his red nose, and after doing that 32,977,421 times he admitted defeat.

This wasn’t a great game. It was tolerable, and there was a nice fluidity to it – but there was perhaps just a bit too much inertia to allow for accurate jumping and platforming. Whoever designed the diagonal attacks should never have worked in the industry again. The jankiness with the controls may well have been an emulator problem, but I did see at least one review mention it.

Will I replay it, or play the sequel? I’ve got quite a lot of other stuff to do first.

Another Crab’s Treasure: sharing a drinks can

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I like the idea of the Souls games. Difficult games which you gradually improve at, learning patterns and strategies, exploring the best route to go. The thing is that they’re just a bit … grimy. Everything’s grey and brown and dark, and dirty and smelly and tacky and it makes me project senses that aren’t there. Anyway.

Another Crab’s Treasure is a Souls-like, but it’s not like that. Everything’s quite happy and colourful, at least until you meet other crabs.

It’s got a cute story as well. There’s a new ruler of the coast, and they’ve bumped up taxes to the point where little crabby here can’t afford them. So they take his shell instead. This means I’ve got to travel to the castle to ask for it back.

I took a wrong turn at first, and found an enemy who killed me six times in a row. Luckily, when you get near said enemies the game creates a checkpoint, so you can just get your stuff back quickly and run away when you realise you’re too underpowered. I then followed the coloured confetti until I met an enemy I could defeat, where I gained a new shell. I say a shell; it’s actually a drinks can. At least it gives me a little protection.

Aero the Acro-Bat: leaps of faith

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I got some variety in the setting, after defeating the boss at the end of the circus levels. Maybe I should say bosses; there were two stilt walkers who sat on opposite sides of the screen, throwing things into the middle. There didn’t seem to be too much of a pattern to where these went, so it seems difficult to avoid them, particularly given the need for the diagonal attacks at their feet. Having built up a good stock of lives (about 20) over the previous levels, a good few of them were lost here. It feels like the designers of the game knew this, since when you die during a boss fight you respawn immediately without the boss’s health regenerating.

So, circus down, and onto a couple of new locations outside. There were some new mechanics introduced here, with pendulums to jump on and roller coasters to ride. One of the rides was a rocket sled that either sat on top of rails or hung beneath them, and I had to switch between the two states to avoid obstacles that appeared with minimal notice. Again, save states made this much more bearable.

The level-boss mechanics continued here. Multiple lives built up over the levels; multiple lives lost during the boss.

The controls still don’t feel that great, particularly shooting stars. Oh, yes, shooting stars, another way of attacking the enemies, which I hadn’t previously discovered because it seems that sometimes you will throw a star out and sometimes you won’t. You have to collect them first, but even when I had multiple stars in stock, I would stand still, press A, and nothing would happen. No idea what is going on there.

Anyway, I’ve just got into the museum and the difficulty has increased significantly. Let’s see if I ever get around to completing this.

Pokémon X: completed!

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The little diversion saw me travelling through fields of flowers and encountering a large number of new pokémon, meaning that I depleted my stocks of all types of pokéballs while travelling through the flora. I also met a couple of trainers with a massive unit of a pokémon. I finally found Wulfric, the eighth gym leader, frolicking in the meadow, and convinced him to return to his responsibilities in the ice world. Was it finally time to battle for the final badge?

Yes, it was. Now, I have mentioned before that I felt I might have spent a little too long on side quests, and as a result my pokémon were feeling a little overpowered as I took down gym leaders with one hit. Since that point my core team has changed little, with the main exception being Xerneus replacing Pikachu. This meant that I no longer had any electric pokémon – or even any electric moves – which is very much unprecedented in the way I’ve played pokémon games before. Electric moves are often quite powerful and have potential to cause paralysis, which has been beneficial many times in the past. They are also strong against water pokémon – and when the first opponent in the Snowbelle City gym sent out Cloyster I was starting to regret the change.

I needn’t have. Every other pokémon in the gym was an ice type, meaning that Delphox could generally dispatch them immediately, and as the availability of fire moves waned then Lucario’s fighting moves substituted. All gym trainers, plus Wulfric, were defeated very quickly.

And with that, I was invited to go to the Pokémon League. Getting there was possibly the most difficult part of the game, with a very long trek up victory road against high-level trainers and powerful pokémon. I had to travel back to Snowbelle City twice to revive and heal all my pokémon, before finally reaching the next pokécentre. This was conveniently located outside the Pokémon League building, and so refreshed and revived I went in.

In other pokémon games I have struggled a lot at this point. In Leaf Green I got to the Elite Four and managed to beat three of them before losing, more than once – and in the end I moved on to other games. In Sapphire I was so discouraged by my Leaf Green experiences that when I got to the Pokémon League my team felt far too underpowered to even attempt battles, and I ended up wandering off to do other things instead, never returning. In Pearl I managed to beat the Elite Four, only to get beaten by the champion afterwards. This has always been the climax of the game, and I have never got past it.

The entrance to the League, and the settings for the Elite Four battles was certainly impressive, with the Four themselves having a great deal of personality. I was told that they had their own specialisms – water, fire, dragon and steel, and I prepared for which of my pokémon should be first out in each case. By now most of my team was up to the high seventies, with the exceptions of Lucario and Xerneus who were a few levels lower. I reviewed my moves; I shifted around my pokémon, and then, with trepidation, I entered.

I needn’t have been so worried. Sure, most of the opposing pokémon posed some threat, with few instant defeats, but I beat all four at the first time of asking. Xerneus’s dragon-type move was invaluable against the dragons, but even other pokémon took off large amounts of health. Blastoise was a monster in the fire battles. The most difficult was the water champion, since I no longer had Pikachu – but I managed to adapt.

Then heal up, check the order, and it’s off to see the champion.

This wasn’t an easy battle. The champion, Diantha, had a large variety of pokémon, some of which I hadn’t seen before and so I was unaware the best way to face them. Luckily I had Edward looking over my shoulder, who told me, for example, that Gourgeist is a ghost/grass type and so I should use fire moves against it, and Tyrantrum is rock-type so would be dispatched with ease by Blastoise’s hydro pump. After defeating five of her pokémon, I had four still standing, and I threw out Lucario to use the mega evolution as a finale. That worked very well indeed.

Yes, I forgot to turn the 3D off when taking that screenshot.

There’s still a lot to do, of course. I recall seeing someone blocking me from a cave in the winding woods, saying it was only for champions. There are many waterfalls to go up. There are many black entries in the pokédex. But I’ve seen the credits roll, and so I can finally say I’ve completed the story in a pokémon game.