Snes Review 126: Final Fight 2

A very long time ago when I did my 23rd SNES review I decided to review Final Fight saying that I needed to get the game out of the way and that the game was important for a lot of reasons and so now I find myself finally getting around to talking about its sequel Final Fight 2. One of the reasons it has taken me so long is because back when I started reviewing SNES games I didn't actually own Final Fight 2 and I swore when I started all of this that I wouldn't review any game which I did not have on cartridge as I wanted to play every single game on the original hardware and for a fair amount of time before I would review them. Well as I am talking about it now its not hard to guess that I have purchased Final Fight 2, I picked up a Japanese cartridge only copy, the truth is my original copy of Final Fight 2 I had as a youngster was Japanese and in fact every copy I have ever played or seen in real life has been a Japanese one, its just much easier and cheaper to pick this game up.

So with some of these reviews I like to tell the tale of how I originally got the game back when I was young, well I originally got a new complete Japanese version from my local games shop called Games World. I didn't spend much on it at all as basically the owner had purchased an entire crate full of them for some cut down price as a sort of delboy get rich quick scheme. I sold a few of them for him on a commission basis, I also purchased a few copies cheap and sold and traded them in to other game stores, this really led to my local area and the closest big towns shops and markets ending up being super saturated with Japanese copies of Final Fight 2 but my biggest regret was not actually holding on to a complete copy, I have no idea why I didn't I guess it just felt like they'd never run out. I cant complain though as all of the money I made from my dealings with Final Fight 2 funded my purchasing of other SNES games and megadrive games and if it wasn't for stuff like this I wouldn't have played as much as I did back then.

OK so back to the game at hand. Like Final Fight, Final Fight 2 is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up produced by Capcom. The first Final fight started life as an arcade game but unlike that Final Fight 2 was never in the arcades instead it was a Super Nintendo exclusive built from the ground up for the SNES instead of being made for the CPS-1 arcade system board like the original and then just ported. The SNES version suffered a lot due to people comparing it to its arcade big brother so this is obviously a problem the second one does not have right? The answer is kind of, kind of not, obviously people will compare Final Fight 2 to Final Fight both on the SNES and the arcade version but they will also compare it to the Sega Streets of Rage Series so unless I want to pretend I am in some kind of pocket universe I am going to at least touch on where Final Fight 2 stands in comparison to all of these.

The original Final Fight arcade machine was loved by pretty much every games player I knew, it was considered to be one of the best side scrolling beat em up's out there a pinnacle of gaming to hold other games up to for comparison. The SNES version was released and was kind of limited, there was only two selectable characters one from the arcade having been dropped, there was also a level stripped out of the game, and the game had no two player mode. So what about Final Fight 2, well its actually much closer to providing the sort of experience the Original Final Fight arcade game delivered than the original SNES Final Fight did. Final Fight 2 has a two player mode, it has a choice of 3 characters and has 6 stages so is essentially the same length as the Arcade Version of Final Fight.

OK so as far as the story of Final Fight 2 goes basically Mad Gear the gang from the first game have returned they have kidnapped Guy one of the heroes from the first games Fiancee and her father who is also his teacher but weirdly Guy is not even in the game, the only returning g playable character from the original Final Fight  is ass kicking mayor and former wrestler Mike Haggar. Two new player characters are introduced and they are called Carlos and Maki Genryusai. Maki is the sister of Guy's fiancee and kind of plays a little like him, she contacts Haggar for help and Carlos tags along because he says he owes Haggar one and also likes to kick butt. So it basically it becomes a globe trotting butt kicking war against the Mad Gear to try and rescue Maki's relatives.OK so a lot of people complain that Cody and Guy are not in the game and yes I have to admit I really like both of those characters with Cody especially being one of my favourite beat em up heroes of all time but I don't think there absence ruins either the story or the game, I find all of the characters present fun to play with and its also nice to see a female character.

As far as Gamplay goes well this game plays exactly like the first Final Fight you scroll from left to right and you punch people to death until you meet a boss who you then punch to death rinse and repeat. Each of the characters feels different  and you will soon find the one who suite you best and the game is really helped by having a two player mode this time around, in fact I would say that is the standout diffrence between this and the first game. As for the controls well you have a punch button and a jump button and then you can either press these together to perform your super move or assign it to a third button. Add to this that the game has good arcade style graphics, good sound effects and a pretty good soundtrack and you would think that this game is excellent right? Well Yes I love this game I am going to stop and throw down a score here, if you can remember I gave Final Fight an 8 so what am I going to give this game? Well you might be surprised to find that I am only giving it a 8.5, look its a darn fine game but it could be much better. If you want to buy it then your best bet if you can play imports then is to buy a loose Japanese cartridge which you should be able to get for around £15, if you really want a boxed copy then you occasionally see a boxed Japanese version for around £30.  It has to be noted that this game is available on the Nintendo virtual console for around the £7 mark so if you just want to play it and legally pay for it then that's your cheapest route. A pal cart on the few occasions I have seen them in various places have been around the £60 mark with boxed pal versions seldom coming up in listings and demanding pretty steep prices. I would think this one is only going to end up becoming rarer and rarer I wanted to pay less for my copy but I just finally figured I needed to jump on this before it became an even bigger more costly pain to get.

