Sega Master System #2: Action Fighter

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Release Date: November 1987

Does this look like a real game you would want to play? Sega bungles it again.

There are a few things you can expect with Sega Master System games. They tended to have boring titles and bad cover art. There was also a frequent problem of the name on the box and cartridge not matching. Action Fighter doesn’t have the latter problem, but it has the first two. The name gives you no information about it whatsoever, and the box art is even more generic. The magnifying glass makes it look like it is about a highway detective. Nope it’s a Spy Hunter clone. I’ve never been the biggest Spy Hunter fan, and the knockoff version doesn’t change my opinion much, but it’s not a worthless game either. It’s just not a particularly interesting one.

This is definitely a picture of a spy in the middle of a hunt

 At least it’s more interesting than the title. I knew something was up when I got my first mission briefing. I was ready for some fast motorcycle shooting action when I discovered that I was going to be destroying some battleships. Getting from highway action to high-seas adventure did intrigue me enough to want to delve into the game further. It turns out you earn powerups which turns your motorcycle into a plane. What starts out as a motorcycle racer turns into a vertical shooter. It goes back and forth the entire game. Before you have to lose your lives there is a timer, so that helps you find the parts you need without having to worry about crashing too much. Sadly, the developers weren’t going to let the players get off that easy.

Yay for self promotion!

 Now I will admit that I am not the greatest gamer in the world, but I am not a die every five seconds gamer. That was the problem here. They decided since there is a timer instead of lives they would put loads of enemies to kill the player almost constantly. There are just too many enemies on the screen, and you are too big of a target to ever get very far along. Now I am sure that if I practiced I would get better, but it’s just not interesting enough of a game for me to want to put in the effort. The setup for every level is the same, and so if you don’t like the first level much you won’t like any of the others. There’s just not much motivation to move forward other than trying to get a better score, which I admittedly I always enjoy, but I don’t enjoy it that much in this game.

Here's those battleships I talked about

 So the first game alphabetically is a little bit of a disappointment. I also wanted to review it first and move through my games alphabetically, but I couldn’t find it at the time. So you were doubly disappointing to me Action Fighter. Have fun being number fifty! You’re still less frustrating than Dragon Crystal, but if I am going to go for a high score I’d rather be playing Galaxian. It is fun having a top 50 though. If anyone knows a better way for me to post my full list without putting it at the bottom of my posts every time please let me know. I want it to be available, but it’s starting to get a little long. I hope you don’t mind awkward screenshots until then.

Sega Master System Quality Percentage: 1/2 or 50%

1.  Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2. Super Mario Odyssey

3. The Legend of Zelda

4. Galaga

5. Donkey Kong

6. Exodus: Ultima III

7. Pac-Mania

8. Wrecking Crew

9. Super Pac-Man

10. Pac-Man

11. Viva Pinata

12. Dragon View

13. Excitebike

14. Drakkhen

15. Todd’s Adventures in Slime World

16. Arc the Lad

17. Clu Clu Land

18. Tails’ Adventures

19. Scrapyard Dog (Lynx)

20. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

21. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

22. Metro-Cross

23. Double Dragon

24. Alex Kidd in Miracle World

25. Panic Restaurant

26. Felix the Cat

27. Adventure

28. Ice Climber

29. Gaplus

30. Dragon Spirit

31. Pinball (NES)

32. Ninja Golf

33. Fast Eddie

34. Super Soccer

35. Gopher

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

37. Entombed

38. Red Sea Crossing

39. Baraduke

40. Demon’s Crest

41. Brave Battle Saga

42. Evoland

43. Tennis

44. Renegade

45. Beethoven

46. Hogan’s Alley

47. Gamma-Attack

48. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

49. Galaxian

50. Action Fighter

51. Dragon Crystal

52. Cosmic Commuter

53. Hot Pixel

54. PocketBike Racer

55. Wild Gunman

56. Defunct

57. Gyruss (2600)

58. Looney Tunes Racing

59. Squidlit

60. Gordo 106

61. Baseball

62. Space Jockey

63. Home Alone

64. Birthday Mania

65. Bad Street Brawler

66. Burly Men at Sea

67. Wayne’s World

68. WeakWood Throne

69. X-Men (HyperScan)

70. My Name is Mayo

71. Marvel Heroes

72. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends

73. Ben 10

(screenshots are from Mobygames.com)

Game Gear #1: Dragon Crystal

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

Release Date: 1991

 

 (Luckily the game doesn't actually take place from the crystal's point of view)

Every so often someone who didn’t live through it will ask us older gamers why the Game Gear got toppled by the Game Boy. It was technically superior after all. It was in color and had a backlit screen plus sharper graphics. The answer to this is is of course complicated, but the key advantage the Game Boy had was games. The Game Boy had a large and interesting library of games with many exciting exclusives. Almost all of the key Nintendo franchises got at least one Game Boy exclusive. The Game Gear, however, has one of the most boring libraries in all of gaming. It is almost completely comprised of miniature versions of games already released for the Genesis. Outside of a few Sonic games there’s just not much to get excited about unless you like inferior versions of licensed titles. That’s why I really wanted to like Dragon Crystal. It’s something different on the Game Gear. It’s a classic roguelike in an era where those were rare especially on consoles. It’s hard to think of another one other than the similar Fatal Labyrinth released during the 16-bit era. Of course, it was released on the Sega Master System in Europe so it’s not a total exclusive, but it’s still more interesting than 8-bit Aladdin. Unfortunately, it has the worst type of flaw that any roguelike can have.

