Vectrex #2: Spike

Developer: GCE

Publisher: GCE

Release Date: 10-1983

No add-on needed!

 

Spike has such a good presentation that I really wanted to like it. I played it once and was ready to put it in the green column. It has a big cartoon mascot, synthesized voice, and neat pseudo-3d visuals. Unfortunately, first impressions are sometimes incorrect, and this game illustrates why I really need to play the games for a while before I can judge them.

 

Spike is a very early platform game that is pretty much nothing but platforms. You play as the titular Spike trying to save his girlfriend Molly from a bad guy named Spud. Yep, this is a Donkey Kong clone. The gameplay is much simpler than Donkey Kong though. The main objective is to move across scrolling platforms while collecting Molly’s bows and then exiting the door at the top. At least they’re bows according to Wikipedia. I could’ve sworn they were keys. It’s a bit hard to tell what is what in this game, which is a flaw I will admit. Eventually monsters show up and the platforms start to move faster, but the basic gameplay never changes.

 

Since this is Vectrex with its four action buttons the controls are a little overly complicated. One button jumps, one button moves the ladder, one button kicks to the left, and one button kicks to the right. This is much more complicated than it needs to be, and I think it works against the overall game. It would’ve been better if the ladders were in fixed locations. It takes out much of the strategy and tension when the ladders can just be moved anywhere. Also, the kicks don’t seem to do anything. Either that or they have to be so precise that I could never get one to land. It’s one of those cases where they had four buttons and were going to use them no matter what.

 

As an early attempt to copy Nintendo this game is interesting. GCE did something that every company would be doing in a few years. It’s an oddly innovative game in that respect. However, the gameplay is just too shallow to put it very high on the list. It stays out of the red because I would definitely play it again, but I don’t like it as much as Spin Ball. As much as I hate putting two games from the same console next to each other that’s just where Spike belongs. It is going right below Spin Ball at #77. That’s not bad for a weird old platform game, but I’m sure hoping that that Vectrex has some hidden gems. I only have twenty left to review so it better hurry up and impress me.

 

Vectrex Quality Percentage: 0/2

 Rankings:

 1. Spin Ball

2. Spike

(images are from mobygames.com)

Game Boy #3: Great Greed

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco

Release Date: 4-1-93

Now I know what the best non-Pokémon or Final Fantasy RPG on Game Boy is. Great Greed is an excellent game that pushes the limits of the console. Of course, it’s also one of those games that was $20 five years ago and now goes for about $150. I really hate the state of retro gaming these days. Luckily this is 2022, so it’s not hard to find a cheaper way to play. It’s certainly worth checking out though. It just shows what can be accomplished when a high-quality developer puts their heart and soul into a game.

 

Great Greed is a classic turn-based RPG, which of course is my favorite kind of game. Most RPGs on Game Boy are slow, but this one moves surprisingly fast even when level grinding. There is quite a bit of level grinding involved so be warned if you don’t like that sort of thing. They are able to speed things up by getting rid of the menu screens during battles. All the actions are mapped to specific buttons with the control pad used for spells which you have to equip. It works very well even if it means the options in battle are somewhat limited. The spells are mostly typical in this game, and I didn’t use offensive ones very often. I mostly used healing and status spells.

 Great Greed is one of those games that starts out silly but gets more serious and difficult as it goes on. The first person you meet is named Microwave, so you know it’s going to be a weird game. Most of the characters and places have food related names. It has both a fantasy and technological setting. In one area you have to save a pop singer from a record store which includes giant spinning records on the floor. However, Bio-Haz, the villain in the game, is menacing enough to never let things get too silly. It is well-balanced in its presentation. It also has a large amount of narrative for a Game Boy game. It’s very impressive in that way.

 

Be careful though, the last third of the game gets very difficult. Once you’ve passed through an area you can never go back. That means that when you get to the last town you are stuck there. Of course, it’s just about the only town in the game with no inn, so I struggled for a bit, especially since the final dungeon was full of difficult monsters. There is a person that sells healing items, but he’s not in a regular shop so I didn’t find him for a long time. Luckily leveling up fully recovers the hero, so I figured out how to time my level ups so that I could recover at just the right time. I thought this was going to be yet another RPG that played through the first two-thirds of only to get stalled and never finish. Luckily I was able to persevere. Hopefully I can do the same with The Sword of Hope II. I don’t have that many more Game Boy RPGs to finish after that one.

 There is one moment that is a little creepy though. At the end of the game the king lets you get engaged to one of his daughters. After the credits are over you can read biographies of all the sisters. It turns out that only one of them was over 18, and the youngest was only 11. Imagine accidentally getting married to an 11 year old. At least no marriage takes place, and is implied that the hero and his betrothed weren’t going to be married for a while. Still, it’s one of those semi-gross moments that comes up in JRPGs from time to time. It doesn’t ruin the game, but it was a weird thing to discover at the absolute last second.