OK so earlier I said I was going to compare Final Fight 2 to the Streets of Rage series and so that's what I want to do here at the end. Now Streets of Rage the original one was sort of Sega's answer to the original Final Fight being on the SNES, Streets had much smaller less detailed sprites but it did have several things that Final Fight didn't 3 selectable characters and a two player mode being the main things. Streets of Rage might not have looked as good as Final Fight but you could play it with a friend which was a big deal. I would argue that Final Fight 2 actually knocks Streets of Rage out cold but I think it is a very different story if you compare Final Fight 2 to Streets of Rage 2. When you look at static screen shots Final Fight 2 has better graphics but Streets of Rage actually has more frames of animation, for example if you leave your character standing still you will see them breathing, yes its not something that's going to change the world but these kinds of touches do make Streets of Rage 2 look a lot better in action than it does in a photo. Add on to this the fact that although Final Fight 2 has a good soundtrack Streets of Rage 2 simply has one of the greatest 16bit soundtracks of all time, there are also 4 selectable characters in Streets of Rage 2 but the most important thing is how many moves there are in Streets of Rage 2. Final fight has 1 special move, your grapples and a basic strike/combo for each character compared to this Streets of Rage 2 has 2 special moves, grapples, a basic strike/combo, a charge move and a backwards attack for each of its characters. The thing that stops me giving Final Fight 2 more than 8.5 is because I think that although it was a great game and did deliver everything Final Fight was lacking in it didn't add enough to keep up with the best of the best in the world of beat em ups at that time.

Bates Motel Season 1 (Spoiler free) Review

Psycho was one of Alfred Hitchcocks very best films and I think it should go without saying that Hitchcock was a master of horror, and Psycho is one of those very few films which despite being from the horror genre actually seems to garner a large degree of respect as a piece of classical cinema. So when it was announced that there was going to be a series based on the same book that the Alfred Hitchcock film was based on people were well I guess the right way to phrase it would be tentativly excited.

As it stands Bates Motel is set before the timeline of the film/book, it is set when Norman Bates is younger (17) and kind of showing what he was like before the events we know about, what he did, who he knew and how he became to be the character we saw in that classic film, one of  the legends of horror. This is a good thing as we have already seen a few sequels which explore what Norman Bates got up to later after Psycho, I cant say I honestly remember all of them but I do remember rather enjoying Psycho 2, so without going in to review territory I would recomend that if your reading this intrested in Norman Bates in general that you give it a bash.

So what did I think to the first series of Bates Motel? Well in short I really enjoyed it. There are a few things I would mention to someone who has seen Psycho who is thinking of giving it a shot one of these is that it is one of those sort of remake/reamaginings of an idea which although it does stay true to the core of the idea it grabs that core and plucks it out and places it into a modern world. This is not set in the 60's like the film, you will see mobile phones, the internet and other modern tools and ideas, this doesnt bother me at all but I think its worth mentioning as I know that this might turn off a few people. As far as I am concerned having written my own horror stories I know how difficult it can be to check facts if you set something in a diffrent place or a diffrent time, it is just an extra list of rules you need to remember a lot more things you have to fact check so that your not pulling anyone out of the moment by them seeing a digital sports watch that wasnt released till the 80's when your shows set in the 60's. Setting things in a modern setting just makes things far easier so I wouldnt hold it against them.

One of the best things in my oppinion about the original Psycho was Anthony Perkins acting in the role of Norman Bates, its only fitting that one of the best things about this show is the chilling and disturbing way in which the actor Freddie Highmore portrays Norman Bates. I once read the statment that the best villians are those who do not think that they are villians, well this takes it a little bit further in a lot of ways Norman Bates is sort of the hero of the show your very much seeing life through his eyes the things he faces and what it is like for him, if your anything like me you will actually find yourself rather liking him even if you dont like some of the decisions he makes and if you can even feel yourself wanting him to defy his future. Vera Farmigais also great as Nora, she is always intresting, you never quiet know if she is telling the truth about things or lying for her own benefit or to protect Norman, this show will always keep you guessing, you will feel yourself connect with quiet a few characters and there problems.

The show starts with Norman and Norma moving to White Pine Bay to start a fresh life after there father/husband ha passed away. They have purchased a motel which they are planning to renovate and then run as a new business venture. I wont take it much further than this as I want to draw attention to the show and give my oppinion on it without ruining it for anyone and it is one of those shows which has revelations in every episode and that is a lot of what will keep you coming back. At 10 episode a season and approximatly 45 minutes per episode it wont take you too long to make your way through the first season, I am currently half way through the second season myself.

