SNES Review Sunset Riders

When I first started my Super Nintendo 150 Reviews series I had a whole bunch of rules, the main two were that I was only going to review games where I owned the actual cartridge, and I was going to review them on actual hardware. I stuck by these 2 rules firmly for the entire 150 reviews but then as I came up to my 152nd review I decided I was going to loosen up a little, I had achieved my objective after all so why not relax a little bit. So for my 152nd Review I used the Everdrive my wonderful Fiancee had gotten me for Christmas and I reviewed an unfinished prototype game using the Everdrive to play it on actual real hardware. After this I proceeded to review a few more unreleased games but then I decided hey why don't I review some of the games I always wanted to review but couldn't either find, afford or ones where I just couldn't justify spending like £80 just to review a game.

It was at this point that I decided that I wanted to take a good long look at the game Sunset Riders. What drove me towards this game was the fact I had found some tickets to get half price admission to The American Adventure theme park in the bottom of a bag while doing a spot of deep cleaning, the weird thing about this is that The American Adventure closed years ago. This got me to thinking about the times when I would go there as a very young kid in jeans, a wrangler jacket with a Sheriffs star on it, a gun belt around my waist carrying a set of matching plastic pistols and a white cowboy hat. This was the start of me thinking that cowboys were perhaps the greatest thing ever which was only proven even more true when I was shown the films of the Duke AKA John Wayne, and then I saw the Young Guns films which made me want to be an outlaw like Billy the Kid. It was when I was almost at cowboy fever pitch that the MegaDrive/Genesis version of Young Guns dropped into my life courtesy of Santa Clause one fine Christmas morning, I have to give my parents a huge shout out here not only did they always keep the magic of Christmas alive but they always did there best to makes sure that I could darn good presents not just by spending money but also by listening to what I liked and making very good decisions.

I have to admit that I don't actually remember when I got the Super Nintendo version but I do remember being surprised as all heck when I loaded it up and on the title screen you could see four heroes on horseback and then when I pressed the start button and I had a choice between Steve, Billy, Bob and Cormano I just felt absolutely spoiled for choice. Bob became my go to character, it was a mix between me really liking the shotgun weapons spread and the novelty of him not having been in my MegaDrive version.

Click here for My Sunset Riders YouTube Review

So if you haven't played Sunset Riders it is basically a scrolling shooter game where you move largely from left to right making your way through the level to reach your bounty, an individual you have been hired to take down in a blaze of glory. You can get two  power-ups  along the way, these come in the form of sheriff's badges with one of them increasing the speed as which you can fire and the other basically making you dual wield, so your character instead of having a six shooter or a shotgun will have two pistols or two shotguns at there disposal for double the damage and double the fun.

The games graphics and sound although not arcade perfect are just about as close as you could expect and give the game a darn charming and fun atmosphere, the music is great for getting you in to the right mood to play the game and for making it feel even more action packed. Even more important than this though are the controls. Yeah they might be simple with there basically being three buttons one to shoot, one to jump and one to slide, but they feel awesome, they are super responsive and your soon doing exactly what you want the very second you want to do it. This means that if you get shot or get blown up by dynamite your never cursing the game itself your instead only cursing yourself and become determined that with a bit of practice you can get better and make less school boy errors.

If I was to give Sunset Riders a score out of 10 then I would have to give the game a 9 or even 10 out of 10 the game is simply a joy to play especially in two player. Some people might argue that with only 8 stages and its arcade nature that there is very little replayability or reason to return to the game but I would argue that with the games sense of fun and its charm its easy to return to the game for a quick enjoyable blast no matter how many times you have finished it, its just a great game to dip into for a bit and enjoy yourself. The game is very very expensive even for a cart only version so I cant help but recommend that people either look for it on Virtual console style services or that you look into investing in something like an Everdrive.

