HyperScan #3: X-Men

Developer: Semi-Logic

Publisher: Mattel

Release Date: 10-23-06

This is the third and final HyperScan game I currently have in my collection, and thankfully I have saved the best for last. I know that’s not saying much, but X-Men actually comes fairly close to feeling like a real video game. It was the pack in game for the console so I guess they wanted to show off their best work. It also shows what the card system might’ve been like in more capable hands. Before you get too excited though I should say that it’s still a bad game. However, its a bad game comparable to other bad games. It doesn’t create a whole new level of badness like the other HyperScan games. 

See this looks like a real game!

X-Men is a traditional 2D fighting game that actually does a few things I like. In the game you can jump right in and fight or train in the danger room. I enjoy the danger room training because it gives the game a simulation feel. The mini games are simple but downright pleasant compared to my other Hyperscan experiences. It also shows off something that might’ve actually been fun with the card system. You could train your fighter, scan and save the stat increases, and take it over to your friends house to fight their best card battler. This was fairly novel in 2007 before everyone was playing online. It’s a shame they didn’t focus on multi-player more in other games. Of course there are still pointless cards to collect, and you can’t play at all without at least one character card, but at least the cards felt like they needed to exist this time around.

Sadly they still didn’t get around to making a quality game. The fighting is just about as simple as it gets. You just have to attack until you build up your special meter then hit the R button to use it. I’m not sure if there are other special moves because I didn’t really need to know. I did just fine mashing buttons. Now I have nothing against a fighting game that I am actually good at, but I do wish there was more strategy involved. I also wish the story mode was more fleshed out. Maybe it’s in the instruction book, but I would like to know why I was fighting Iceman. Was he a villain at the time? I don’t know my 21^st century X-Men all that well. It’s just another game element that they were too lazy to care about. It’s a shame because with some polish this could actually be a decent game.

For now this is the last HyperScan game I can review because the other two are a bit harder to find. I would love to be able to finish off a few more of my consoles. I think the system I have the next fewest games for is Turbografx-CD, but I have to get a new controller for that one before I can play it again so I’m not quite sure what is next. X-Men was good enough to go above My Name is Mayo. I know that is faint praise, but for a HyperScan game it feels like a real victory. I doubt the other two games will be hidden gems but maybe they won’t be complete disasters. That’s the best I can hope for.

HyperScan quality percentage: 0/3

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Wrecking Crew

7. Super Pac-Man

8. Pac-Man

9. Excitebike

10. Arc the Lad

11. Clu Clu Land

12. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

13. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

14. Metro-Cross

15. Ice Climber

16. Gaplus

17. Dragon Spirit

18. Pinball (NES)

19. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

20. Red Sea Crossing

21. Baraduke

22. Tennis

23. Hogan’s Alley

24. Gamma-Attack

25. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

26. Galaxian

27. Evoland

28. Cosmic Commuter

29. Hot Pixel

30. Wild Gunman

31. Defunct

32. Gyruss (2600)

33. Looney Tunes Racing

34. Squidlit

35. Baseball

36. Birthday Mania

37. Bad Street Brawler

38. Burly Men at Sea

39. X-Men (HyperScan)

40. My Name is Mayo

41. Marvel Heroes

42. Ben 10

HyperScan #2: Marvel Heroes

Developer: Semi-Logic

Publisher: Mattel

Release Date: 2006

Marvel Heroes is better than Ben 10 because at least it fooled me for a few minutes. For about the first 10 minutes of playing I thought that it might be an alright game and not just a big scam. Sadly I was wrong. It’s so similar to the scam of Ben 10 that I don’t even have much to say about it in my intro. It is interesting to see a bit of Marvel ephemera from right before Iron Man came out and changed their fortunes. However, if you want to get a copy of it for your Marvel collection you’ll probably want to leave it in the box.

"Wait till the kids at school see my dirty back alley card!" - Not even the dorkiest kid in class

Marvel Heroes is a side-scrolling brawler featuring different setups for different characters. The card gimmick in this one is that all the different character cards are esentially their own tiny games. I started up the Captain America story card that came packaged with the game and was surprised to find myself actually having a little bit of fun. It played pretty quickly, the controls were decent, and combat was actually fun. I was almost ready to move the game into the purple section and call the HyperScan not a total loss. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for it to all fall apart. The story mode that goes along with the card consisted of three short levels with a few comic panels in the place of load screens. Captain America is looking for Baron Zemo. Then he finds Baron Zemo. That’s the whole Captain America story and it only takes about ten minutes. At the end of it there was a prompt to scan a Captain America card, however the story card I had didn’t work. Apparently you need one card to play the story and a different card to save your stats. This machine never stops infuriating me.