I would give Bates Motel season one a very healthy 8 out of 10, its not flawless but it is a darn good show which I find to be really well paced and to create and maintain a veyr believable community/world with lots of interacting characters, relatiionships, and power dynamics, on a side note it might not be a bad gateway to bring someone in your life into the world of horror as its almost part horror, part pschological thriller and part soap opera. There is a lot here which would appeal to diffrent types of people.

Ash Versus Evil Dead Episode 1 and 2 Review

I have been meaning to do this ever since the night I watched it. That night was the 1st of November. The first episode of the TV series Ash Versus Evil Dead aired on Starz a TV channel which as far as I know is exclusive to America, we certainly don't get it in England. It aired on Halloween but I had to wait till the following day to scratch around online to find a copy. The ridiculous thing was that if it had been available on a British channel I would have looked at getting that channel, or if it had been put on British Netflix Id have subscribed for a few months long enough to watch the whole first season as it went up, heck I would have even spent like £1 an episode renting it if the option was available to me, but as it stands I basically had to pirate it, which is not good when I want to support the series as I am a big big fan of Bruce Campbell, on the off chance he ever see's this.... Bruce I will buy the series on Blue Ray as soon as someone see's fit to release it on this side of the ocean and hey I already have pretty much all of the things staring you that can be got here on DVD.

OK so basically the story is this after spending thirty years hiding out as in a trailer park working in a sort of  Target/Wallmart kind of shop  Ash gets high with a hippy chick and unleashes the Deadites (for those new to this who havent seen the film think sort of Demon Zombie creatures) by reading from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis (the book of the dead, a book full of spells and passages made from human flesh and inked in blood). So do you need to have seen the film for this all to make sense? Not really its enough to know that Ash was a sort of hero, a killer of these creatures who has beaten them in the past but basically decided he wanted a quiet life. If you enjoy this though and haven't seen the films then trust me its going to make you want to see them..

I think most of the people watching this though are going to be the die hard fans like me, who saw these films, have watched them again and again, studied more or less every moment of them and then have begged and begged for more. The thing is that everyone has been asking about an Evil Dead 4 for so long that we had pretty much given up hope that we would ever get it especially with the fact that Sam Raimi is now a multi-billion-dollar grossing director, we all had kind of figured that he would be doing big budget A list movies and wouldn't want to return to a series of films that was started at the beginning of his journey, but return he has to direct the first episode and to get the ball rolling. People wanted more Evil Dead because they wanted more Ash and if you want more Ash then this is exactly what you get here. Ash is the same blow hard try hard screw up but yet somehow overcome the odds guy he has always been.

El Jefe The First Episode certainly has the right mix of horror and silly. It also manages to give you a big old dose of Bruce Campbell at his finest while still introducing a host of new characters and getting you intrested in them. I am really looking forward to seeing how the series progresses and I am very happy to hear that it has already had the green light for a second series. If you enjoy either a mix of horror and laughs or just think Bruce Campbell is an awesome actor then I strongly advise you to watch out for this show and give it a whirl as I personally think it is awesome.

Some people were worried that the show might fall on its ass after the first episode with the fact that the first one was the only one being directed by Sam Raimi but having watched episode two, “Bait” I am not only pleasently suprised at its quality I am also very positive about the fate of the show. It has its advanateges over the pilot. For one , all the exposition is done with, everything has been set up, all of the characters are in place so it has more freedom just to go for the laughs and for the gore.

Originally when I heard Starz was producing Ash Versus Evil Dead as a half-hour show I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't an hour long thing however the pacing on this episode seemed to be great not to spoil to much but it opens with Ash and Pablo having to deal with a deadite and then goes on to a dinner with there friend and her mother who may or may not be another deadite. There are some awesome one liners just as quotable as anything from the movies.

I wont say anymore just seriouly check out this show

SNES game review 88: Super Return of the Jedi

It is an interesting time to be a Star Wars fan. There is a brand new movie starring pretty much all of the actors from the original trilogy plus some new faces coming out this Christmas but there is also a new big Star Wars game Star Wars battlefront to look forward to on PS4, Xbox One and PC. I was reading about a special limited edition PlayStation 4 that is being released featuring a fully customized PlayStation4 and DualShock4 wireless controller inspired by Darth Vader, a copy of Star Wars Battlefront and a voucher containing download codes for four classic Star Wars games Super Star Wars, Star Wars Racer Revenge Star Wars Jedi Starfighter and Star Wars Bounty Hunter. So what has this got to do with reviewing SNES games? Well Super Star Wars is a SNES game, yes I have already reviewed it but it’s still exciting to see it get re-released on a modern format but its more than that it’s the possibilities its release opens up. There were 3 games in the Super Star Wars trilogy as well as a game based on the first three Indiana jones films released so if the one is coming out surly this opens the door for the others. If a SNES game can be released on the PS4 what is to stop SONY approaching other third party developers who had titles out on the SNES and offering them the chance to put them up for sale in SONY’s PlayStation store?