SNES Review 135: Animaniacs

Animaniacs known in Japan as Animaniakkusuis a platform video games developed by Konami for the Super Nintendo, based on the hit animated series of the same name, there was a MegaDrive Animaniacs game but it was a totally different game even though both of them were developed and published by Konami a company that was certainly very much in the lime light back in the 16bit games. I never owned this as a kid in fact I have only just recently gotten my hands on it, I have played the MegaDrive one before so I guess in a way that is sort of a template my mind will be comparing this one to as well as well.

Now its important to say that I have a very big soft spot for Animaniacs I used to watch it when I was younger and its just this perfect mix of humor, awesome pop culture references and just a sprinkle of learning. Songs from the show that listed the various countries in the world or American presidents or other such things were done with such a charm and were just so darn catchy that you were entertained enough not to realize that they were daring to educate you a little bit. Then at other times it would literally have me in fits of laughter. I loved everything about the show, it was filled with the most amazing characters so full of life surly this would make them perfect characters for the world of gaming?

Ok so whats the games story? Well Pinky and the Brain steal an important movie script from Warner Bros. Studios, and plan to make the film themselves so that they can become filthy stinking rich and then use this cash to do what they try to do the same thing they do every night try and take over the world. The CEO of Warner Bros. recruits Wakko, Yakko and Dot (the Animaniacs) to retrieve the script pages and stop Pinky and the Brain. Each level contains a number of script pages, you don't have to collect all of them but the ending that you will get if you finish the game depends upon if you got enough of these pages or not. In general it is quiet a good idea for a game story and they use it to decent effect as each level has a different theme be it Sci-Fi or Adventure, and there are plenty of humorous parodies of famous films to be seen if you keep your eyes peeled.

 The graphics in this game are quite good. There are nice, bold characters that look very much like their cartoon versions, and a fair amount of characters from the series pop up in the game, throw on top of this that there are some very detailed backgrounds and enemies as well. The sound is also pretty decent. The music is very  fitting to the game and the shows theme is used so there is a plus point for fans, the sound effects are best described as average though and also kind of under used.

I have always liked the saying ''gameplay is king'', what it basically means is that the most important part of a game is the gameplay, a game can have a good story, it can have good graphics, it can have an awesome soundtrack but all of that sort of stuff is just nice, the real important thing is gameplay. If a game plays badly then it doesn't matter how pretty it looks or how great it sounds, if it plays bad then the game is bad. The gameplay here well its not awful but it is kind of awkward and frustrating, its one of those games were it is hard in places not because of any challenge but because when your jumping your not quiet sure if you will land where you think you will. So when your in a game which at a time could feel a little unfair youd want a lot of extra lives and such wouldnt you? Well here you get three lives, each of the Warners is basically a life, so to die you have to get Yakko, Wakko and Dot killed then if your lucky you will see a continue screen, and when you continue it will be from the last check point. So the obvious question is how many continues do you get? Well that depends you see the whole time your playing the game there is this like slot machine at the bottom of the screen which when you collect enough coins it starts to spin and you can win continues and stuff, personally I find this the most annoying waste of screen space in a game, it doesn't only take up screen room it draws your attention to it and away from what your supposed to be doing. Also if you had a set number of continues then you'd possibly get a little further into the game each time you play and as you improve but here we are adding some luck to the proceedings so I am not overly keen on it. I could go on to moan that the passwords are long but I think if the game was a solid diamond then no one would realistically give a monkeys about that

OK so I guess its time to say how I feel about the game overall. Well in honesty I think this game is a very very average game, I would give it 5 out of 10. The most surprising thing about this all for me is that the game was made by Konami, and when it comes to the 16 bit era you think Konami on the SNES and you think about a company which was probably one of the companies with one of the best records on the machine. I spent £7 on a loose cart of this game and in all honesty if you really want to try this game I would advise that you don't spend anymore than I did if you want to avoid disappointment. In fact if you own both systems I would advise spending your cash on a copy of the Megadrive Animaniacs instead