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Paper Mario: an endless prologue

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Playing Paper Mario now, the similarities to the Mario & Luigi games are obvious. Not just in terms of the mechanics – attack an enemy in the overworld to get the first hit in battle; turn-based combat with timing enhancements; use items to enable special moves – but also in terms of the humour and interaction with other characters. In this game, Mario’s sidekick is one of a selection of bad-guys-turned-good, subverting the usual assumption that goombas and koopas are only there to be bounced on, and lending specialist skills to open new paths and collect more badges. That’s not to say that all enemies are converted, and the game hasn’t quite yet reconciled the fact that Goombario, for example, has so far seen a hundred of his peers being brutally slaughtered.

The game starts off quite slowly, with a lot of story to cover. Bowser has obtained a star rod, which makes him look like a fairy but more importantly allows him to have any wish granted. He has taken this opportunity, not to make Peach fall in love with him or to have Mario disappeared from existence, but rather to just kidnap Peach and her castle wholesale. Back to a standard plot, then. Mario has to find seven star people sprite things, which are all over the kingdom, and to do that he has to collect new abilities and get stronger to face stronger enemies.

So far I have found one.

The first part of the game took ages to play through due to there being so much conversation, which of course you can’t just skip over because there is the odd line that is important at telling you where to go. I started playing this back on 6 November, and because I have very little time to play and also because of the slow pace, I didn’t reach Chapter 1 until 12 November.

I explored the village and pathways first, finding a number of badges and coins and star pieces, before venturing into the Koopa Brothers’ fortress. The puzzles inside weren’t at the level of Ocarina of Time’s water temple, but it was refreshing to see a bit of clever design which required little backtracking. Halfway through I rescued Bombette, who coincidentally was able to blow up cracked walls, of which I had noticed a couple throughout the dungeon.

Bombette is relatively handy in battle as well, though her special move of Bomb uses a fair amount of FP (flower points?) which means I am more likely to be found with Blue Koopa accompanying me; his special move allows you to attack all the enemies on the ground at once.

I battled up to the Koopa Brothers, and then the fight against them was the most difficult so far; I had to use some items to regain health since I couldn’t work out the timing to mitigate against their attacks. It didn’t help that Goombario’s Tattle skill – which gives information about an enemy and then unlocks a health bar beneath that type forever more – only worked on one of the four brothers at a time. Nevertheless, they eventually fell, and I rescued big moustache star man thing.

Starfox: the stars are colourful

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You press a button, and wait for a couple of minutes for the view to change. You hear something shooting at you, but there are no instruments telling you from which direction. You flail around panning up, down, left and right, until you finally see some weird distorted polygon on one of your screens. If it’s in your front screen, you hit the lasers and fail to do anything since it’s already disappeared. If it’s in your back or side screens, you can see it merrily firing at you while you try (and fail) to turn around to face it. You then accidentally press the T button and see your ship rocketing off into space, with no idea where you’re going.

I’m sure I’m missing something. There must be a way of seeing where you are supposed to fly to, and then to see where things are when you get there. I was told I was near a planet, and near a fuel ship, but didn’t see either of them. I was told I was near a convoy – and saw a single ship each time.

I think I’ll stick to Elite.

Robocop: initially like a dalek

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Robocop on the CPC is a great game. Responsive, colourful, fast, full of action. It’s also pretty difficult, and relies on you memorising every enemy pattern throughout its levels.

The majority of the game is a side-scrolling platformer. Enemies include standard gun holders (walking along or appearing at windows above), chainsaw users, and flying kick specialists. The latter are pretty easy; as soon as they appear at the side of the screen, you can duck down and they will jump over you when they reach you anyway. Others need to be hit in a certain pattern at certain times to avoid taking damage; there are limited health recharge powerups, and only three lives for the whole game, so preserving health is important. On the second scrolling level (the third overall) there are bikes that you need to crouch down and shoot as soon as they appear, and even then it’s a toss up as to whether they’ll be destroyed before they hit you. I can get to the end of the third level now without losing a life, but only just.

The second mission is a shootout, where you need to hit a kidnapper without hitting the hostage he’s hiding behind. The fourth mission is a photofit game where you need to match up parts of a face. The fifth mission is another side-on platformer, but now you can walk up stairs and the screen scrolls vertically as well as horizontally. I don’t yet know about levels past this, because the enemies keep killing me as I walk up stairs.

Robots are very slow at walking up stairs.