Obviously this excited me but more than that it convinced me it was the perfect time to review another game in the Super Star Wars trilogy, now I know what you’re thinking, Ok he is going to review Super Empire Strikes Back (or at least you would be if I didn’t throw the title of my review up above my review) but there is a certain bitter sweet thing I have to admit here and that is despite the fact that I really love the game and I am a diehard Star Wars fan I don’t actually own a copy of it and as I said I would only be reviewing games I owned and could play on actual physical hardware well yep you’ve guessed it I jumped to the next one Super Return of the Jedi.

Originally I played Super Return of the Jedi very close to its release because an older friend of mine was a diehard star Wars fan, he collected the old figures (as I also did) he had the posters in his room and he waited patiently for more Star Wars be it film or book or game. We had spent so many hours together watching the films, playing the old Atari 2600 games and talking about it that I guess he felt he needed me to be a part of his experience so on the very day he got the game he rushed over and we jumped in to it.

The main thing to take note of about the third and final SNES adaptation of the original Star Wars trilogy is that it is very much more of the same if you have played either Super Star Wars or Super Empire Strikes back then really what you are getting is more of the same. I think there are a lot of tweaks and a lot of layers of polish added to this game in this way it reminds me of another game, I have talked about another third part to a Trilogy and that is Donkey Kong Country 3. You can see clearly in places that the game is more refined than its predecessors but in being a sequel based on what you could call an upgraded engine it wasn’t as original and as hard hitting as the first in the series. People were generally surprised that Super Star Wars was as great as it was but they walked in to Empire and Jedi expecting nothing less. Just like in the case of Donkey Kong country 3 I feel this game was a little bit shadowed by the PlayStation, sure this game came out about five months or so before the PlayStation but it was to some degree shadowed by the new machines hype, I knew people who were busy selling their Super Nintendo stuff in an attempt to be ready to make the jump to the next generation of machines and these people didn’t stop to look at what was coming out in the here and the now.

Much like in Super Star Wars this game has excellent presentation. The game succeeds in recreating the atmosphere of the film just as well as its prequels did, it has all of the same little touches the opening text crawl the wonderful 16bit rendition of John Williams’ classic music there are also areas in where this game excels above and beyond its predecessors. A much larger cartridge was in fact Super Return of the Jedi came on a 16-Megabit cart which is twice the size of the cart used on the original Super Star Wars. The game needed it as well with far more playable characters, more levels and even more effects.

Something a lot of people talk about with this trilogy is the difficulty, they are often referred to as hard games. In fact when it came to the original I think there was a definite issue with its difficulty curve, with the game seeming to have some rather hard levels early on before you had properly gotten to grips with it there was also some climbing in the game where one bad move could see you screaming as the last fifteen minutes of gameplay was torn out from under you and these issues seem a lot less present in Jedi, strangely to me at least it feels like a much easier game.

In conclusion, do I think this is a better game than Super Star Wars and what kind of score do I think it deserves?  This is a tough question to answer as a sequel it is very much a case of bigger better more and that should make me instantly go yes its better so I guess from that point it is yet I don’t think I can give it a higher score or recommend it over Super Star wars so I find myself stuck giving it the same score 8 out of 10. These games are ideal when treated as parts of a bigger whole. If you want to sample this game it is available on the Wii’s virtual console however if you would like a physical copy unless you’re lucky and find it out somewhere in the wilderness you will be looking at paying about £15 to £20 for a loose pal cart or around £40 for a boxed version. There are certainly far worse games you could spend your cash on.

SNES Game review 87: Kevin Keegan's Player Manager

Whenever a sim related game seems to come to a console I always hear terms on the lines of ‘’oh it’s been dumbed down for the console retards.’’ The truth is yes some things will have to be altered when bringing a game or type of game which has previously relied on the use of a mouse and a keyboard with over 50 keys on it on to a system which uses a joypad with a d pad and only around eight buttons. This doesn't always have to be a bad thing though there are certain games which have made the jump from PC to console which I have really enjoyed. One example would be Sim City, I actually prefer the SNES version, another example would be the original X-Com Enemy unknown, I think that worked really well on the original PlayStation.

Now Kevin Keegan's Player Manager was based on Player Manager a game released in 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST and PC. Player Manager was the first game to combine both managing and playing. The engine used for the actual football playing part of the game borrows heavily from the match engine used in the Kick Off which was developed by Dino Dini and Anco Software, who also created Player Manager. The best way to describe it is as a very light and quick kick about. The ball doesn’t stick to your feet like in some games, you actually need the skill to move with it, overall it feels very basic and out of your control, it feels sort of like a NES game but really the playing is not supposed to be the focus of this game, it’s a management game that happens to let you play the games as well, at least that’s the way I see it.