 So this one is going high up on the list. It’s at a very respectable 22^nd right behind Tails’ Adventures. It’s one of the better 8-bit RPGs that I have played, and it’s a shame that it has gotten so expensive. It’s the kind of game that only the most dedicated RPG players have probably ever heard of, and the high price tag certainly doesn’t change that. I don’t think it was ever on the 3DS store either like so many other old handheld RPGs. It’s definitely a game that deserves some more attention. I feel like I’ve gone a little easy on Game Boy so far. All three games I have played have been high quality ones. I need to play some licensed crap just to even things out. Perhaps I will do that in the near future. Stay tuned!

 

Game Boy Quality Percentage: 3/3 or 100%

images are from mobygames.com

Game Boy Rankings

1. Great Greed

2. Knight Quest

3. Super Mario Land

Playstation 4 #3: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

Developer: Chinese Room Ltd.

Publisher: Sony

Release Date:  8-11-2015

The name and title screen really don't have any relation to the game itself

 Never have I played a game more cowardly than Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. It tries to be a profound look at human nature, but the developers were too afraid to commit to anything real that would give the game true meaning. The game starts after the story’s end, takes all the people out of the picture, and gets rid of practically all gameplay elements. What this creates is a game almost impossible to connect to. There’s just so much nothing in this game. The fact that this game garnered so many positive reviews really show how desperate people in the gamer community are to elevate their hobby into the realm of art. People are so desperate for this type of validation that they will latch on to anything that even has a hint of deeper meaning. However, just because something is sad and ambiguous doesn’t make in meaningful. Sometimes a sad, boring game is just a sad, boring game. If the developers had any courage, they could’ve used similar themes and put them into an engaging game. Instead, they take the most basic themes of alienation and loss and decide to do nothing with them. Or rather, they make the player do nothing with them.

Hey, look it's some paint cans

 So the game goes like this. The world has ended and everybody is seemingly dead. It’s your job playing as a being of pure plot device to find out what happened. Spoiler alert: they did not go to the rapture. You do this by walking very slowly through the most boring-looking small town in all of England. It’s the kind of town where everybody has the same tv, microwave, radio, and garage full of paint cans. I know this because I looked in all those houses. It’s important to the game to walk through as many houses as possible. And yet, they are all basically the same. It’s another case of the developers being to afraid to actually give their game personality. Why should they make anything unique or interesting? I’ve seen plenty of garages in my life, and none of them looked much the same. Yet in this fictional setting where your only task is to slowly wander through houses everything is completely devoid of personality. If you want us to connect with the people in your story you have to make them seem like actual people. The graphics are used to make everything looks as real as possible, but it felt more artificial than even the most cartoony game. They work so hard to make it all look real and then spoil the illusion by replicating the same objects over and over again. Now I know practically every game reuses sprites and images more than once. The big different here is that there’s nothing but empty fields and bland houses to look at. It’s not just background sprites. It’s the whole game.

 

My least favorite part, though, is just how impersonal this game is. You collect clues by following a swoosh of light all over the map. You could really do nothing else in the game except follow the swoosh but exploring everywhere will give you even more details. When you get to certain spots you will hear the characters talking without ever being able to see them. Not only is this a lazy way to get out of having to animate any actual people but it makes connecting with the characters difficult. They never seem like more than flashes of light in an empty universe.

 

 

I felt pretty empty at the end of this one. It’s a game where you do nothing, connect to nobody, and come out of the experience with no further insights. All you do is follow the bouncing spirit and look at paint cans. My favorite part of the whole game was finally stumbling across the paint store. That’s not a good look. So once again we have a game that’s going to go below Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. At least that game was only thirty minutes and had a little action. I hope I stop getting games worse than Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots because I am sure getting tired of typing out that name. So Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture just barely makes it into my top 100, and I am very excited that I now have a top 100. It’s been a lot of purple and red lately on the ol’ list so hopefully I will play a good game again soon. I just never know how things are going to turn out when I follow my whims. Perhaps I just don’t have very good whims these days. Oh well.

Playstation 4 Quality Percentage: 0/3

(images are from mobygames.com)

Vectrex #1: Spin Ball

Developer: GCE

Publisher: GCE

Release Date: July 1983

Have you ever seen a Vectrex box before? I think they look nice.

 It seems like there’s always something stopping me from reviewing an entire library of games. There are a couple of problems reviewing Vectrex games. The first problem is that six of the games require peripherals that I don’t have access to. Alright, so I’ll review the other 22 games. That’s a very small amount. Well, it turns out that a Vectrex costs about 400 dollars on the low end these days so it’s time to emulate. I will admit that I am never going to get the true experience of a Vectrex by playing it on a modern tv with a modern controller. This was the console that came with its own tv and had a controller with a gaudy four action buttons in 1982. Still, I can judge if the games are good or not. So, what’s the problem now? The first game I picked out to play is the one that doesn’t emulate well. I was going to call Spin Ball an absolute mess. The ball traveled through walls, and it was all very flickery. Thankfully it’s not the game’s fault and without the emulation errors it turns out to be a playable pinball simulator.

