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Super Mario World: lost in chocolate

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I have got further than ever before, but that’s not saying much. I own Super Mario World on multiple systems – SNES, GBA, Wii, Wii U, 3DS – as well as having emulated it on the Raspberry Pi, the iMac, and (shh) my work laptop. I have played the start of it many times over, knowing to go left at the first map screen and turn on the yellow switch, then progressing right up the map to Donut Plains. I know about the secret exit in Donut Plains 2 to get to the green switch palace. I have, very often, given up at the ghost house in Donut Plains because I just hate the way the enemies move and the need for constant vigilance.

Not this time, though. Playing on the Switch (and then the Switch 2), I pushed through, and found new life beyond the ghosts in Vanilla Dome, Twin Bridges, and then the Forest of Illusion. And at this point it became really annoying.

In an effort to actually finish the game, I tried to ignore the red blinking dots that told me there were alternative exits to the levels. I went straight through each level, to the obvious end, making progress. And then in the Forest of Illusion, taking the obvious exit no longer worked; I ended up going around the overworld map in circles. I did find a secret exit in Forest of Illusion 1, but that just took me to the ghost house which I had already accessed from Forest of Illusion 3. The ghost house exit took me to FoI4, and then the exit from there went back to FoI2. I was frustrated for ages until I found the secret exit from FoI3 which was hidden in a pipe I was sure I’d been down multiple times before, just before the normal end of the level.

Keeping a Yoshi seems to make life a lot easier.

Through Roy’s castle, and onto Chocolate Island. I was doing fine until Chocolate Island 3, when I found that the exit led me into a loop which took me back to Chocolate Island 3. I explored CI2 for ages, because there was a sign at the start indicating that if I collected a certain number of coins or finished at a certain time I would get a different exit, but no amount of experimenting gave that result. There didn’t look as if there could be a secret path leading from the ghost house or CI1. And then, met with a facepalm, I realised that the arrows at the end of CI3 were pointing to the right, showing me where I had to go. I rode Yoshi along, swallowed the blue koopa to give me wings, and then made my way over to the other secret exit.

I’ve left it at CI4, which has a lot of diagonal platforms to slide down. Hopefully I won’t get lost again.

Comix Zone: comically hard

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I love the concept, of being pulled into a comic and having to battle through the panels. Having the world shaped by your own hand, and then having enemies drawn in by your enemy is a work of genius. Choosing paths, having to jump across or down past the borders of the picture, is a really engaging mechanic. It looks stunning too, with large sprites which have been drawn full of character and incredibly colourful. This is paired with a fighting game engine which is very competent and fun to play with – punches and kicks carry weight, and enemies can be avoided by a millimetre.

But it’s very very hard. You have a single life, and recharges to your energy are few and far between. I haven’t worked out how to consistently kill enemies without them taking some of my health off. As such, I’ve never got very far in, and short of quick saving after every hit I’m not sure I ever will.

But it does look lovely.

Sonic CD: chasing the generators

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I had some questions before, and I have now answered them.

  • Do I need to travel to the future after destroying the machine in the past, or is it sufficient to just explode the generator? No, you don’t need to travel to the future; you can finish the act in the past, and you’re still told you created a good future. However, if you can travel to the future (through two future lampposts in sequence) there are no enemies in the way of you getting to the end.
  • Do I need to create good futures for both acts, and if so do I then have to fight the boss? Yes, you have to create good futures for both acts, and if you do then the third act takes place in the good future – but you still have to fight the boss.

I know this, because I have spent quite some time exploring levels and working out where to time travel, where the robot generators are, and planning routes to get there; I’ve now managed it on the first five Zones, and have at least located the generator in the present on Stardust Speedway Act 1 (though I have no idea how to get to it, and this is a rare example of a 16-bit Sonic level being pretty poorly designed). Luckily I’ve built up a stock of about 25 lives, and it’s fairly easy to collect 100 rings to gain another, since I keep running out of time when exploring.

I have often thought of Sonic CD as intimidating, because I thought you needed to get everything perfect. Back in 2011 I threw caution to the wind, and played through the game on the Xbox 360, not trying for the good ending but just hoping to get to the end. It was relatively easy to do that, though levels were sometimes a bit disorderly and prevented a fluid run throughout. The race with Metal Sonic was particularly difficult.

Having plugged in my PS3 (because I wanted to test a copy of Crashed that I found), I saw Sonic CD on the list of installed games, and immediately got the sense of being overwhelmed again, because having completed the bad ending I felt I would need to try for the good one. Back in the 1990s I had time to devote to a game, and to this day I have a complete picture of all levels from Sonic 1 and 2 in my mind, crowding out information which might actually be useful. That came from playing the games over and over; by the time I got my Mega CD from Pink Planet in Bristol, I had many other things to be doing.

But in recent months I find myself wanting to spend time dedicated to specific games again, hence returning to Mario Odyssey, playing through GTA3 and Vice City, and progressing through Wreckfest. Taking time to appreciate a game in its entirety – exactly what has been holding me back from Sonic CD.

So I’ve been taking my time, exploring levels, working out routes to take, where to find time travel posts and then build up speed, trying to find the machines in the past. It’s been a very different experience, very unlike other Sonic games, but it’s been very enjoyable. I fear I may need to resort to looking at some level maps, though, if I don’t work out how to destroy the generator on Stardust Speedway soon.

Oh, and the special stages are still pretty rubbish.

Out Run GB: a valiant effort

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I previously wrote about Hero GP, a fun little Game Boy Colour game I bought which is pretty difficult given its speed. I have played it on occasion since, since it’s ideal for a very short play session (which can turn into a much longer one with just one more go). The maker of that game has wondered “what if OutRun came to the Game Boy Color?”, and despite his misspellings of both “Out Run” and “Colour”, it’s a valid question. Luckily, he has answered it.

Yes, there are limitations. No branching paths, limited roadside furniture, blocky cars. But it feels like Out Run, with undulating tracks and traffic getting in the way, and if you hit another car or a tree with enough force, the car somersaults in the classic advert for seat belt wearing.

It feels slower than Hero GP, which is probably a good thing given the tighter feel to the track space. The controls are very precise, other than the brake which seems to have too much of an effect. Hitting other cars slows you down a little too much, meaning that two hits is almost enough to mean you fail the first stage, whereas that’s not usually the case until the second stage at least – depending on DIP switch settings, of course. It’s a very accomplished bit of coding, and while it can’t be released commercially for obvious reasons, I hope that Sega keep it available as a curio – it’s free to play from the link above.

APB: twitchy siren

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Maybe it’s the conversion to the Xbox pad, but APB is incredibly difficult to control. In order to arrest someone you have to have your cursor over them and press the siren, because obviously criminals are only going to pay attention to a police car which is an exact distance away from them. The thing is that the cursor is not at a set distance from your car, but instead varies with the speed you’re going. In order to have enough of a gap between your car and the cursor to be able to arrest someone, you have to be going quite fast, certainly faster than the criminals you are chasing. For littering this isn’t so much of an issue, since you need to signal to them once. By the time you get to chasing down dopers, it’s much more difficult because you have to signal on them three times, meaning you are almost guaranteed to crash; too many crashes and you’re out.

I’ll have to see if there’s an original cabinet next time I go to somewhere like Arcade Club, because the concept of the game – a semi-open world, different criminals to find, extending time through fuel and doughnuts – is quite attractive. It’s just the controls which frustrate.