This is one case where I wish things had been dumbed down more, when putting the cart in and trying to play it without a manual it really becomes a game of guesswork, a bit of clicking here and there and I soon managed to play a match. You see one of the big draws of this game was supposed to be the fact that you could manage and you could play, but they certainly didn’t dumb things down that much, and they certainly didn’t think that anyone might one day pick this game up without a manual. I am there trying to play the game and I am met with icons. I find myself clicking one thing to see what happens finding myself on another screen full of icons, being met with a dead end in one case and then seeming to come full circle with the frustration growing. Eventually I managed a few matches and to make a little progress but the game really has not aged well. I wanted to just watch the games be played and make the behind the scenes decisions but couldn't work out if this was possible.

I try to review games fairly taking in to account when they were released and trying to sample as much of the game as possible but in this case I just found it all frustrating. I didn't enjoy what I did play and I just wanted to put it down straight away and load up one of the various much better football management games I have on my PC. If you’re not worried about having the newest of the new then you can get a football manager game through steam for a couple of quid. I feel bad giving this game a score, I mean at the time on the SNES if you wanted a football management game it was kind of a case of like this or lump it, forced to rate it though I would give it a 3 out of 10, I really didn’t rate it. I can say though if you have a SNES and are looking at collecting games then unless you can get a copy with a manual it might be worth giving this one a miss and getting a football management game on a different system. I paid £1 for my cart from a pawn store so I don’t feel like I have lost much. If you do want a cart of this a pal cart tends to go for about £5 online including postage but copies with a manual are usually quiet a lot more. Honestly give this game a miss.

SNES GAME REVIEW 83: TOYS

Toys was a 1992 fantasy comedy film directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robin Williams one of the in my opinion most talented comedians people have had the pleasure of seeing on film yet even though it hurts me to criticise something staring the man the film was pants. This is not just my opinion though the thing tanked at the box office at the time of its release, despite having not only Williams but an impressive cast in general and a forty three million dollar budget.  The film was criticised for a lack of plot focus and poor direction even to the point that its director was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Director. The real thing it proved though was that despite his amazing talent Robin Williams could be in a flop and that his raw talent was not enough to turn any old mess in to gold.

Now it is a sort of unwritten rule in the world of video games and to be honest this was even more true back in the SNES days that if it is a movie license then nine times out of ten it is going to be a steaming bag of manure. So before this game came out no one expected anything of it after all it was a video game not only based on a film but based on a bad film.

So Toys was an Action game based on the film, developed by Imagineering Inc which was an in house develop for the publishing company Absolute Entertainment. It was released in 1993. In general all the company had ever released on Nintendo platforms was a bunch of games that either had received either very mixed or very mediocre reviews  including a bunch of Bart Simpson based NES games and TV quiz based NES games so as far as I remember expectations were absolutely in the gutter. This being true I avoided it like the plague, I remember seeing it on store shelves for £40 and then less and less and less until it was like £5 in bargain bins and I still didn’t try it. Sure at this very moment I am considering buying one of the apparently worst PS4 games released so far for £5 to see if it’s as bad as people claim but back when the SNES was out I was having to use my pocket money to get games or I was having to ask for them for Christmas, £5 I would have spent on this would have been £5 I couldn’t put towards a game of some actual worth. So here I am now trying this game for the first time years and years after its release. It could be argued that I am going to judge it on nowadays standards as opposed to based on how it stands when compared to games of its time but trust me I will keep what things were like back at the time very much in mind.

Ok so popping it in the first thing you are met with is the intro sequence which is nothing special at all it literally just tells you the story with blinding white and light blue text which seems to come out of a static elephant statue as words written in water. Now one thing they did right was to not try to make the whole film in to a game scene for scene, some parts of a film just wouldn’t really translate to a game as it stands the game basically starts in the last third of the film with you infiltrating the Zevo Toy Factory that is being run by General Leland Zevo.

The kindest thing I can say about the graphics is that they are extremely average for when this game came out, sure I might just have played Donkey Kong Country 3 one of the finest looking game on the SNES but don’t worry I popped a few games in the slot between this and that to cleanse my pallet and still came away with average being the nicest thing I could say. The music's also can kindly be described as average but it is also totally 100% forgettable. The sound effects are best explained with the term mixed bag, sure some of them are kind of nice but others are just plain awful. The controls don’t actually feel bad at all, which is what I usually find is the thing which makes for a bad game. I mean if it’s good to play and can hook you in then average or even bad graphics and sound can be forgiven and/or ignored.

The basic idea of the game is that you use happy fun children’s toys to try and attack and beat war based toys, so you’re shooting at tanks and helicopters with an elephant head peanut firing gun, or sending spinning tops or toy robot ducks at them. This could be fun, I mean look at other games such as Zombies Ate my neighbours were a wide variety of weapons all have different strengths and weaknesses, but the truth is all of these weapons seem to do nothing to the enemy, it really does feel like you’re throwing peanuts at a tank and hoping it will somehow blow up. In fact on my first go the only thing that seemed to die from my attacks was the walking bombs. On my second go I did get a little bit better, I collected more types of toys and worked out where to stand so I could hit things more than they hit me and I did manage to kill a jeep or two but the cameras you need to get rid of are surrounded by tanks and I literally used everything I had to try and destroy a tank and got nowhere. I even tried to attack the thing I am certain is the camera in case I could just run in destroy it and jog on before the tanks could kill me and that didn’t work. I actually cannot make any progress in this game at all and this sucks the very fun out of what in theory could have been a good fun game.

