Taito Milestones: The Definitive Review – Complete 10 Game Review + Ranking

August 30, 2023 by 1 Comment

I was a little startled when I saw the lineup for Taito Milestones. Taito was the company behind Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and Arkanoid. What’s their first collection have? Two barely memorable “oh yea, I played that one! It was fun!” all-stars and eight other games that nobody could possibly get excited over. Compared to the Taito compilation of my childhood, Taito Legends, which had a whopping 29 games. The follow-up, Taito Legends 2, had an insane 39 games (43 if you bought every version!). This feels like the junior varsity team of classic collections.

I picked up the physical version of Taito Milestones last Christmas when it was on sale for $20. As of this writing, it’s only $11.80 on Amazon. The Milestones series uses the Arcade Archives builds of ten Taito coin-ops. Good deal, right? And, while I’ve not had great luck selecting Arcade Archives games, there’s no doubt they mostly have great emulation. The only time I can think of where I didn’t enjoy the actual technicalities of one of their releases was their port of the arcade Punch-Out!! Otherwise, Hamster knows what they’re doing.. even though they stubbornly refuse to add rewind. Logically, a set of ten games at $39.99 that uses their emulators is like getting ten Arcade Archives titles for the price of five, right? BUT, you’re not getting the full Arcade Archives packages here. The cheating-proof Hi-Score and 5 minute Caravan Modes that seem to be in every Arcade Archives release are not included with this set. So, what IS included?

EMULATION EXTRAS

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To repeat: there’s no rewind or quick save/load, so that’s annoying. There is a form of save states called “interrupt save state” that, when used, creates a save state that you have to quit the game and restart to activate. And that save state disappears when you game over. Why not just give us the option for normal, run-of-the-mill save states? What annoys me about Arcade Archives is that it has progressed very little over the last few years. Also, the save state feature they included can be used to cheat on the online leaderboards (check my review of Arcade Archives: Pinball for that) rendering those leaderboards functionally useless. Hi-Score mode and Caravan Mode in standard Arcade Archives releases end if you so much as pause the game, rendering cheating impossible. And frankly, the games included in this set could have used as much extra value as humanly possible.

The options would normally be controlled by dip switches. Here, what they are (and what’s the default setting) are clearly labeled. I appreciate that.

What you DO get is clear, detailed instructions for each game. I always appreciated that Arcade Archives has some of the most well-written instructions in the retro gaming scene. They always include photos of the items and what they do. They also include all the dip switch options for each game, and again, they’re clearly labeled. Also, this is now the only way to get Hamster’s Arcade Archives build of Elevator Action on Switch, which was delisted on the eShop (still available on PSN). Finally, there’s a variety of screen options, including being able to turn the Switch into “tate mode” and turn it on its side for a more accurate arcade experience, at least when the games used vertical monitors. For all the emulation features, I’m awarding no bonus in value and I’m not issuing any fines for the set. Call it a wash!

THE ULTIMATE VERDICT ON THE COLLECTION

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

I’m going off the standard set by Capcom Arcade Stadium 2: if the games are sold separately, the sales price for each individual game is the value for a quality game. Since all ten of these games are sold separately for $7.99, I’m rounding it up and setting a value of $8 per quality game. Taito Milestones has a standard suggested retail price of $39.99, which I’ll round-up and call $40. That makes the break even requirement 5 YES! votes. Though, keep in mind: nobody sells it for that, which is why I no longer award my Seal of Approval to classic collections. I set a value.

YES!: 4 GAMES
NO!: 6 GAMES
Standard Price: $39.99
Final Value: $32

Again, I bought this at $20, and right now, you can purchase Taito Milestones for $11.80 on Amazon. It’s easily worth that just to own Elevator Action and Qix, with any other enjoyment you get being a bonus.

FINAL RANKINGS

How I determined the rankings is simple: I took the full list of games, then I said “I’m forced to play one game. Pick the one I could play the most and not get bored with.” That goes on top of the list. Then I repeat the question again with the remaining games over and over until the list is complete. Based on that simple criteria, here are the final rankings. Games above the Terminator Line received a YES! Games below it received a NO!

  1. Elevator Action
  2. Qix
  3. Halley’s Comet
  4. Alpine Ski
    **TERMINATOR LINE**
  5. The FairyLand Story
  6. Chack’n Pop
  7. Space Seeker
  8. Front Line
  9. Wild Western
  10. The Ninja Warriors

GAME REVIEWS

Alpine Ski
Arcade Release: 1981
Unknown Designer

The collision detection seems accurate, which helps.

Ah, for the days of simple reflex-based coin-ops. In Alpine Ski, ski down a hill, pressing or alternately holding down the buttons to pick up speed while avoiding other skiers, trees, and rocks while scooping up points. Every time you crash, you lose ten seconds, and you keep playing until you run out of time. The game is divided into three segments, but really, the “ski slope course” and the “slalom course” are the same gameplay, with the only difference being you lose 100 points if you touch a flag in the slalom. The third segment, the ski jump, is the bonus stage. Here, you just have to time jumping at the end of the ramp, then not hit any trees using a radar. There is a novel twist: instead of reaching physical checkpoints on the levels, your time is reloaded when you reach scoring benchmarks. I’ve never seen a game like that, where the timer doesn’t just reload in intervals, but rather runs all the way out THEN reloads if you’ve earned it. So that’s something different!

Unless I missed it, there’s no “big points” like the 1,000/1,500 scores in the slalom course. You also don’t get a time penalty for hitting flags or just skipping the course.

Here’s my issue: nobody in their right mind expects a forty-year-old skiing game to hold up today, in the 2020s. The inclusion of Alpine Skiing in a Taito collection only really works if the set is aiming to be comprehensive. But, this Milestones series isn’t attempting that at all. Each release is staying firm at the ten games per set. Including a forty-year-old skiing game seems like it would just be bad for business. This is the type of game that probably should have been thrown in as a bonus +1 instead of being one of THE ten games. But, all I care about is whether or not I had fun. I found Alpine Skier to be somewhat cathartic in its simplicity. Wiggling back and forth, scooping up points wasn’t the worst use of time. I couldn’t get the hang of the bonus jump. Stuff like this is where going that extra mile and adding a rewind feature would have helped a lot, which would have allowed me to practice at it. I think it’s silly to have included this over more iconic games, but I had a mildly better time than I expected.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in value added to Taito Milestones

Chack’n Pop
Arcade Release: April, 1984
Designed by Hiroshi Sakai and Hiroyuki Sakô

It’s really rare for these classic arcaders to have not one but TWO deal breakers that all but assure I vote NO! on the game. Chack’n Pop is one of those rare games that has two complete deal breakers. If it controlled fine, the enemies would be too annoying, and vice versa. The whole concept needs a complete overhaul.

The best thing I can say about Chack’n Pop is that it apparently led to the creation of Bubble Bobble. Of course, it’s one of those situations where it feels like they recognized one game wasn’t fun and set out to make a better game. Despite a couple enemies sharing nearly identical character sprites, this has nothing to do with Bubble Bobble. This is more like a side-scrolling Bomberman where you don’t have to eliminate ALL the enemies. Instead, the object is to cling to surfaces and eventually bomb all the cages that contain hearts that unlock each stage’s exit. The bombs sort of bounce a bit like baseballs during the Dead Ball Era. Planting one where you want it to go is a pain in the ass and never intuitive.