Just look at this stupid thing! At least Whirlwind makes a pretty good fan.

When I scanned my regular Hulk card I found a very different and much worse game. First of all the character card version of the game makes scanning a much bigger necessity. I even had to scan a boss to fight. Does anyone want to play a game where they have to provide their own enemy? You could at least make complete levels Mattel. Then I started my game as the Hulk and instantly fell in a hole and died. It was a hole I couldn’t get over with my regular jump no matter what I tried. I discovered that Hulk has a long jump that is activated with one of the shoulder buttons, but it would’ve been nice to know before I got a game over trying to move past the first hole. Sadly the level is full of them. Any time there was a change of elevation I didn’t know if it was just a small cliff or a deadly hole. I spent the whole game worrying about falling to my death. I doubt Hulk would even get hurt much if he fell into the grand canyon so it’s annoying and nonsensical. Why did they put these holes everywhere? Why not just focus on fighting bad guys? There wasn’t anything like it in the Captain America part of the game. I guess each character is a completely different awful game. It’s like Action 52 if you had to buy the games in individually priced blind bags to get the whole set. It’s downright shameful.

Needless to say Marvel Heroes is another HyperScan disaster. The whole console reminds me of a video game you would see in an early 90s cartoon made by non gamers. Everything is slow and weird and the whole thing is designed to take parents’ money. Even the most unscrupulous smartphone games don’t quite sink to the level of the HyperScan. Hey why buy one good game when you could spend twice as much money and play a dozen bad games? That’s the flawed logic of history’s most flawed console. Marvel Heroes is saved from the cellar by virtue of it not being Ben 10. Thankfully the HyperScan only has five games so at worst I’m only going to have to write about it three more times. I just hope I have a little sanity left after I am done.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Wrecking Crew

7. Super Pac-Man

8. Pac-Man

9. Excitebike

10. Arc the Lad

11. Clu Clu Land

12. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

13. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

14. Metro-Cross

15. Ice Climber

16. Gaplus

17. Dragon Spirit

18. Pinball (NES)

19. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

20. Red Sea Crossing

21. Baraduke

22. Tennis

23. Hogan’s Alley

24. Gamma-Attack

25. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

26. Galaxian

27. Evoland

28. Cosmic Commuter

29. Hot Pixel

30. Wild Gunman

31. Defunct

32. Gyruss (2600)

33. Looney Tunes Racing

34. Squidlit

35. Baseball

36. Birthday Mania

37. Bad Street Brawler

38. Burly Men at Sea

39. My Name is Mayo

40. Marvel Heroes

41. Ben 10

HyperScan #1: Ben 10

Developer Semi-Logic

Publisher: Mattel

Release Date: 2006

At least the box is decent

The Mattel Hyperscan is an infamous console. If you read my blog you know that I like to be positive and try to find the good in games. I will say without hesitation however that the Hyperscan is not particularly good. Too harsh? Okay so I am underselling the low quality of the console. It only takes about ten seconds to realize that Mattel had thought of the money first and the quality of the games dead last. Their idea was to make games with collectable cards that enhanced the gameplay upon being scanned. They were obviously thinking about Pokemon when they designed it. Pokemon exists as both an insanely popular video game franchise and a playing card game. Mattel thought combining the two would be a surefire way to make a lot of money. Unfortunately they didn’t think about what it takes to make a successful video game console. The forgot that while the console was aimed at kids it was the parents who were going to be buying it. They could see right away that the whole thing felt like a scan. The cards weren’t just there to enhance the gameplay. They were, in fact, required to play the games. If your kid lost a card or needed one they didn’t have you’d have to buy more random booster packs to find the right one. You could potentially spend over 200 dollars to complete a set just to play a complete game. Meanwhile you could buy a Wii for almost that same price and have endless family fun playing Wii Sports which was a complete package free with the console. Their biggest blunder, however, was not the crass marketing strategy behind it. They somehow thought the console would sell itself and they didn’t need to make good games for it. How does one sell a console with terrible games that cost hundreds of dollars to get the full experience? At it turns out not well at all. The Hyperscan only had five games and was quickly forgotten. Luckily I am always here for the forgotten console and finally got to play Ben 10. Let me say upfront it’s not particularly good.