I have to score this game pretty low and I would not recommend it to anyone unless they are a diehard collector who just wants everything and then I would say make sure you get it cheap.  It doesn’t feel as broken as other bad games I have played like Ultraman and The Rocketeer but I think I actually got less fun out of it and was more frustrated, rocketeer might have been a mess but with effort I made some progress. Bearing all of this in mind and the fact that the main purpose of a game is entertainment I feel I have to give this a score of 2 out of 10. If you’re a glutton for punishment or a collector the cheapest I can find it for online at this very moment in time is £10 for a cart. I paid £4 for my copy, £4 with free postage complete and in fairly good condition my fiancee actually helped me purchase it so here is just a small acknowledgement and shout out for the magnificent lady who helps and supports me with my game collecting and associated hobbies. The copy I got was advertised as an NTSC version which I think might have helped but when it arrived it was PAL. Do I regret buying it? Not really I like to see what exists for a machine both good and bad and at least now I can have my own opinion rather than having to just say ‘’well I have heard its bad’’.

If you want a fun game based around toys then I would strongly recommend Toy Soldiers on the Xbox 360 live arcade which sells for the excellent price of £6.75 , it also has two sequels the first of which I have also tried and loved and the second of which I am strongly considering purchasing. I recommend you look the series up.

SNES Review 81: WWF Super WrestleMania

Ok so I kind of feel like I should have tackled this game earlier so I could pace out the WWF reviews but oh well it’s a bit late now (WWF the former name of what is now known as the WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment). So WWF Super WrestleMania is a multiplatform wrestling video game based on the World Wrestling Federation it was released in 1992 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. The game was developed by a company called Sculptured Software and was released on the Super Nintendo by the infamous LJN.

Sculptured Software Inc. was a video game developer based in the Salt Lake City, Utah metropolitan area. There area of specialisation seemed to lay in the field of porting games to differing platforms. They were responsible for at least 8 wrestling games as far as I know with the last being WWF Warzone on the PS1. They were responsible for two other 16-bit WWF games, WWF Royal Rumble and WWF Raw, which I will hopefully talk about in the future.
Now I am going to talk about one of my first and biggest issues with this game. Despite being pretty much the same game on both the SNES and Mega Drive with minor differences someone decided that they would give the games different roster’s, I am not sure if there was any real reason for this, maybe they thought it might inspire some people to buy both?

The SNES roster is a little bit larger, with ten wrestlers compared to the mega drives eight. The only wrestlers in both versions are Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Ted DiBiase. The SNES version also includes Jake Roberts, The Undertaker, Sid Justice, The Legion of Doom, and The Natural Disasters. The Mega drive version has The Ultimate Warrior, Papa Shango, Irwin R. Schyster, The British Bulldog, and Shawn Michaels. Yes old games didn’t have the dizzying amount of wrestlers you would find in a modern game but why oh why split the number between platforms, surly if you have done the work on the character it wouldn’t be that hard to have them in both versions would it?

It is not like there is mountains and mountains of effort made in making each wrestler feel different, sure they might look different but all wrestlers share the same set of standard wrestling moves slams, suplexes, dropkicks, clotheslines etcetera. There is only a few modes basically a one-on-one mode, tag team mode, and four-on-four Survivor Series elimination style match mode.

It needs to be remembered that when this came out Wrestling was at an all-time high, the crowd for SummerSlam 1992 was one of the biggest in WWF history. Hopes were high as well due to the fact that we had been treated to WWF Superstars the arcade game followed with the release of WWF WrestleFest in 1991 which were absolutely awesome arcade games. We all felt that with the added power of our 16bit consoles in comparison to the 8bit machines we had left behind we could get something which would not be too far away from these great games and that we would be able to remake some of the best matches we had witnessed recently.

Graphics wise by now days standards the graphics are not up to much but I guess for the time it came out really they were not bad at all the wrestlers look like they're real-life counterparts and everything moves around how you would hope for. As far as sound goes well there really is not much sound, there is the title screen music, and the wrestlers theme music and then the odd grunts and groan. I suppose the best thing you can say is it serves its purpose.

I have made this point already but it needs saying again every wrestler has exactly the same moves as all the rest, there is no reason to have a favourite beyond the fact it is the one you liked to watch as a kid. There are no specials or finishers. Beyond this it needs stating that the way you perform the moves is through button mashing, he who mashes quickest wins, which I guess is not the worst way to handle things but it does mean you will batter the heck out of your pads if you have too many heavy button-mashing. I am not criticising the button mashing blaming it for the game I blame the fact that it all just feels a little soulless, it lacks the sense of fun and tension which you got from the arcade WWF games I mentioned earlier.