It took me forever to figure out you could swim in the water. I appreciate that it tried to change up the formula, but the problem with Chack’n Pop is it’s almost impossible to manipulate the enemies into the path of the explosion. It’s agonizing to see them float away from the bombs.

What kills Chack’n Pop for me is how badly done the movement is. There are times where I’ll hold UP to transfer to the ceiling, in a spot I’ve done it before, and it doesn’t work. I read the manual multiple times trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. It has something to do with whether your foot is hanging off a platform or not, I guess. But the issue was there regardless of where my feet were. I think the collision detection for the movement was just haphazardly done. I also can’t stand the combat. The enemies are the little floating whale head thingies from Bubble Bobble, but their behavior makes no sense. You have to try to bomb them, but because their behavior is apparently randomized (or possibly programmed to retreat from the bombs), they’re too hard to kill. Because your bombs take so long to explode, chances are by time they have their sights set on you, it’s too late to fight back. I hate Chack’n Pop. I’ve played it a variety of times, on a variety of platforms, and I’ve always found it to be one of Taito’s worst games. Astonishingly, it only fell to 6th place. Really tells you how terrible the bad games in this set are.
Verdict: NO!

Elevator Action
Arcade Release: May 23, 1983
Designed by Toshio Kono
Arcade Archives release on Switch Delisted

I don’t think any classic side-view coin-op has such a satisfying ability to dodge projectiles as Elevator Action. It’s exhilarating to leap over enemy gunfire. It’s always a thrill!

I’ve already reviewed the Arcade Archives port of Elevator Action. It got a YES! before, and it’s still getting one here. I have this game design theory: the best ideas for video games only need to accomplish the bare minimum playability to work. Elevator Action is my poster child for that. While its sequels eventually improved the core gameplay, Elevator Action Returns was really bad, but it also didn’t hit that “bare minimum playability” benchmark. Meanwhile, the original still gets the job done. A forty-year old, ultra-repetitive, sluggish-controlling action game is still damn fun after celebrating its fourth decade of existence. If that doesn’t prove my theory to be correct, I don’t know what would. Now, I find myself asking if Elevator Action really only does the bare minimum? Is it possible I got that part wrong? Yea, it is.

Dropkicks work in a pinch, but few things are as fun as dropping the lights on someone. Actually, crushing them with the elevator is the best, but that’s a rarity.

Hey, I’m not too big to admit when I’m wrong. Rolling Thunder? Now THERE’S a game that does the bare minimum. That’s probably why it sucks, while a game like Elevator Action overcomes some glaring issues with controls. It’s all about the little idiosyncrasies you barely even notice. Being able to dropkick enemies isn’t as satisfying as shooting them, but if the option wasn’t there, close quarter combat would be too unpredictable and chaotic. When you shoot out the lights on the upper floors, enemies react slower to you. Moreover, Toshio Kono proved he understood the value of good gameplay by the fact that a major gameplay mechanic was cut from the game. Originally, there would be barrels that enemies would hide in. I couldn’t find a reason why it was deleted, but I suspect it might have been too cheap. I once called Elevator Action a borderline bad game. I was just plain wrong. It’s a solid action game that does one bad thing, and many more good things.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones
WINNER: Best in Set

The Fairyland Story
Arcade Release: July, 1985
Directed by Masaki Ogata and Mikio Hatano
Designed by Hiroshi Tsujino

I figured Taito knew how to make a novel, exciting single-screened action game. And they do, but that doesn’t mean every recipe is a winner.

If you were hoping for a signature Bubble Bobble-like “jump around and exterminate the baddies” experience, keep hoping. The FairyLand Story actually predates Bubble Bobble by nearly a full year. That explains why it feels like a proof of concept that hasn’t figured out how to make the whole extermination aspect fun. Here, you play as a witch who transforms enemies into.. uh.. cake? Why cake? You don’t even eat it, either! You can then destroy the cake by continuously shooting it with your magic, pushing it off a high enough ledge, or having an enemy land on it. Is it fun? Not at all.

Some of the level design is so cheap that you could die a second after a stage begins. It’s not uncommon, actually.

I get the distinct impression that Taito understood they were onto something with the idea, but that they created some of the dullest combat mechanics in gaming history. It’s just not a fun way to defeat enemies. Occasionally, a worm pops out that might eat you, but it might also eat the enemies too. I think that is what the game should have been. Turning baddies into food that other baddies eat. Maybe a little macabre, but hey, so am I. However, the combat isn’t the only problem. Level design ranges from dull to annoying, with some levels having too high of barriers to cross over, forcing levels to end when the game declares a stalemate and moves you automatically to the next round. I’ve never been impressed with a game that’s so sloppy it has to give you a pity advancement. The FairyLand Story is an action-free action game, and it’s a total snoozer.
Verdict: NO!

Front Line
Arcade Release: November 10, 1982
Designed by Tetsuya Sasaki

CONTROLS ALTERED FROM ARCADE ORIGINAL

I will never complain about Commando being hard again.

If Front Line wasn’t impossible, it might be a decent little game. This beat titles like Ikari Warriors or Commando to the market by several years, and the arcade version even had a dial to aim your gun, something many SNK games would later copy. Unfortunately, Front Line is so prohibitively difficult that I couldn’t make any progress. That’s not an exaggeration: I COULD NOT MAKE PROGRESS! Front Line isn’t my first rodeo. While I’m nowhere near a professional caliber gamer, I’m not too shabby, either. But I couldn’t even get past the first stage of Front Line, and I spent a whole day trying.

This was the sole time I lasted more than a second in the “big tank.” Which looks more like a Dalek with a case of the blues.

Like so many crap games, fans will say you need to “get to the good stuff.” In this case, the good stuff is being able to hop into tanks. Tanks where it’s still one shot and you’re dead. The thing is, when you die at the point where you reach the tanks, you respawn without a tank you can climb into near you, surrounded by enemy tanks. You might be able to take out one of them with a grenade, but the others move faster than you and dodge your grandees easily. So, once you that first life in the area with the tanks, you’re toast. For what it’s worth, I thought the dual-stick controls Hamster implemented worked better than the arcade dial. However, Front Line wasn’t even trying to be fun. One of those games so impossible it’s practically a quarter-shakedown scam. Sadly, this won’t be the last such game in this set.
Verdict: NO!

Halley’s Comet
Arcade Release: January, 1986
Designed by Fukio Mitsuji

I got the power! Until I didn’t. Then, not so much power as I had a pile of broken ships.

In my first round of playing Halley’s Comet, I almost instantly became an unstoppable tank that was shredding through enemies with ease. It was quite empowering, but kind of awesome too. “Hey! This ain’t too shabby. Why isn’t this a more popular game? I’d literally never even heard of it before I started this set!” And then a wayward bullet blew me up, and my tank days were over. A few seconds later, so was my game. Yea, Halley’s Comet is one of those shmups where, when you lose your power-ups, the game doesn’t really feed you a chance at recovery and you’re pretty well screwed. Also, I now totally understand why other, better shmups give you a SPEED-UP item almost immediately.