The game is similar to the spectrum version but 34,218% more colourful.

I must admit it took me a while to even know I could walk up the stairs. In the first couple of scrolling sections, you can’t, even though the stairs look exactly the same as they do in the factory level. To walk up stairs you need to be in the correct spot and then press diagonally up, meaning that you are pretty vulnerable to enemies who aren’t standing obligingly at the top.

So it has some foibles, but it’s also a really fun game. I think I have found an exploit on the first and third level, though. The game can only cope with five sprites at a time, meaning that if you can shepherd four enemies along with you, no others will appear. Most enemies will come in from one side, shoot at you or hit you with a chainsaw, and then walk back to the side; they’ll then come back in to get you again. If instead you just walk along behind them, they’ll carry on walking away from you all the way to the end of the level. If four of the flying kick people are clustering you, you can just keep on ducking their attacks and walking along when they’re off screen.

Chase HQ: completed!

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Everyone remembers the synthesised speech of “Let’s go, Mr Driver!”, but in fact there are other sayings in different levels; the one that I noticed as I played through today was “Giddy up, boy!”. I wonder how many people have heard the full set.

Chase HQ on the CPC is one of the best 8-bit computer arcade conversions of all time. Comparing it to the arcade machine there are obvious differences – smaller sprites, digital controls, less accurate handling and lower framerate – but given the constraints of the hardware the game plays amazingly well. I remember when we first bought the game, on disk, from the basement of Hamleys in London – I’d read the review in Amstrad Action and knew it was meant to be good, but when we got home and I played it for the first time it was better than I could imagine. So colourful, so fast, and speech as well. Amazing.

There’s not so much amazement nowadays, since we can, if we want, play the actual arcade game emulated on a computer, and driving games like Need for Speed Most Wanted have provide a more coherent ramming-the-baddies experience. Nostalgia is still a powerful thing, though.

Getting the game to run wasn’t easy. I had a CPC core in RetroArch, and Caprice32 as a standalone emulator. The latter crashed immediately on startup. The former worked fine, until I loaded the game in – and found that it was a pre-hacked disk file which offered me the option of infinite time and infinite turbos. I didn’t want these, so pressed “N” … and found that the keyboard didn’t work. To be exact, some of the keys didn’t work – they’re mapped to RetroArch shortcuts – and some did. I could get into the game by choosing “O” (for ‘oui’) and the “W” key seemed to be mapped to RETURN. Once in game I could use a joypad, or the cursor keys (with X changing gears and A operating the turbo). The joypad was OK apart from the fact that the accelerator was mapped to UP on the d-pad, which got a bit painful after a while.

I committed to only using three turbos per stage, and roughly timed 60 seconds to get to the criminal and then another 60 seconds to take them out. I think I just about managed it, but it’s hard to be sure.

Who puts massive columns at the side of the road anyway?

The game is still great, if a little samey after you’ve completed the first few levels. There are five in total, and the only thing that seems to change is traffic density and the length of the stage – meaning the last level is pretty tricky to complete. Well, complete in the right time limit anyway. I’ll try to find an unhacked ROM and try that one out next time.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg: I’m rolling

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For years I had the theme tune from Billy Hatcher on my phone to use as an alarm, though I had cut the initial spelling off the front so I would be woken with a cockerel crowing.

I never really played much of the game, however – this was back in the days where I had more money than spare time, and £20 spent at HMV on the reduced-price GameCube stock was good for an afternoon of entertainment. At the time there was a glut of 3D platformers, and despite its Sonic Team heritage this just didn’t feel like it stood out. It didn’t help that the first part of the game is set in comparative darkness, with shadowed colours and a lack of spark.

Going back to it today, though – albeit via the slightly glitchy Dolphin emulator, since I currently can’t connect my GameCube to the TV – the egg rolling mechanic does actually make the game a bit different to the standard platformer, adding in a sense of vulnerability when you lose your egg, and fostering an element of wanting to collect and hatch different egg types.

The controls work pretty well, and the camera doesn’t get in the way as much as other games of the era. I have rescued the Chicken Elder, who has brought morning back, and then found and beat a big lizard thing who tried hiding in the grass. The relatively free-form nature of the levels (as opposed to something like Crash Bandicoot) has meant I’ve had to do a fair bit of exploring at times, which is only problematic because I’m still not sure I’ve got the controls down pat.

I died a fair few times falling off those rails, even though I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be able to.