Hey you know what you should do here? That thing that makes us more money.

Playing Ben 10 is one of the least pleasant gaming experiences I have ever had. It’s one of the blandest, worst controlling platform games I have ever played made exponentially worse by the constant interruptions. I hate a game that doesn’t trust the player, but Ben 10 seems like it barely believes its players have brains. Practically every obstacle is prefaced with a dialogue box reminding you that it is an obstacle. I think even the youngest of gamers know to push a button to jump or that it’s bad to fall in holes. When there is an enemy on the screen I doubt anyone would think that they were supposed to stand still and wait for death. Ben 10 seems to think otherwise. It’s not a very complicated game. You go to the right, pick up items, and fight things. What’s worse is that the levels I played through don’t have checkpoints so any time I died I got to go back to the beginning of the level and hear all the instructions again. They can be skipped, but there is still a pause which slows down what’s already a painfully slow game. Why can’t you just let me turn into wild aliens and battle giant robots? That’s what I want in my Ben 10 game.

Scanned and ready to avoid meteors

Oh and get ready to die because the controls are awful as well. It’s one of those games where you feel like you’re on the Moon. It’s constantly floaty and unresponsive. Every jump feels like a leap of faith. I died dozens of times just trying to get past the first pit. All I have to do is grab a branch directly above the pit but it’s so easy to fall in. Transforming into one of the aliens only makes matters worse because they move much faster than human Ben making jumps even harder to time. Then of course every minute or so a character will pop up and remind you to scan a card. With as much scanning as you’ll need to do it’s best to play with the console in your lap. I don’t think that causes cancer, but it probably will cause your game to freeze not that you would really notice.

That brings me to my final complaint about this thing. Having to constantly scan cards is not a very pleasant experience. Ben 10 has 80 cards in total. What do you do with a set of 80 thick cards? Because of the chips in them they are much thicker than your average playing card. It’s like having a giant stack of Kraft Singles to keep up with. I don’t often get to compare games to a whole lotta cheese so at least that’s something. The cards serve all different functions in the games so you really do have to have them ready. You can’t even save without a card. Does constantly fumbling through dozens of cards and then bending over to scan them sound like very much fun? They don’t even look all that good so they don’t work as collectibles either. At least with Amiibos and Skylanders you get cool figurines that double as toys. 

Don't lose this card! I have no idea why they are shaped funny. 

So I played the game until I got to a giant wall that I couldn’t find a way to get past. It was one last insult in a game that already makes the player feel like a moron. To get past it I am pretty sure I need a card that I just don’t have. They actually expected the players to get stuck after ten minute of playing and actually want to go out and buy more cards. It’s hard to believe that anyone didn’t think this thing was a ripoff. Imagine having to run back to Walmart to buy a pack of cards in the slight hope that one will let you progress through the game. Then if you get the cards and don’t find the one you need you are still out of luck. That’s $10 down the drain. That’s more than my weekly allowance as a kid. I’d much rather save up for a month or so and buy a discounted Playstation 2 game. Of course so did everyone else on the planet because HyperScan was a monumental failure. So sorry Ben 10, you are not fun, you have lousy controls, and you are undoubtedly a ripoff. Welcome to the bottom of the list. I have no doubt that your HyperScan bretheren will be joining you soon.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Wrecking Crew

7. Super Pac-Man

8. Pac-Man

9. Excitebike

10. Arc the Lad

11. Clu Clu Land

12. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

13. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

14. Metro-Cross

15. Ice Climber

16. Gaplus

17. Dragon Spirit

18. Pinball (NES)

19. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

20. Red Sea Crossing

21. Baraduke

22. Tennis

23. Hogan’s Alley

24. Gamma-Attack

25. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

26. Galaxian

27. Evoland

28. Cosmic Commuter

29. Hot Pixel

30. Wild Gunman

31. Defunct

32. Gyruss (2600)

33. Looney Tunes Racing

34. Squidlit

35. Baseball

36. Birthday Mania

37. Bad Street Brawler

38. Burly Men at Sea

39. My Name is Mayo

40. Ben 10