And of course there’s no continues. Taito hadn’t yet figured out that players are more likely to keep plugging quarters into a game they suck if they’re allowed to keep sucking on their own terms. I imagine a big reason why it had no staying power is because when a game turns on a dime, like Halley’s Comet does, players are inside an arcade full of other titles that don’t feel like they just pull the rug out from underneath you.

The main problem is just don’t move fast enough to dodge all the crap Halley’s Comet throws at you. Since enemies (1) move faster than you (2) will hook right into you (3) completely fill the screen and (4) have some of the least visible bullets in the genre, when you lose that first, presumably most powerful life, the rest of the lives are certain to not be long for this world. When my GAME OVERS happened, they happened very quickly. While it lasts, Halley’s Comet is a fine generic shmup, I suppose. Even getting my ass kicked, I kept coming back, and enjoyed those early lives where my firepower could fill the screen. It’s not a total wash. But, again, I can’t help but feel this would have been a nicer game to have as part of a more comprehensive collection, like the Taito Legends games had been back in the day.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones

The Ninja Warriors
Arcade Release: “Late” 1987
Directed by Masaki Ogata
Designed by Hiroshi Tsujino and Yukiwo Ishikawa

What was even the point of having a triple-wide screen?

I have never seen the likes of Ninja Warriors. I mean, I have seen games with this play style. It’s a shallow rip-off of Kung Fu Master or Shinobi, only with the gimmick of having a triple-wide screen. The original arcade cabinet used mirrors so you couldn’t see it was really using three monitors instead of a single long one. Cool idea, but the gameplay is as lifeless and shallow as any I can remember. You walk right at a pace where you can practically feel yourself being lapped by snails and slice any enemy that walks by you, or throw your progressive less effective throwing stars at them. After you walk far enough, a boss shows up. The OOMPH is non-existent and the combat is terrible. Even if what happened to me in the second stage hadn’t happened, the Ninja Warriors would have been one of the most boring games I’ve done so far. Then, IT HAPPENED! What happened? The thing that compelled me to say “I have never seen the likes of Ninja Warriors.”

“You want to keep playing this game? Well, you haven’t fed me quarters in almost a minute, since the first boss spam attacked you. Give me more quarters. Oh, you still have health. BOOM, now you don’t. More quarters, please!”

That is not hyperbole, because I’ve never seen anything like this: at the start of the second level, after you kill a small handful of baddies, you just blow you up from a tank that’s off-screen. Mind you, the screen is TRIPLE WIDE and you still can’t see the tank, and you can’t even see its projectiles it fires at you. Just BOOM, dead, pony-up more quarters, bitch! I legitimately laughed. It was just shameless about it. So flagrant. It then pulls the same crap again at the end of the stage. This sat in arcades and cost real quarters. Given the fact that an off-screen enemy shoots invisible projectiles that lead to a GAME OVER, I have to say that Ninja Warriors, as an arcade experience, is a scam. Just dying like that, from an off-screen enemy, with invisible projectiles? That’s a shakedown for quarters. Look, it’s not like Ninja Warriors was getting a YES! anyway. At its very, very best, it’s boring. But hell, I’ve dealt with boring games before. If I can’t deal with boredom, I might as well quit. What astonishes me is the game bored me to death AND THEN went that extra mile towards becoming one of the worst video games I’ve ever played. The determination to excel at being crappy is remarkable.
Verdict: NO!

And it wasn’t just the Taito Milestones build where I couldn’t see the projectiles.

Qix
Arcade Release: October, 1981
Designed by Randy Pfeiffer and Sandy Pfeiffer

Even Nintendo wanted in on the action. The Game Boy port had a cameo from Mario in it!

Ah, Qix. Good ‘ole, reliable, dependable, durable Qix. Somehow both relaxing and tranquil while also lending itself to white-knuckle, edge-of-your-seat excitement. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept: you have a blank canvas with an evil screensaver bouncing around. The object is to leave the border and draw a line through the playfield. When you reach another border, the game fills in the area that doesn’t contain the “Qix” which is that aforementioned evil screensaver. You can either use a blue line, which is much faster and much lower scoring, or you can go for broke with the slower orange line and try to pile up points. The bigger the boxes you draw, the more points you score. When 75% of the playfield is covered, you move onto the next stage and score a bonus for every percentage point you go over. The Qix has no attack pattern and should not be mistaken for a chaser. It is just totally random in its movement. Less random are the fuses that crawl around the border, preventing you from lingering too long. It’s a simple premise, and it’s been copied for four decades now for a reason: it’s crazy fun.

Once you reach level three, the dynamic changes. There’s two QIX sticks, and if you can manage to complete ANY line between them, you win. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I only managed to do it once.

The funny thing is, few games have been ripped-off as much as Qix, and yet, the original might be the hardest version to this day. Like so many other Taito arcade experiences from the 1980s, the biggest issue with Qix is it’s too damn difficult. Even on the EASY settings, the Qix Stick becomes too fast on the second level. Boldness? Hah. I feel like every big box I completed from level two onward happened because the Qix didn’t bounce my way. Sheer dumb luck. However, I’m still grateful that Qix exists. If anyone thinks I’m some kind of soft ass who can’t take a beating and whines too much about difficult games, look no further than Qix. I suck at it. I played this for hours and rarely even made it to the double Qix levels. And yet, I couldn’t put it down. Maybe the reason why this version.. specifically THIS version.. holds up to the test of time is that tough-as-nails gameplay, which makes those moments where you cut the screen in half SO satisfying. I love this one, folks.
Verdict: YES!
$8 in Value added to Taito Milestones

Space Seeker
Arcade Release: October, 1981
Unknown Designer

You can only shoot so high and so low in the first person mode. Naturally, the enemies will almost immediately drift below your range. This really is awful.

Combining a flagrant-yet-bad rip-off of Konami’s Scramble (which released seven months before this) with a flagrant-yet-bad rip-off of Atari’s Star Raiders, Space Seeker is a game that has no identity of its own. You’re given a world map and have to slowly crawl the cursor to one of three bases, trying to avoid the red dots. If you make contact with one of those dots, you enter the Star Raiders-like first person shooting sequence. The enemies don’t shoot at you and instead just try to suicide-bomb your guns. It makes literally no sense that it’s your guns you have to stop them from flying into. IT’S FIRST PERSON! Wouldn’t flying into literally any part of the ship do the trick? Either way, there’s no crosshairs, which makes aiming tough enough, but the upward and downward movement feels unresponsive and sluggish. Some rounds I only lasted literally a second or two before the first batch of enemies dived into my guns.

The missiles come in massive clusters, and to the game’s credit, if your timing is accurate and your aiming is true, you can wipe out all of them. Or fly into a mountain trying. I usually flew into a mountain. Unfortunately, Jimi Hendrix wasn’t there to chop it down with the edge of his hand.

Assuming you don’t die on the map itself and reach a base, Space Seeker becomes a side-scrolling shmup where clusters of missiles attack in curvy or circular patterns.  Fly into the various jaggy mountains? You die. Fair enough. Fly into the clouds? Also death. Well, obviously. After all, being a ship capable of interstellar travel, condensed moisture would be lethal to you. On the plus side, the stages only have X amount of missiles, so if you keep returning to the same base, eventually you’ll get what’s essentially a free pass to that base’s goal, which ends in a speed tunnel that you can fly through for bonus points. So, there’s three play styles in one game, which yes, was ambitious for 1981, and I always admire ambition. But, forty-year-old ambition isn’t worth much today. Hell, judging by the fact that people who were around for arcades during the time haven’t heard of Space Seeker either, it doesn’t seem to have had contemporary value, either.
Verdict: NO!