Would I recommend this game? Not really I would give it a 4 out of 10. Maybe once this was pretty much the best you would get on a console when it came to wrestling, well at least without importing or waiting till latter in the consoles life span. I am sure rather than spending the £7 this game tends to go for as a loose cart online you would be much better served going in to a shop and looking for a modern wrestling game with at least 3 times the characters, additions we now have like create a wrestler, either that or look into a none WWF related game like Saturday night slam masters or import a copy of fire pro wrestling if you want a good Snes wrestling game and don’t mind paying a little more or going to a little more effort.

Snes Review 80: Donkey Kong Country 2

What with Rare Replay having come out just recently celebrating the companies long history I thought it would be a good time to review a SNES game made by them. Now there are no SNES games on Rare replay with 3 of them it is because Nintendo owns the rights to them these are the Donkey Kong Country games. Now I already reviewed the first Donkey Kong Country so now I guess it is time to talk about its first sequel.

So Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest or as it is known as in Japan Super Donkey Kong 2: Dixie & Diddy was a 1995 adventure platforming video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in November 1995 in Japan and America coming here mid-December. Now I wish I could tell a heart-warming tale of my youth in how I waited for this game with bated breath or how I got it and my friends got it and we all played it together but the real truth is it largely passed me by. There used to be a great game shop in my small town and the guy who owned it had a Japanese Super Nintendo Television, it was literally a TV with a cart slot in the top and he had the Japanese version of this in there on it trying to encourage sales, I used to fetch him coffee and check on competitors prices for him and in return he gave me enough cash to get myself a coffee as well and let me play on the games. So I played enough of it there to know that it was good but it launched just after the original PlayStation and everyone was saving and scrambling trying to get their hands on one of those.

It is a shame when the twilight games for one system get shadowed by the arrival of new technology but part of the world of Video games is built on this continual technological progress. I eventually got my own copy of Donkey Kong country 2 as a boxed NTSC American game along with American copies of the other two Donkey Kong Country games but what I used for the purpose of this review was a loose Japanese Cart I picked up about 4 months ago.
A s the title suggests, this is really Diddy Kong’s game, in fact you can’t even be Donkey Kong in it, he has been kidnapped and the plot of the game is that Diddy along with a female companion called Dixie is on a quest to rescue him.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as in the original but most players will notice that the levels soon increase in difficulty, this would make it a bit tough as a starting point for newcomers but it is ideal for those who have played the original as it lets you sort of carry on enjoying the gameplay without you having to be babied through the start of the game. Diddy Kong’s Quest is pretty much equal in terms of its graphics and audio to its predecessor but really the first one was pushing the machine hard so it would be foolish to have expected any great leaps. The atmospheric orchestrated soundtrack returns, providing catchy and eerie tunes alike. The music is beautiful, I cannot fault it even in the slightest and the graphics are very detailed, with brilliant charter animation and design which is absolutely full of character.

Much like in the first game you get to switch between the games two characters. Diddy is the quicker character, but Dixie has the ability to glide in the air by using her pigtails, which begs the question how in the heck does that work? There are still animals to ride, things to collect and bonus stages to enjoy. If you have played the first game then you know exactly what you are getting yourself into.

To be honest I really like this game and would have no trouble recommending it, it is a lot better than some of the PlayStation games which people were going wild for at its time of release. A lot of us would probably have been better off enjoying this and biding our time waiting a little longer for the PlayStation but it’s easy to say that in hindsight. I would however recommend the original first unless you already own that as it is a much better starting point and would most probably be a great deal easier to find. If forced to give this game a score I would give it an 8 out of 10, it’s a sold good looking chunk of platforming but it really is a typical by the numbers sequel.

OK so if you want to buy it how much of an investment are you looking at? Well it’s on the Wii U Virtual console for the usual price (I think it’s about £6.50 it’s been awhile since I have purchased a SNES game on there) which if you just want to play it is a fair figure for a great game like this. If you want a real pal cartridge the price for a copy seems to start around £18 but in some cases can be much higher, I have seen actual retro stores try to get up to £40 for a loose cart, boxed versions will usually start around £40 with the condition and price varying widely. If you want to save some cash but still play it on a Super Nintendo and can play imports I have frequently seen Japanese copies on eBay under the name Donkey Kong Country 2 including postage go for around £6 to £7 and with it being a cartoon platformer there is no real language barrier this would probably be my recommendation.

Shadowrun Snes game review 79

Sometimes when you look back on certain video games they remind you of more than the game sometimes they will remind you of a time, a place or a person. A lot of the games I have reviewed and talked about have connections like this. Combatribes for example reminds me of a local Pizza parlour in my home town. The main reason for this is because they had it in there for a long time, it was pushed in the corner and you’d stick a few twenty pence pieces in it and see how far you could get while you were waiting for your pizza to be made, most of the time this would be after having seen something in the local cinema. The cinema is gone now as is the arcade machine but the pizza parlour is still going strong but every time I pass it I look in that lonely corner and sigh wishing there was still an arcade machine there.