Yep, this is about it

 Of course, this is a pinball game from 1982 so it’s not going to blow anybody away, but it does some things that I like. First, it’s one of the first pinball games to have a skill shot. If you hit the ball just right with the plunger you can have it knock over most of the drop targets. The drop targets lead to the game’s best feature. Knock them all over to reveal a special symbol in the lower part of the table. If you hit this symbol, you will trigger multiball. I could be wrong, but I think this is the first pinball video game with a multiball. As you would imagine it’s fast and frantic and it usually doesn’t last very long. It sure was a pleasant surprise though.

 

Unfortunately, after ten minutes or so of playing I had already experienced everything in the game. It’s about as shallow as you would expect for a 1982 pinball game. I will probably play it again because I love pinball, but it’s certainly not the Vectrex game to track down first. It doesn’t really show off the unique properties of the console either. The best Vectrex games had a very futuristic, pseudo-3D look to them, but Spin Ball looks flat and boring. So, despite its innovations Spin Ball is going fairly low on the list. It’s all the way down at #75 which is lower than I expected actually. That’s even lower than Pocketbike Racer. It’s not a good sign when your game is shallower than one sold alongside combo meals. So, I have 21 more Vectrex games to review, and this is probably the least interesting of the bunch. Get ready for some angular fun in the near future. 

Vectrex quality percentage: 0/1

(images are from mobygames.com)

Sorry no list today. The computer is acting funny and won't save the screenshot. Just trust me, it's #75 and it's right in the purple "okay" section. 

Neo Geo Pocket Color #3-6: The Casino Games

Developer: Dyna Corporation

Publisher: SNK

Release Date: 1999

 

I’m going to do something I haven’t done before on this blog and cover multiple games in one entry. The Pocket Color is probably best remembered for its high-quality fighting and unique RPG-styled games. It has a dark secret though. SNK very quickly started to fall apart after its release, and one of their many problems during this time was not being able to produce enough games. The desperate need to fill out their gaming library is one of the most logical reasons I can think of for a very sad quartet of games that all came out very close together in the American market. I think this type of game was even more popular in Japan as there are a few more of them exclusive to the region that I might cover later. I can’t take any more casino games right now though. Now, I have nothing against casino games in general. Some of them are quite fun. The problem with the NGPC games, however, is they are incredibly shallow. In 1978 Atari released Casino. It was a very early game on the system but still managed to have three different card games. None of the NPGP games which came out a full twenty years later have more than one. If all four of these games were on one cartridge than I could understand their existence. The fact that they were sold individually is nothing short of a rip-off. So, let’s take a look at these games in order from best to worst.

 

Neo 21

 

I am putting this one first on the list because at least blackjack has a little bit of strategy. It’s the only game of the bunch that you can’t win by just pressing a button over and over. It is also the only game of the bunch that didn’t come out on the same day. It does have a more advanced presentation than the others too. It has a fancier title screen and some digitized voice acting. Of course, it doesn’t help matters that the dealer sounds bored out of her mind as she deals the cards. The last thing this game needed was a laconic voice stating the obvious. Yes, I know that card with the three hearts on it is a three. She can’t even muster up any excitement when the player wins. I was slightly hopeful when I first turned on the game to find a name entry and save file. I thought maybe there would be some sim elements to it. As far as I could tell though it’s just so you can continue the card dealing fun at a later date. There wasn’t even a high score list, and the game doesn’t even end until you decide it ends. It’s at the top of the list because it does require a little bit of thought, but it is still a boring game that doesn’t add anything to a simple game of blackjack.

 

Neo Mystery Bonus

 What a strange name for a game. It sounds like a game that would be found in an 80s cereal box. Sadly, this was not a bonus game but an actual retail item. It’s the first of two slot machine games to come out on the same day in 1999. Its entire gameplay consists of one zoomed in slot machine. How was something so shallow even allowed? Why weren’t people more offended by it? The gameplay consists of placing bets and stopping the reels. Since you can keep the bets in place after each turn there’s really no reason to do anything but push the button. I don’t know if you knew this, but slot machines are only fun if you are winning actual cash money. I had fun playing the slots at an actual casino. The game, however, has no payoff whatsoever. You just stop the reels and watch as your credits increase or decrease. You can’t do anything with them. They just go up sometimes and down sometimes. My goal with this game was to see what would happen if I ran out of credits. It actually took longer than I expected because winning isn’t that hard. So, what happens? You just get 100 credits again and start all over. Having a game over screen takes effort I suppose. So why is this the better of the two slot machines? In this one the reels stop instantly when you push the button. It at least gives the player some feeling of control. With a quick eye you might be able to stop them the way you want them. I also like the rainbow mystery squares. They look nice and sort of pique my interest. They are very small things, but at least they are something.