Wild Western
Arcade Release: May, 1982
Unknown Designer

CONTROLS ALTERED FROM ARCADE ORIGINAL

The Meh Train Robbery doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Wild Western takes the rotary controls from Front Line and applies them to a game where you bobble back and forth on horseback shooting train robbers. The train is part of the playfield and bullets ricochet off it. That I was able to pull off, successfully angling bullets off the train and onto the baddies. It wasn’t remotely satisfying, but hey, it’s something. What I couldn’t do regularly was hop onto the train when the bandits boarded it. I kept.. well.. dying when my horse brained itself on it. When you clear the enemies out, you do the worst bonus stage I’ve ever played then start another stage. Unlike Front Line, I didn’t think the controls carried over well to the home port, and frankly, I don’t think Wild Western ever had potential as even a decent game. It’s actually stunning how little game is here, though at least the coin-op had the attraction of a novelty controller. That wasn’t part of the home version. Many of my lives in Wild Western lasted as long as it took for the enemy to fire their first bullet. As the final game in this set, Wild Western hammers home that Taito Milestones 1 is the collection of games not good enough to buy alone.
Verdict: NO!

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Arcade Archives: King & Balloon (Review)

August 3, 2023 by 1 Comment

Back in January, I reviewed King & Balloon, which is my personal favorite Namco shooter. Sorry Galaga and Galaxian fans. Not only was King & Balloon one of the best games to emerge in the wake of Space Invaders, but it was one of THE most underrated games of the Golden Age of Arcades. Well, a couple weeks ago, Hamster gave it a solo release as part of their Arcade Archives franchise. Everything I said about the game in my original review still applies, but Arcade Archives offers a few extra features for the $7.99 price tag. It also allows players to enjoy the game on their Nintendo Switch. Which might be the best feature of all, but I’ll get to that. First, go click that link and read my original review. Especially since I’m going to ignore the gameplay mechanics here and talk about the package.

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Like EVERY Arcade Archives release, there’s two competitive modes: “hi-score” and “caravan.” Caravan runs on a five minute timer that starts as soon as the enemies spawn for the first time. Hi-score just goes on until you die. Both have strict rules that forbid pausing the game. If you do, game over. You don’t get to upload your score, even if you were kicking ass and taking names. I’ve never understood the ordering there. Shouldn’t you take their names down BEFORE you kick their ass? Personally, I’d be a lot less inclined to give a person who just kicked me in the ass my name. I’d want THEIR name. You know.. for the lawsuit for damaging my beautiful, bony ass. Anyway, pause and you have to start over. There’s no gameplay options for these two modes (however, autofire and any adjustments to the screen you make in the standard mode will be applied here) but there’s also no cheating. You can’t say that about the standard mode. See my review of Arcade Archives: Pinball for more details on that, but needless to say, they don’t make note if you used save states or not in the high scores.

Mind you, everything I love about King & Balloon is still here, and the five minute timer in Caravan further adds to the deceptively complex strategy. You’re best served to avoid this type of swarming attack and allow the balloons to Megazord–together. They score A LOT MORE points when they do.

You also get the option to run the game at the “original speed” but I really couldn’t notice a difference. The real reason to buy King & Balloon as part of the Arcade Archives series is if you own a Nintendo Switch and want an authentic Golden Age of Arcades release that works perfect as a portable game. King & Balloon is wonderful for short play sessions. It provides the type of thrilling, white-knuckle gallery shooting that would be jammed-up today with loud visuals and too much downtime, and it’s challenging enough that you’d be lucky to last ten minutes. That makes it ideal for handheld devices, as far as forty-three year old coin-ops go. It’s still beyond ridiculous that only three Namco Museums have ever included it, one of which never came out in America and one of which was the weird à la carte Namco Museum on Xbox back in the day. But, King & Balloon finally has a chance now to be appreciated as its own thing. Sure, I wish the game had more sophisticated scoring. Perhaps one that rewards players for consecutive made shots. But, I still adore this charming little gallery shooter. It’s one gaming tragedy that now has a legit shot a happy ending.

Arcade Archives: King & Balloon is Chick-Approved

King & Balloon was developed by Namco
Published by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Store

$7.99 was full of hot air in the making of this review.

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Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight (1984 Arcade Review)

January 12, 2023 by 2 Comments

Owwww. Ow ow ow ow ow. Owwie. My hands. My beautiful, bony hands. What the hell were they thinking with this one? Look, I’ve never been the biggest Balloon Fight fan in the world. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of Joust, either. So here’s a warning to fans: maybe take this review with a grain of salt. Balloon Fight has never been for me. But, it could be with enough twists to the formula, which is why Vs. Balloon Fight got my attention. Of all the Nintendo Vs. System coin-ops, Balloon Fight has the most profound change to the NES counterpart. Well, besides Vs. Duck Hunt, where you can shoot the dog in bonus rounds (though you’re not supposed to). It’s the same concept: flap your arms to fly, and then come crashing down on top of enemies to pop their balloons. After that, you then can hit them a second time as they parachute down, or kick them off the ledge once they land, Mario Bros.-style. So, yea, in a nutshell, Balloon Fight is really just Joust with an extra hit-point and parachutes instead of eggs. The big difference over its NES counterpart, besides having a lot more levels, is that Vs. Balloon Fight is not a single-screen game. In the coin-op, the size of the playfield is doubled vertically and you have to scroll the screen upwards. It makes for a more exciting, intense experience. Enemies might come flying out of nowhere (especially when bumpers are added after six stages) creating a chaotic atmosphere that somehow never feels cheap because you ought to know better than to leave yourself wide open from the unseen menaces above. It should be great!

Sigh.

Here comes the “but..” Like the Starks say: nothing counts before the “but.”

Vs. Balloon Fight has absolutely brutal gravity. The amount of flapping it requires is completely unreasonable by any standard. The NES version allows you to maneuver with a steady pulse of tapping the button. But, for a game that you’re expected to pay two bits per session, that won’t do at all. You have to absolutely button-mash to maintain your flight, Track ‘n Field-style. I’m not having a pity-party for myself here, but I literally physically cannot button mash to this degree anymore. Thankfully, my family, including my 12-year-old sister, also couldn’t believe how furiously you had to tap the buttons to maintain your flight. Again, I’m not a fan of the NES version, but I think I’d remember if this was one of the reasons why. Just to make sure, I threw on the home version on Switch Online, and it took me only a few seconds to verify the gravity for the arcade version isn’t like the NES version at all. The worst part of this whole issue with Vs. Balloon Fight is, if you start to come down, the gravity seems to further intensify, requiring even faster flapping to regain your momentum. Maybe that’s more “realistic” but it’s a frick’n video game about a guy in a balloon dueling to the death with birds using balloons themselves. To hell with realism! And why the heck didn’t anyone care this much about realistic gravity when it was Pinball? The gravity especially affected me in the wide-open bonus stages, which require you to chase down balloons that rise out four chimneys. I would inevitably lose my strength, and any attempt at recovery was hopeless and I’d crash pathetically to the ground with balloons still rising.

