retro — Page 32

3D Power Drift (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 12/11/2016 Written by deKay

Despite having played this before, a long time ago (on the Spectrum and Amiga at least, maybe once in the arcade), I was half way through Power Drift before I realised you could, well, drift. Round corners like, you know? The clue is right there in the name of the game but for some reason it never occurred to me to try.

That’s probably why I found the later tracks, on routes C, D and E, easier than the earlier ones, I suppose.

As for how the game plays, it’s incredible. Sure, the graphics look a bit rough now, and the way the road appears to be made out of various coloured logs is a little weird, but it is a lot of fun. The 3D is excellent, the faux-cabinet tilting effects add a surprising amount, and it’s so very, very fast. I think it may even be better than the 3D Out Run remake, although there’s no Magical Sound Shower so perhaps not.

To count as completed, I finished all five stages on all five courses (so 25 in all), plus two Extra Stages (where you race as the Afterburner plane!?) I unlocked. I think the lowest I placed was 2nd.

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3D Altered Beast (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 06/11/2016 Written by deKay

No, you shut up. It’s my game. I’ll play it if I want. I said shut up. Stop laughing.

One credit. Start to finish. Bosh. Done.

We shall speak no more of it.

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3D Thunder Blade (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 06/11/2016 Written by deKay

It was never the best of Sega’s arcade games. Impressive as it was, with the hydraulic cabinet and fancy (at the time) scaling sprites, I never really found it very much fun. I bought the Mega Drive “Super” version, which had neither of those selling points and it was dire. I wasn’t expecting much from the 3D update.

And I was right. It’s pretty poor. The 3D works well, and it has all the nice touches other games in the 3D Classics series have, like tilting display and “cabinet noises”, but it’s short, easy, and boring.

Much easier than Super Thunder Blade was, in fact. Not sure why that might be, but I’m sure that was a lot longer. I certainly never completed it, anyway. I don’t think I’ll be playing this again – the into the screen levels are fun but very short, and the vertically scrolling bits aren’t a patch on other shoot ’em ups.

It’s no Afterburner.

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3D Fantasy Zone (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 05/11/2016 Written by deKay

No, not 3D Fantasy Zone for the 3DS, 3D Fantasy Zone. For the 3DS. This one is one of the ten games on the Sega 3D Classics Compilation, just like the other one is, but this one is a 3D port of the Master System version of Fantasy Zone, whereas the other was the arcade version.

Still with me?

Thankfully, the Master System version was much, much easier and instead of taking eight hours to complete, it took just one. It’s almost the same as the arcade version, only with a couple of boss changes and seemingly a lot more money to collect – which made stocking up on lives and heavy bombs simple to do.

All of the bosses seemed easier as well, especially the final one which took me $hlmun tries before, but just two here. It’s much slower, I think, so easier to avoid and attack.

Now to finish the other nine games! Even though I have half of them already.

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Gargoyle’s Quest (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 30/10/2016 Written by deKay

Along with some other games (like Year Walk), Gargoyle’s Quest was cheap on the eShop. I don’t know what prompted me to buy it, but this Game Boy classic has always interested me, at least a little due to the plot.

Well, what I knew of the plot – Firebrand, the bad guy gargoyle from Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, is the protagonist in this part RPG, part platformer set in the demon realm Firebrand comes from. You quest is to defeat the even-more-evil-than-every-other-demon, the King Breager who is going to destroy Firebrand’s world.

How this plays out is surprisingly reminiscent of Zelda II on the NES, with overland travel – where random battles take the form of very short platforming sections – villages to visit, and “dungeons” which are side-scrolling platforming bits of substantial length. Firebrand upgrades his abilities to enable him to hover for longer, jump higher, or allow him to temporarily cling to spiked walls.

Unlike Zelda II, though, it’s actually possible to complete Gargoyle’s Quest, as I proved today when I did so. It is a bit janky (with lots of slowdown in sections), a couple of areas are incredibly frustrating (timing drops past spikes, in particular) and bosses that don’t get harder (the end boss is the easiest in the entire game). It also suffers from terrible dialogue, complete with spelling mistakes.