ugvm

the site of uk.games.video.misc

Aero the Acro-Bat: completed!

Posted on Written by

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.

Aero the Acro-Bat: leaps of faith

Posted on Written by

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.

Aero the Acro-Bat: diagonal attacks

Posted on Written by

In the rash of character-based platformers following the rivalry of Sonic and Mario, there must have been many which were unfairly overlooked. Aero is not one of these; it sold well enough to get a sequel, so was not overlooked; and if it had been so it wouldn’t have been unfairly.

Maybe I am being a little harsh; I have only played the first five levels to far, but they are all in the circus and I am longing for some variety in the setting already. My main complaint is with the way that Aero attacks enemies, and controls in general. The control layout indicates that button A is reserved for “fire”, but I have found no way to actually fire anything. Instead, I am forced to use a drill-type attack that goes either diagonally down or diagonally up, and half the time doesn’t hurt the enemy at all (but still hurts me).

A great platform game lives or dies on the accuracy of the jumps and the momentum the character has. Aero is competent enough, but it’s not fun to control – plus there are frequently unavoidable deaths from going too fast or due to trampolines launching you into spikes off-screen. Luckily for present-day me, save states make this a lot more bearable.

Virtua Racing and Virtua Racing Deluxe: evolution of the Mega Drive

Posted on Written by

Virtua Racing in the arcade was a revelation. Until this point driving games were generally represented by a curving path drawn on a 2D plane, with you having to react left and right to keep in the middle of the road (the game was moving your sprite automatically in the opposite direction). As amazing a game Chase HQ on the CPC was, the driving model was basic at best. Even Road Rash had only a semblance of steering. There were some exceptions – Hard Drivin’, Stunt Car Racer, all the Mode 7 flat racers on the SNES – but it wasn’t until Virtua Racing appeared that you could really feel like you were driving a racing car.

It came with a price tag. While most games in the arcades were 50p a go (or even 10p for the older cabinets), the big noticeable Virtua Racing cabinet was £1. I hadn’t paid £1 for a go of an arcade game since the Virtuality cabinet on which I played VTOL. At least Virtua Racing didn’t make me feel ill, with a headset that didn’t fit properly and a framerate that was probably measured in seconds per frame, although going back to the arcade game now the refresh rate isn’t anything to write home about either.

So I didn’t play VR much in the arcade, but the few times I did it was a great experience. And then they announced it was going to be released for the Mega Drive. Oh my.

It cost £70, almost twice the price of a standard game, and it included an extra processor to allow for the polygonal graphics. The framerate wasn’t amazing (15 fps compared to that arcade’s 30), the graphics were very much cut back, but the feeling of racing was still there. I bought Virtua Racing and played it a lot.

I don’t think any other games ever used the same extra processor on the Mega Drive, but not long after Virtua Racing was released Sega announced new hardware for the home – not only a new console (which would be launched as the Saturn), but an add-on for the Mega Drive to increase its capabilities. The 32X did not sell well, which is why I was able to buy mine for £25 a couple of years later. It’s a fun machine to own because the games are actually pretty decent, even today.

Sega released Virtua Racing Deluxe for the 32X, and it’s a big step up from the Mega Drive version. It runs at 20 fps – which is still very low for today’s standards, but feels fine – and there’s a lot more detail on the screen. I played this version even more than the MD game, even though I did get it much later on.

Since Virtua Racing Deluxe was a launch game for the 32X, both these games came out in 1994 – March for the Mega Drive, and December for the 32X. Comparing the two games shows quite a lot of progress for nine months – and the huge upgrade the 32X was able to enable.

The resolution and clarity of the graphics is immediately apparent here – the 32X has more colours, relying less on dithering for shading, and everything is made up of more polygons. Even the HUD overlay is better constructed, with the map rotating with the car, and the information taking up a little less space.

I must apologise for the lack of consistency between these images – I wasn’t planning on comparing them when I took the screenshots. Nevertheless, you can see here the detail on the car is massively improved for the 32X game, even if you can’t see the struts holding on the wheels (due to them being the same colour grey as the road).

You can also see that I completed the course faster on the 32X.

The 32X has added particles, a clarity around the edge of the road, and for some reason the car’s at a slightly different angle.

Revisiting these games (admittedly via emulation) is instructive to see how far we’ve come, and yet also how much has remained the same. Virtua Racing came out on the Switch a few years ago, and it is (as you’d expect) even better than the arcade game – 60 fps, improved handling, expanded game modes – but the game plays the same as ever, and the Mega Drive versions are just as fun.

Mega-lo-Mania (MD): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Yes, this again. Seems I didn’t play it at all in 2023! How did that happen?

Anyhoo, this time through I played as Caesar (the green one), and for the first time I can remember, I wasn’t asked to form an alliance at all for the whole game. Normally at least someone panics and tries to get me to join with them, although I almost always decline.

As usual, I reached the Mother of All Battles as the end of the game as the only god who remembered to stash away some humans, so naturally I won that by default.