In addition to the crushing gravity, the walls and ceilings seem to have a lot more bounce to them. This can be problematic near the water. The enemies tend to do what I call “ride the current” and drift across a straight line, going through one side of the screen and coming out the other, and this will likely include one that hovers just above the water line, where the big fish will jump up to snatch you. Since there’s often platforms right above you, I tended to bounce off them and make myself hover too close to the water. I lost more lives to falling in the drink than I did to the enemies, easily. Well, partial credit for the bumpers. Those things ought to have warning signs. And yes, the fish will eat the enemies too, and it’s ALWAYS hilarious when it happens!

On the NES, you can hold the B-Button to autoflap. Thankfully, Arcade Archives games almost always have an option on the button mapping menu to turn-on autofire. Even better is that you can set the speed, and this is one of those games where that matters greatly. In fact, I took advantage of it and set a different flap speed to each face button (kinky, right?). It works great! Hey, the game’s now completely playable, and you get to appreciate what is actually a massive improvement on the Joust formula. Fun characters. Lots of charm. The combat has weight and my beloved OOMPH and it feels impactful to crash a balloon, complete with satisfying POP sound! It always brought a smile to my face seeing the sad look of an enemy as it slowly drifted to its potential doom. Of course, they can turn the tables on you if you wait too long, pumping a new balloon and upgrading to a more aggressive level of AI. There were also moments I got sadistic glee out of. Like having a stage with lots of bumpers, and I’m at the top of the level and suddenly I hear the fish jumping up and down, and then a few seconds later a bonus bubble starts to rise onto the screen, meaning an enemy just got eaten off-screen. Side note: I’d like to think that the bubbles are the enemy souls going to Heaven and bursting them sends them straight to Hell. Or maybe it stops them from being resurrected. Either way is bliss!

I did NOT die from this. When you take too much time to finish a stage, the clouds tap three mountains and cast Ball Lightning at you. It bounces around the stage and is an instakill even if you have two balloons. But, right here, more than half of it hit my body and I survived. That might be the most generous collision box I’ve seen in an arcade game.

Now, here’s why the gravity should be a deal breaker: because in the two modes designed specifically to compete for online high scores, you can’t turn on autofire. Yes, there’s online leaderboards in the main mode too, but you can cheat like you’ve been made an honorary Houston Astro in those. In addition to all scores counting no matter what adjustments you make to the game’s default settings (including giving yourself extra lives), you can use the interrupt save state feature. Until you game over, you can keep returning to the main menu and restarting from where you last saved. I used this to put myself 4th on the all-time leaderboard, because screw it, why not? Meanwhile, if you so much as pause the game in Hi-Score or the five minute Caravan mode, the game is over. You can’t just continue and must restart the game. While future releases of Arcade Archives would allow autofire in Hi-Score/Caravan, since it makes no sense to ban them when everyone has the option to turn them on and thus it’s a level playfield, they’re disabled here. So, 66% of the game requires you to mash buttons more than any game not based around the Olympics should, and those are that have protection from cheating. I figured this was an easy NO! Well, no, because it’s not 66% of the package where autofire is disabled. It’s 50% of it.

Let’s talk about co-op.

My promise to my readers in 2023: I will make a good faith effort to take the multiplayer for a test drive in games more often.

Being a Nintendo Vs. System release, a real Vs. Balloon Fight has two screens, which allows for two separate games to be played at once OR for a two-screened co-op experience. On a single Nintendo Switch, this is represented by two side-by-side mini-screens. Or, if you each own a separate copy of Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight, each player can have their own screen with one of the players hosting a game. I wasn’t willing to spend $16 on this, so Angela and me played on one screen “cooperatively” in quotation marks that feel ashamed to be associated with such an obvious lie. The only cooperation we showed was our mutual understanding that the two of us would be spending the next hour trying to assassinate each-other. Oh sure, we were bound to kill a few enemies would die along the way too. You know, in the crossfire. But really, once the game started with me immediately making a beeline for her and popping one of her balloons, sh*t was on. And guess what? It was a lot of fun, but it also further exposed some obvious weaknesses in Vs. Balloon Fight.

YOU MURDERER!

If a player runs out of lives, they can’t just re-up without issue. When either player has a game over, the action pauses and goes to the continue screen. If a player continues, the level restarts from the beginning. Since the other player was likely to be on their last life, we took to just feeding ourselves to the fish as soon as the game restarted so that we’d both have full lives to continue the fratricide. I get that it was 1984 and jump-in continues weren’t the commonplace practice yet, but it really hurts the flow of the multiplayer mode, especially when you’re having a blast killing each-other. It also sort of renders competing for points completely pointless. If you’re losing, pull a Tonya Harding and whack the other player. Your score resets to zero if you die. If you got a high score, too bad. That’s fine though. We had a jolly good time playing aggressively against each-other while also dealing with the enemies. We came to appreciate a comically well-timed betrayal when one of us was actually dealing with the baddies.

We’d actually work together best during bonus stages. I credit the cheerful music. Also, just so we’re clear: there’s no Balloon Trip mode in this. With the gravity it has, it’d basically be impossible anyway.

Even my parents got in on the action, and watching my Mom avenge me by taking out Angela about three seconds after Angela respawned from the previous murder will go down as an early highlight of 2023 for me. So, was this multiplayer mode enough to save Vs. Balloon Fight? Surprisingly.. yea! Barely, but barely counts. While I’m still pretty peeved that the modes I cared most about going into this are basically unplayable by me, fun is fun, and with autofire and a second player, Vs. Balloon Fight is a lot of fun. It could be more fun with some adjustments, like letting players reload without the level restarting. Especially since you’ll be draining each-other’s lives. Or, if you want to legitimately cooperate, that’s also fun. Of course it is! Trying to make homicide look like an accident is always fun.

Angela: “I KNEW IT!” Oh, like you weren’t doing it too!

Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight is Chick-Approved

Arcade Archives: Vs. Balloon Fight was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 burst your bubble in the making of this review.

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Arcade Archives: Golf (1984 Nintendo Arcade Review)

January 9, 2023 by 1 Comment

I used to golf quite a lot. I grew up literally right next to a country club that we were members of, but we never went next door to do anything but eat. Then my father had a mild heart attack and the doctor suggested he needed to take better care of himself and take-up a nice, relaxing physical hobby. Guess what he chose? Heh. Yea, because golf has NEVER been known to cause stress, right? I was 11-years old and, content that my father was on the mend and not, you know.. dead.. I went back to my normal routine of staring blankly at the screen while playing video games. I was on my brand-spanking-new PlayStation 2 when my Dad said I was coming with him to take-up golfing too. I refused, and he threatened to repurpose all my disc-based games as drink coasters. I said “you wouldn’t do that” and turned around to find my copy of Eternal Ring sitting under his mug. So, bitching and complaining the entire walk over to the clubhouse, I took-up the sport with my old man. Like most middle aged men suffering a midlife crisis, Dad overdid it with all the best equipment money could buy and lessons from the club pro, and whatever he bought for himself, he bought for me too out of guilt. It didn’t help him at all. His swing is such a disaster that I wanted to learn to play the violin and strum out Nearer, My God, to Thee after every tee-off. “It’s been a pleasure playing with you, Pops.”

