Developer: ADK
Publisher: SNK
Release Date: 4-30-99
Crush Roller seems like an odd choice for SNK’s doomed handheld. Of course, they didn’t know that the Pocket Color was only going to last about a year, so they weren’t really out to maximize game quality. Almost a third of the game library is casino games after all. Still, when you line up all the thirty or so games you don’t really expect to see an enhanced remake of a twenty-year-old Pac-Man clone that had never seen a proper US console release before. It didn’t even have any name recognition because in America the game had been known as Make Trax. Still, arcade games often worked well on handhelds thanks to their quick gameplay. It’s just weird that for their first foray into classic arcade adaptations they went with such an obscure one. Oh well, in a couple of months they would release the original Pac-Man and everything would make sense again.
The game itself is a mixed bag that almost works but falls a little short. It’s a single screen maze game where you play as a paint roller trying to fill up the screen with paint. Yeah, that’s just a reverse Pac-Man. The original game only had one map, but the NGPC version fixes this by having many maps to discover. You can pick a path after you beat a level making it a maze within a maze. I’m not exactly sure how many playthroughs it would take to see every level, but I’m sure you’d be right sick of the game by then. There are also animal friends to collect along the way. In the original game there were animals that would pop out and ruin part of the painted path. In this version you can catch them. You can go back to the menu screen and look at them, but they otherwise don’t add anything to the gameplay. All you get is a picture and a very brief description. So that’s the game. You paint trails and avoid enemies until you get a high score, beat level 6-1 and see the somewhat disappointing game over screen, or reach your destination and have to turn your game off.
If it all sounds a bit repetitive that’s because it definitely is. I think the main problem is that they can’t decide what kind of game it is. Is it supposed to be a high score game or a more contemporary play-to-the-end type of game? I’d say for once the unlimited continues hurts the game. It erases the high score aspect because every time you continue your score starts over, and it takes out all the challenge of playing through all the levels. The enemies move randomly and get faster and faster, so in the later stages it becomes more about luck than strategy. You just keep continuing until you play a round where the enemies leave you alone. Also, despite the branching paths I couldn’t find any evidence of a true ending. It just seems to be the same sad game over screen every time. Maybe there’s something extra if I collect all the animals and complete every level, but I don’t really feel like finding out.
So, our first foray into the interesting world of the Neo Geo Pocket Color is a bit of a disappointment. I love old arcade games, so I really wanted to like this one. Unfortunately, there’s a big difference between playing an arcade game for a few minutes at a time and playing a console game for an hour. It just ends up being too shallow. They could’ve added extra wrinkles like new enemies and power-ups, but instead every level plays the same with only a slightly different map. It’s pleasant enough to keep it out of the red section, but it’s a perfect example of a purple “okay” game. I actually enjoyed Evoland better at #60 so it’s going to be my new #61. In recent years Crush Roller has become one of the most expensive games on the NGPC, so just remember that if you are paying 100 dollars for this game it’s more for collecting than for playing.
Neo Geo Pocket Color Quality Percentage: 0/1
images are from mobygames.com
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