If you’ve never played a roguelike they work like this: you wander around in a randomly generated dungeon trying to get to the end without dying. There are usually levels to gain and equipment to find making them nominally RPGs, although they are often missing other RPG conventions like world maps and NPCs. The main hallmark of a roguelike is permadeath meaning that if you die it’s back to the start with a brand new level 1 character. Dragon Crystal doesn’t completely adhere to this parameter. It does have the potential for a few continutes. However, it doesn’t help the game become much easier. Dragon Crystal is difficult through and through. When difficultly is done right I find it to be an asset, but when it’s done wrong it can really ruin a game. Dragon Crystal definitely has too much of the wrong kind of difficulty.

 

But first the positives. I certainly like the way it looks. It’s a game where the maps are hidden, and uncovering them involves creaking along through colorful environments. In a genre where everything tends to look the same it’s nice to have a game with several different backgrounds and monster designs. Walking through giant smiling cacti instead of plain black backgrounds goes a long way. I also like that there is a good good amount of items to uncover. It encourages more exploration when there might be something new out there to find. Of course, identifying the items can be dangerous in itself because they are only listed by colors until you use them. Still, if the potions and books are found on the lower levels they are usually not fatal. I enjoy the game’s sense of style so that’s a point in its favor.

 

However, it all falls apart with the genre’s biggest flaw. Success in Dragon Crystal is almost entirely based on luck. All the equipped weapons, or at least through the twentieth floor where I hit a wall and couldn’t go on, are close range. The only ranged attacks come from items. There are some monsters that will pretty much destroy you if you don’t have ranged items. So if you haven’t found any along the way you are going to die. There aren’t very many item slots either, so you are not going to be able to stockpile a ton of them. You just have to hope that there are going to be some extra ones near the monsters. What’s worse is there are monsters on the higher floors that drain your stats on almost every hit. The only way to recover them is to find the right potions. This can be hard to do when strength has been reduced to almost zero and armor has been rusted. The only way to win is to find the right potions in the right place at the right time. And of course there are always plenty of monsters even when there aren’t plenty of potions. Also there’s no way to save on the original hardware. If you get drained in the final third of the game and can’t recover you are just out of luck, and it can take a couple hours to get there. Imagine playing the game for two hours only to have all your strength drained by a blue snail and having no way to recover. I don’t have to imagine because I lived it, and let me tell you it was not pleasant. Of course I was playing on 3DS where I was able to play with save states, but I think to actually beat the game I would have to save after almost every turn and reload if something bad happened. That’s not much fun either.

 

So if you had a Game Gear back in the early 90s and got tired of playing licensed platformers I could see buying Dragon Crystal. Actually it got very good reviews back in the day. However, I think it was more for the novelty than anything else. There just weren’t a lot of games like Dragon Crystal out there at the time. Today roguelikes are loved by indie developers and there’s just about every flavor of them on the market. I can compare Dragon Crystal to other games and see all of its flaws. I enjoy a challenge, but I don’t like a challenge that’s based on pure luck, especially when you can’t tell if your doing well or not until a couple hours in. The novelty is enough to keep it out of the red, but the best I can do is 37^th right behind Galaxian. The best way to play it might just be to see how far you can get instead of trying to go to the finish, but that’s still not much fun. I’ll probably still try to beat it someday though. I’m just that kind of person.

Game Gear quality precentage: sadly 0/1 so far

 

1. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

2. Super Mario Odyssey

3. The Legend of Zelda

4. Galaga

5. Donkey Kong

6. Exodus: Ultima III

7. Pac-Mania

8. Wrecking Crew

9. Super Pac-Man

10. Pac-Man

11. Viva Pinata

12. Dragon View

13. Excitebike

14. Drakkhen

15. Arc the Lad

16. Clu Clu Land

17. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

18. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

19. Metro-Cross

20. Double Dragon

21. Ice Climber

22. Gaplus

23. Dragon Spirit

24. Pinball (NES)

25. Ninja Golf

26. Super Soccer

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

28. Red Sea Crossing

29. Baraduke

30. Evoland

31. Tennis

32. Renegade

33. Hogan’s Alley

34. Gamma-Attack

35. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

36. Galaxian

37. Dragon Crystal

38. Cosmic Commuter

39. Hot Pixel

40. PocketBike Racer

41. Wild Gunman

42. Defunct

43. Gyruss (2600)

44. Looney Tunes Racing

45. Squidlit

46. Baseball

47. Birthday Mania

48. Bad Street Brawler

49. Burly Men at Sea

50. X-Men (HyperScan)

51. My Name is Mayo

52. Marvel Heroes

53. Ben 10

(Images are from vgmuseum.com)