Like Satan himself, this goes under many names. It could be called just Golf. It could be Vs. Golf. It could be Stroke & Match Golf. Hell, there’s even a re-sprited version with women called Vs. Ladies Golf that has different holes. Why wasn’t that included in this set? Because it’ll be an extra $7.99 when it inevitably lands on Nintendo Switch. Duh!

Meanwhile, given my size, strength, and complete lack of coordination and athletic ability, I wasn’t too bad a golfer. At my best, I was a 14 handicap. Which, for you non-duffers out there, that means if I were to play a full eighteen hole round of golf with a score of -14 to start, you would expect that I’d finish the round at 0, or even par. In essence, I got good enough where you wouldn’t expect me to bogey every hole. Dad was a 29 handicap. He couldn’t even get halfway to me, and if you don’t think I didn’t take a moment to rub that in his face every single time we hit the links, you don’t know me. None of that has anything to do with golf video games, but what do you want? They’re usually games about stopping a meter on time. YOU try to make it interesting! Really, the only reason to put all this here is to make it clear: I know my golf, and even though I consider myself a mediocre-at-best video game player, I usually annihilate golf games. I played Mario Golf on Switch Online a few months ago, a game I played a lot as a kid, and it was like putting on a comfy pair of old shoes. After a brief warm-up period, I was draining eagles and holes in one like there was no tomorrow. I even had an elusive albatross! It was like no time had passed at all. Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 shockingly holds up very well to the test of time. I wish the same could be said about the one that started it all.

If some of these holes seem eerily familiar, they should. If you played golf on Wii Sports, you played these holes too. They just took the NES/Arcade Golf course and made it 3D. Yep, really.

Golf was one of the most successful of Nintendo’s Vs. System arcade games, so much so that they had one in the country club before I was born. I’ve heard from people who bought an NES just to have it. So, this is a little more historically big than I thought. And man, talk about a pedigree! Golf was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, directed by Kenji Miki (who also directed NES Open Golf and Wario Woods before going on to be a very prolific producer at Nintendo), and programmed solely by Satoru Iwata. Apparently, Miki got deeply into golf during the Japanese golf boom of the 80s. You wouldn’t know it from this. I know a lot of my readers get annoyed when I talk about the dribblty-ball or other assorted sportsballs, but this is where I have to let the sports nerd in me come out. Because this is a golf game that basically does one thing right, and everything else horribly wrong. And, by the way, if you don’t know anything about golf, you’re going to need time to read the manual and memorize the max shot length. There’s no computer assistance with choosing your club, nor anything on-screen that tells you how much yardage you get out of each. If you don’t know the difference between a 3 Wood and a 6 Iron, you’re on your own to figure it out. There IS a chart in the instruction manual but you have to pause the game for it (which will automatically end your game if you’re playing Caravan or Hi-Score mode), but still, it’s not the most user-friendly golf game. You also always default to the driver at the start of every new hole, even if it’s not a hole where you’d want to bring the thunder. This is golf played exactly like everyone who steps onto the links for the first time: hammer always in hand.

One of the golden rules of golf is it’s better to undershoot than overshoot. A wise man once said you’re not likely to hit a parked car by undershooting.

So, here’s the thing about golf that matters most: any idiot can do a tee shot with a solid 80% accuracy if they practice it enough. It’s not even that much practice you need to learn to drive well enough to not embarrass yourself. In golf, real or video, it’s the short game that makes or breaks you, and Match & Stroke Golf has a pretty abysmal short game. Especially troublesome is chipping. In real life, if you ask any professional golfer what’s the most important club in their bag besides the putter, they’ll almost all agree it’s the pitching wedge. In Vs. Golf, the club is just not calculated right and it makes it unsuitable for chipping and other assorted short-distance shots. In fact, they seem to have designed it to play like a lob wedge, which is not the same thing. A lob wedge is designed to make high-arcing drop-shots that have less bounce and roll. They also allow for more control over the spin if you want to angle it. In Vs. Golf, the wedgie launches the ball high into the air with a tall arc, even if you chip. In a game where there’s no topography outside of the green and you can’t put English on the ball, that kind of shot is totally unnecessary.

The bunkers might as well be repainted fairways for all the challenge they pose in this game.

Yet, if you’re right by the green, you don’t want to use the wedgie. Even with a very light powered chipping stroke, the ball gets too much distance. I found myself using the sand wedge, which I suppose was a satisfactory enough chipper for the purposes of this game. Yes, many people, including pros (famously Phil Mickelson) use the sand wedge on the fairway because of its large-angled face which is great for a variety of different spins. You know what? I honestly found it was a lot safer and accurate to just putt from the fairway if I was 30 yards away. The game at least tells you how far you are from the hole, and anything less than 30, screw it, I putted. Sometimes it would even go in the hole, though this felt entirely like it was luck-based. This doesn’t seem like that big a deal, right? But, it sort of is.

Putting is annoying at first, but you can get SOMEWHAT used to it. The arrows on the green clue you into the slope, and it’s just a matter of figuring out the power to use. But, it’s not a good system. There’s no adjustable power and judging the speed and roll and distance is completely guesswork. Also, sometimes you’ll get a lie that I’m almost entirely certain isn’t possible to make in a single stroke. That happens in situations where you’re putting directly against the slope from a long distance. I had full-powered strokes come to a stop before they reached the hole. Golf doesn’t do any of the short game in a way that feels good, but putting is the worst. It never feels comfortable. Annoying you can learn to deal with it just enough to not be a deal breaker, but you’ll NEVER like it. Okay, maybe this really IS accurate to the sport.

See, you’re not going to be shooting holes-in-one or ironing-out eagles from 150 yards out as anything but dumb luck in Vs. Golf. It’s just not a precise enough game. BUT, you also can’t just chip-in either, and that’s where it crosses the line for me. Putting from a pixel or two off the green isn’t the same as knocking-in a forty-yard chip, and you can’t do that here. 99% of the best moments in golf, real or digital, are not shots off the tee. The most exciting and satisfying shots almost always come after that, and that can’t happen here. Not with these mechanics. Thus, you’re left with a game of video golf that lacks the potential for the most exciting shots. It’d be like a basketball game without dunking or a three point line. That’s the fun stuff! Remember, Golf is the one sport where “close enough” can be exhilarating. One of the single most incredible moments of my life was the first time I shot a ball from a bad lie in the rough and put it about five feet from the hole. Mind you, the putt was for a double-bogey, but I didn’t care. I was 12 years old and it was the first time I’d ever done anything that resembled good golf.

I had to rewrite a few parts of this review because I didn’t even think to pause the game to check and see if there was a shot chart to help newbies. I hate that I keep picking games I ultimately don’t like. I can see why Hamster wouldn’t want me to get review copies. They have a bad winning percentage with me. BUT, I will always give them props for their instruction manuals. They’re never half-assed and I really do appreciate the effort for clear instructions.