The game I am going to talk about today though doesn’t remind me of a time or a place it reminds me of a person, a friend.  This particular friend had a love of RPG style games that seemed to have no limit, he was the first one to get and play all of the final fantasy games, secret of mana, etcetera. Most people would quickly see what he had gotten and after listening to him excitedly go on and on about it or after him turning up at their house with it singing its praises well let’s just say they would be buying it as soon as possible. One game though he just couldn’t seem to get anyone interested in, I have to admit on first glance even I couldn’t see what it was that attracted him to it. After sitting and watching him restart the game in front of me though it wasn’t long before I was asking for a go. The game was ShadowRun.

I had heard a little bit about the original Shadowrun the pen and paper role playing game but when it came to that kind of thing the people I knew where generally into citadel miniatures Warhammer 4000. I still have never played the original roleplaying game of Shadow run so I won’t be comparing this game to it nor have I ever done but knowing this at the time did give me a rough idea of what to expect.

Ok so the story goes a little like this it is 2050 you play a guy called Jake Armitage, an information courier who is shot supposedly dead and taken to the morgue. You wake up on the slab with a sore head and no idea of who you are. Your basic mission throughout the game is to try and work out who you are and what happened to you. You’re in a world with guns which are basically based on sort of current technology, but there are orcs and trolls, not the dumb kind who walk around naked holding spears and axes, no these guys wear leather jackets have shotguns, pistols, uzi’s, hacking computers and hire themselves out as thugs, protectors, hackers, killers etcetera.  I won’t spoil any more of it than this but this gives you a basic idea of the world this game is set in and your place within it.
Ok so to get a few things out of the way this is not a graphically impressive game for a start the sprites are small, sometimes rather lacking in detail but there is often quite a lot of enemies moving around on screen shooting all over the place so you can kind of see why.

The levels of animation on the sprites are also at times rather limited and there are issues of repetition with sprites and the portraits used for faces when you are speaking with people being reused again and again. I can see why some people would be put off by this but it would be a shame if people were to judge it based on appearances and not try and get in to it.

The music is decent and easy enough to listen to, but it’s not impressive not when compared to some of the beautiful RPG soundtracks that found their way on to the SNES but it fits and it doesn’t annoy so it works.

The game almost feels like you should be playing it with a mouse, its part RPG but then there is also at times a sort of point and click element to it. You highlight doors or cupboards and select options like ‘’look’’ ‘’open’’ etcetera. You also do the same sort of thing when interacting with individuals picking what you want to say. The talking with people part is handled quiet interestingly there are various topics of conversation that you can use these form a database which  can be made larger through picking up new terms from the people you talk to. So, to explain this, imagine that you talking with a person and they mention a club ‘’the purple banana’’ then the name of this club if it is highlighted will go into your topics database, and you will able to ask anybody that you meet about the club by selecting ‘’the purple banana’’ from your list of topics (this club is not really in the game but it helps me make my point without spoiling anything). This actually makes you feel you have a lot more freedom than in some games when it comes to talking to other characters, there is a lot of un-needed answers added in just to make the world feel real and I appreciate the effort that’s gone in to this.

The graphics are not amazing nor is the sound, the story is interesting if clichéd at points but the world they have built up around the game feels big and real, if you can get past how basic it looks on the surface and get your head in the game, get your heart in to the story then you have an incredible game here. I feel very comfortable giving this game a very hearty recommendation and scoring it 9 out of 10. It only loses out on perfection due to its lack of graphical and audio polish and a bit of repetition but none of its issues can hold it back once you have found yourself deep in its clutches. It is also quite a long game so provides a good ratio of bang for your buck. An English cart typically seems to end up going for around the £35 to £40 price point which is a lot, I haven’t even seen a boxed one in I don’t know how long, but if you can play American games you can with some searching cut that price down to around £25 and this is a rare case when I would say its worth it (Also to my knowledge there has never been a digital virtual console version of this on any system). As a side note if you don’t want to invest so highly in this game either because it’s a fair bit of cash or your worried that it won’t be your thing there are some new PC shadowrun games available on steam which are very much in the style of this game. Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun Dragonfall are both about £11 each but I have seen them go down to as low as about £4 during steam or humble bundle store sales so if it sounds interesting keep your eyes open.

So what happened to my friend who introduced Shadowrun on the SNES to me? He has moved to America now and no longer plays Video games.  I don’t get to talk to him that often as he is busy with his work and family but I will always think back and remember him as that excited guy who couldn’t wait for RPG’s to come out, who would buy some of them in Japanese and just plough his way through them the best he could and I will never be able to play a shadowrun related game without thinking of him and smiling.