 

Neo Cherry Master

 

Can you believe SNK had the audacity to release two single screen slot machine games on the same day? Because they totally did and now I have the displeasure of comparing them. This one is even more brainless than the other one. It’s almost exactly the same except when you push the button the reels slow down before they stop. The illusion of control is gone in this one. It’s seriously just pushing a button and watching your fortunes increase or decrease with no meaning or purpose. Is there someone out there that this kind of game appeals to? It’s no different than an electronic slot machine toy that you would get at the checkout at the grocery store and play with in the bathroom in the pre-smartphone days. Except one of those would keep high scores and wouldn’t cost as much as a video game. I am honestly baffled by why either of these games exist.

 

Neo Dragon’s Wild

 I have no idea why this game is called “Neo Dragon’s Wild.” There are no dragons to be seen. The deck of cards just has regular jokers. Am I missing something? I doubt it. They just probably couldn’t call it “Neo Joker’s Wild” so they went with dragons. This is the NGPC version of electronic poker, and it’s even more drab and brainless than the other games. All you get to see on the screen are your five cards, the payouts, and a few stats. At least the slot machine game had spinning reels to look at. How can you justify a game where the description of the payouts takes up two thirds of the screen? Since everything’s automatic in this game I’m not sure showing the payouts is even necessary. Of course, what would you fill up the rest of the screen with, a dragon? This game gets on my nerves because the computer automatically holds the cards it feels you should keep. The only strategy at all in video poker is picking out what cards to keep. Once again, this feature is helpful in Vegas where you only care about winning money, but not in a video game where you are playing to have fun. You can change the holds, but I only did this when I was determined to make the game have some sort of playability. It didn’t help. This is, without a doubt, the most boring game I have ever played. All I did was place my initial bet and then push the button. A deck of cards is fun to play with, but boring to look at. Just imagine sitting in a dark room with nothing but random playing cards flashing in front of your face. That’s what this game is. Am I starting to make up surreal scenarios again? Neo Dragon’s Wild does that to a person.

 

These four games are making me do something I just recently said I would never do. They are so bad that I am going to rank them below Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. I thought that would be my lowest-ranked non-Hyperscan game forever, yet just a few reviews later it gets usurped by not one, but four games. At least Robots used all the buttons and required me to actually look at the screen. Other than Neo 21 these games could be played without looking. You could fall over dead onto your Neo Geo Pocket Color and still potentially play these games. You don’t even need a pulse, and that’s a bad sign. So, this quartet of games puts the Neo Geo Pocket Color in a deep hole, but there are good games for it. I think it might still make it over to the plus side by the end. Also, a bit of housekeeping. I have no idea how Marvel Heroes snuck up a couple places on the list. I’m putting it back down to the next-to-last position where it belongs. That means that there are at least six games on this planet worse than Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Sorry humanity, it looks the bad video game situation was worse than I thought.

 

Neo Geo Pocket Color quality percentage: 1/6 or 16.66%

(images from mobygames.com)

Neo Geo Pocket Color #2: Pac-Man

Developer: Namco

Publisher: SNK

Release Date: 7-31-99

 As a chronicler of every game ever I guess it’s finally time to cover another version of a game I’ve already ranked. I think the way I am going to do this is keep it fairly brief and not specifically rank it. I will judge its overall quality and add it to the console’s overall tally. I will go ahead and rank it if it is significantly different than the original. If you really want me to rank every version of Pac-Man on the master list let me know. I wouldn’t mind getting a few comments on here. I think I’ve had two total.

 

This version of Pac-Man plays exactly like it’s supposed to. I got it along with my Pocket Color twenty years ago, and I always thought it was one of the better handheld versions. It was nice to have a full-color handheld version that played smoothly, although I don’t know how it compares to the Game Gear version in that regard. I liked that you could switch between a closeup view and full map view. Other than that, it’s a decidedly no-frills adaptation. It’s the one iconic map with the traditional gameplay that’s just for getting high scores. Of course, I enjoyed it, even if by 1999 having only Pac-Man on a standalone cart was starting to seem a little flimsy. Also, I wish you could save high scores. We didn’t have phones to take pictures of scores back then. Still, who can complain about a high-quality game of Pac-Man? I’m going to put this in the good column for Neo Geo Pocket Color which evens the score.

 

Neo Geo Pocket Color Quality Percentage: 1/1 or 50%

NGPC Rankings:

1. Pac-Man

2. Crush Roller

Neo Geo Pocket Color #1: Crush Roller

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