Well, the Nintendo Golf doesn’t really capture that spirit well because the short game just isn’t exact enough, and while “close enough” is a staple of golf, it’s also a game of precision. The strongest aspect about Vs. Golf is easily the shots off the tee. This was a pioneer of the standard triple-click swing mechanic that’s so ingrained into the video golf genre that the recent EA PGA game brought it back. It works here, and thank god for that. You can only shoot in sixteen exact directions and have to learn to utilize the slice (curving the ball right) and the hook (curving it left), which is simple to remember: left is right, and right is left. On the final click, if your meter is left of the white target, the ball will slice right mid-flight. If you’re right of the target, the ball will hook left in the air. You have to learn to use this, because sometimes you absolutely just can’t aim at the green the way you want to and have to sort of guestimate the hook or slice. There’s no flight trajectory or any method of helping you. I suppose, once again, it’s true to real life golf: you have to practice to get a feel for it.

Stupid as it is, I did enjoy the standard Arcade Archives five minute Caravan Mode. Yes, it’s even part of Golf. My best was shooting -4 after five minutes. I only barely finished the 6th hole when time expired. My best in the standard mode was shooting -10 for 18 holes. Not too shabby. In my recent Mario Golf session, I shot a 51, or -21 under par for the second-to-last course. My best as a kid wasn’t far off that. I think I did -25 under once. In real golf, one time at a par-3, nine-hole pitch & putt, I shot +1. At the course I played most on, my best ever for a day was +7 scratch. Sounds not too bad, but I was only +1 after nine holes. I gagged away the best nine holes I ever shot in my life, and Dad was calling me “Shark” after famous choker Greg Norman.

Another problem with Vs. Golf is every single shot is essentially a clean lie on the fairway. If the ball lands on a tree, it’s out of bounds and a penalty. Otherwise, even if you’re facing a tree, you don’t have to do anything different. It’s as if the trees aren’t there. There’s not even a rough in this golf game. Rough, aka the tall annoying stuff which is the thing that you’re desperately trying not to hit in real golf. No worries about that here. Instead, you’re playing all-or-nothing golf. It’s feast or famine: you’re either on the fairway, bunker, or green, or you’re out of bounds (or in the water, but at least there you get to take a drop). There’s wind, which barely manipulates the ball at all unless it’s over 10mph. Even sand traps don’t really factor in all that much. I never once hit one that wasn’t right by the green, which would be the only time that would actually hurt. The ball doesn’t get buried in sand, and you don’t have to do anything special besides switching to the sand wedge, which makes them kind of toothless, which defeats the point of having them in the first place. If anything, they’re just a brown-colored fairway that’s easier to chip off of. They’re the one element where it IS safe to chip and not worry about overshooting.

The little fist-pump Mario does when you sink a birdie managed to bring a smile to my face. Sadly, I never shot an eagle this entire review process. Not one. Came close only once, and yea, that was cool. It’s golf! Those moments would be cool no matter how antiquated the actual game is.

So, what do I make of this? Because golf should be frustrating, right? It’s golf, named as such because all the other four letter words were taken (yes, I stole that from Leslie Nielsen). It’d be weird if there wasn’t a steep learning curve. But, I think that this does little more than serve as a good first step towards making video golf a legitimately fun and viable genre. I’m totally certain this was groundbreaking and probably very fun in the mid-80s, like Golden Tee was in the 90s. Nintendo’s Golf is ultimately a very stripped-down game of golf, and while it isn’t totally crap by today’s standards, it’s just not that fun anymore. Vs. Golf is hurt badly by what it doesn’t do. Despite the lack of complex terrain, it lacks for assisted club selection, thus making it not so newbie friendly. But, veterans of video golf will find it too basic. What is Match & Stroke Golf? It’s a really good proof of concept for where video golf would go over the coming decade, and that’s awesome and admirable. But, now it really only has value as a historical curio. Then again, there’s people buying this because this version has music and the NES version doesn’t. Do I recommend it? Well.. no. But, with handicap, it could be a yes.

Golf is not Chick-Approved.

Golf was developed by Hamster Corp.
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 triple-bogeyed in the making of this review.

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Arcade Archives: Clu Clu Land (Review)

May 3, 2020 by 2 Comments

Yep, I spent $7.99 on this. And this time, the game wasn’t purchased by a fan. It was all me. I also ordered 18lbs of my beloved Mega Fruit gum at the same time. Fuck it, if I’m going to burn money, I want to (eventually, it won’t be here until between May 11 – 18) chew synthetic rubber chased with plastic filler coated in artificial fruit-flavored sugar while I play my over-priced arcade versions of games that I already get free by being a Switch Online subscriber. I’m fucking stupid!

Not entirely stupid. Hey Daddy, if you’re reading this, I used your Visa card for the gum.

I’ll enjoy chewing the lemon, grape, and orange flavors.. once I flatten them with a plate and break them into smaller pieces, at least.. and enjoy using the watermelon flavors on my putting green. Because they are disgusting. Apple is nasty too. Strawberry is what I save when I have nothing else to chew on.

So, Clu Clu Land. Or, in this case, “Vs. Clu Clu Land” even though the title doesn’t include the “Vs.” part. Previously, it had been one of my least favorite Nintendo-produced games. But, I go into these reviews with an open mind. After a few play-throughs of the various modes offered in the Arcade Archives release of it, I’ll admit that Clu Clu Land is simply a bad game and not an all-time toilet clogger. Hey, that’s progress! Also, I’m going to come to the defense of this stinkeroo by saying it’s not Nintendo’s attempt at Pac-Man. That would be Shigeru Miyamoto’s Japanese-and-Europe only release Devil World. Clu Clu Land doesn’t feel like Pac-Man at all, and as bad as it is (and it’s pretty bad), it at least deserves to be recognized as an original idea. Here, you only use the left and right arms to swing yourself around a grid of poles to reveal a pattern of hidden gems. Until the Donkey Kong: King of Swing games (for the record, I didn’t like those either), nothing controlled like Clu Clu Land.

That’s for the best.

Exclusive to the Arcade and Famicom Disk System versions of Clu Clu Land are these Super Urchins that look like that boss you have to blow the whistle to destroy in the NES Legend of Zelda. They don’t appear until you’ve squashed several of the smaller urchins in a stage, and only one spawns per level. They still only require one shot and a shove into the wall to kill, but doing so gives you credit for killing ten enemies. It’s essential if you’re chasing scores.

Really, Clu Clu Land’s controls frustrate beyond reason. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be insanely impressed watching someone who practiced long enough to wire their brain to adjust to the peg-swinging mechanics. I’m sure I could do it with enough practice. But, keeping it real, I could probably also train myself to juggle while riding a unicycle if I practiced long enough, and at least I can make tips at the piers doing that. Honestly, the best thing Clu Clu Land, Vs. or Clu Clu Land D have going for them is the combat formula. You get infinite shots with a sound wave, which stun-locks the enemy urchins that you then push into the walls to defeat. It’s a genuinely satisfying way to kill enemies, especially when they make that wonderful sound that’s a mixture of a crunch and a pop. That part’s fun. Uncovering the hidden patterns.. which is the actual point of the game.. isn’t so much. The bad controls actually take a back seat to the fact that Clu Clu Land is just sort of boring, and there’s no worse sin a game can commit.

This is as close as I came to getting all the gems in the bonus round. I tried so much I have a small sore on my thumb. That’s not a joke. I became obsessed for a couple hours with acing this bonus round and only managed 63.

