ugvm

the site of uk.games.video.misc

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Did I completely forget that this was also an arcade game? Pretty sure I only ever knew it as a SNES title, but no – here’s the arcade version. It is, as you’d expect, very similar to the original version but with better graphics and animation, and levels set in various time periods like “dinosaurs” and “pirates” as the title would suggest.

It felt somewhat easier than the original, perhaps because there are a few more moves and certainly more floor pizza to pick up. It still required a virtual piggy bank filled with virtual coins to get through (in two-player mode this time) but as before, it’s button mashing mindless fun.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Yes! The arcade version! It’s another game on the Cowabunga Collection, and probably the best one on there from what I remember.

Sure, it’s mindless and lacking in combos and special moves like newer examples of the genre, but it’s a classic and you can never hear “SAY YOIRE PRAYERS, TOITLES” too many times. Also, being an arcade game designed to extract as many coins from your purse as possible, it’s really rather hard and the bosses especially are just unfair money-sponges, but it doesn’t matter when you can just feed it unlimited virtual credits.

We also played through in three player, which is a very unusual thing these days.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Originally a Game Boy game, this TMNT game is now one of the games on the “Cowabunga” collection, and it… isn’t great. Pretty sure it wasn’t great at the time, either, what with the flickery graphics and barely-there animation and repetitive gameplay and the tiny viewport and, well, it goes on. It’s not that far from Kung Fu Master for most of the game, having to attack enemies as they approach from left and right, but there’s also some basic platforming and jumping over tumbling rocks and stuff.

In the Game Boy’s heyday, there were probably a trillion (conservative estimate) games near identical to this with various different licences, but being Turtles, Fall of the Foot Clan was probably more visible. Plus, you get to choose which turtle you want to be for each level even though they make no difference whatsoever, bar the two animation frames of swapped out weapons.

Still, it isn’t terrible. The Game Boy was incredibly underpowered and by rights shouldn’t have even been able to manage half the games it did, but FotFC is not the best fit for the device.

Lost in Play (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

A point and click adventure game set in the imaginations of two kids playing with a weird collection of creatures and characters, some Alice In Wonderland-esque trippiness, and some fantastic art and cartoon level animation? Sure, why not.

Not unlike The Many Pieces of Mr Coo, Lost in Play is wordless, with intent and conversations in the game taking place via icons, gestures and various non-vocal grunts and outbursts. It does mean that a bit of nuance is lost, but it also means the devs don’t need to localise. Besides, it’s all nonsensical, what with gnomes and frogs and strange flying devices and a toilet inside a whale, so actually trying to understand is probably unnecessary.

It wasn’t especially hard, mainly as it did manage to have puzzles that made some sort of logical sense (if no real-world sense, of course), and I found it thoroughly enjoyable and humorous. And very pretty and well animated.

Super Mario Land (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Ah, who doesn’t remember the chart-topping MC Mario “Folks round here think I’m crazy, but I gotta rescue Daisy” song that was based on the music from this, slightly odd in hindsight, Game Boy Mario game? Kids, that’s who. Tch.

And it is a bit odd. Super Mario Land starts out as a seemingly normal, low resolution and black and white approximation of the NES classic, but adds different enemies and the fire flower is a bouncy ball and there are scrolling shooter levels. It isn’t a bad game, but put it next to Super Mario Land 2 and it’s like they’re not even the same console generation, let alone in the same game series.

I completed it, of course, and it was ridiculously easy. But not actually bad.