BUT, before I wrap this up, there’s an interesting idea I didn’t make it far enough in the game to find out about until right before hitting publish. Later in the game, Vs. Clu Clu Land becomes a logic-reflex puzzler when suddenly the gems that form the puzzles have two sides. In order to beat levels, you have to put all the gems on the shiny side (if each turn of the gem is odd and even, it’s the odd side, or first side, that you need). If you have the Switch Online Famicom lineup, the version of Clu Clu Land in it is essentially Vs. Clu Clu Land, only you can start the game on these harder levels, with a fresh and genuinely good idea. This by itself would have saved Clu Clu Land because I was very interested in this concept. However, there’s a relatively quick time limit to each stage. The time limit and the control issues are going to be an insurmountable tag-team when you reach this point in the game. So, Clu Clu Land still sucks, but at least I see a light where a potential remake of this could build a fun and worthwhile play mechanic. You’d be dumb to spend $7.99 on Arcade Archives Clu Clu Land (unless you want to compete on a barren leaderboard where some absolutely horrible play by myself still put me in the top 40 global scores ever). But, the format isn’t as dead on arrival as I figured going into this review. That’s an upgrade in the same way being sick with flesh eating bacteria is upgraded to being healthy and missing a foot.

Arcade Archives: Clu Clu Land was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99  still had her Dad’s Visa card committed to memory in the making of this review.

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Arcade Archives: Bells & Whistles (Review)

May 2, 2020 by Leave a comment

I’ve somehow managed to play multiple versions of TwinBee over the last year. The arcade version was included in the putrid Konami’s Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection, while the NES version is free with Switch Online. I wrote off the formula as being unworkable and dumb. The concept of a shump where items come in the form of bells that must be juggled via shooting until they become useful is, frankly, kinda not good. That doesn’t change here. While playing Bells & Whistles, you’ll want to shoot a lot. But if the bell changes to a useful item, a second shot changes it back to gold, which is only worth points. And you’ll make that mistake a lot because, you know, you’re supposed to shoot a lot. That’s by design, too. The screen is often spammed with enemies at the very moment the clouds that contain the bells arrive. That’s useful in the typical Arcade Archives Hi-Score or 5-minute Caravan modes, but not so much when you’re trying to go as far as you can in the game without losing a life. It’s a bizarre mechanic for sure, and while it has fans, I’ll point out that TwinBee as a franchise is comfortably on the fringes of gaming and never rose above it. Maybe that’s why?

I’m happy to report that bosses are a LITTLE more than “spam with bullets until dead”. I mean, they really are still that, because Bells & Whistles is a shump, but the bosses are each different and open themselves to attack in ways that require a bit of finesse. I’m a finesse type of chick, so I appreciate the effort. Also, they’re some of the coolest looking bosses in a shmup.

Having said that, I’ve played two very decent entries in the series this last week. Bells & Whistles was chosen by a fan to be included in this Arcade Archives marathon, while a previously Japanese/Europe-only SNES release, Pop’n TwinBee, is now included globally on the Switch Online SNES lineup. Surprisingly, they’re both pretty decent. It’s not entirely a “realized potential” situation because I don’t think these represent the maximum “as good as TwinBee CAN get” situation. You still have to juggle those fucking bells, but at least the enemy formations are more rational (at least early on) and the speed, pacing, and reliability of projectiles feels more modern and slick. I wish the power-up system was handled differently, since getting the desirable guns was a pain in the ass, but otherwise these were both pretty decent shmups. Focusing on Bells & Whistles, it has some clever enemy & boss design, a charge shot that is bad ass, and a decent variety of power-ups. The cutesy setting is also a welcome break from your typical bleak space setting.

Don’t let the adorable facade fool you, though, because Belly & Whistler dips its toes in bullet hellfire late in the game. And that can be problematic, because the visually loud background and relatively small, under-developed bullets are often very hard to see. Some fans of the genre disagree with me, and I’ll fully admit I’m not a hardcore bullet hell fan, but I think the key to a really good bullet hell is to make the bullets visible. In a screen full of projectiles, the challenge should be dodging them, not trying to locate them and dodge them. In a fast-paced, auto-scrolling shump, having to do both isn’t a reasonable challenge. It’s just not. Granted, this game was made to earn money 25¢ at a time, and if the person is deep into the game, that means they’ve been sitting there for a while. If they’re there by virtue of being good, that machine wasn’t making money. Spamming the screen with low-visibility bullets against backgrounds that bleed into the bullet colors is a cheap, borderline dishonest way of getting the person occupying the cabinet to put more money in it, but it works.

For its time, this probably was visually impressive, but it needed to make bullets stand out more.

Still, this is the first TwinBee game that’s fun enough on its own merit to warrant a recommendation. I’ll be talking about Hamster’s misguided $7.99 price tag when this marathon is over with, but needless to say, eight bucks might be a bit too much for a one dimensional (albeit finesseful.. yes, finesseful, it’s a word as of now) shump. This should have been in the Konami Anniversary set, which had a miserable lineup outside of Life Force. In fact, I’d go so far as to say Bells & Whistles is comfortably better than everything in that set but Life Force. I’ve played a lot worse, and I’ve played a lot better, but if you’ve got an itch for a decent shmup, you won’t hate Bells & Whistles, even if it’s lacking, um.. something that indicates extra effort.

Arcade Achives: Bells & Whistles was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Switch, PlayStation 4

$7.99 never learned how to whistle in the making of this review. Hey, I only learned how to snap my fingers within the last year.

A fan purchased this game for this review.

Bells & Whistles is Chick-Approved and will be ranked on the IGC Arcade Retroboard when it debuts July 1, 2020.

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Arcade Archives: Kid Niki: Radical Ninja and Arcade Archives: Elevator Action (Review)

October 24, 2019 by 3 Comments

Arcade Archives: Kid Niki: Radical Ninja was developed by Hamster ($7.99 said “tubular, dude” in the making of this review)

I’ve found the most generic, uninspired, bland, yet still playable game ever made. It’s called Kid Niki: Radical Ninja. I’m not sure what the story on it is, though it feels like something made to cash in on Dragonball back in the day. It’s a typical post-Mario platformer with the “twist” being you spin a sword in front of you to slay enemies. And, well, that’s pretty much it. Run right, and hit the attack button as needed. You can jump, and it’s works and doesn’t feel crappy. The controls are responsive. It’s not a badly made game. And hell, maybe for its time, it was a little more special. Probably not, since my play session with it wasn’t met with dozens of squealing retro gamers going OMG KID NIKI, HEART! In fact, hardly anyone recognized it at all. Maybe one or two people noted they rented the NES version of it back in the day. I’m used to having my older followers unleash the gushing for these titles. Not even a sniff of that here. So Kid Niki is truly lost to the ages despite being available in 2019 on Switch and PS4, and it’s not hard to see why. Every single aspect of it, from its look to its sound effects and action make it feel like you’re playing a fake video game being shown in a bad sitcom. It’s so typically 80s gaming that it’s like a joke game.

I had to abuse the interrupt save states to beat Kid Niki. The normal run-of-the-mill enemies are not a challenge at all. The same can’t be said about the bosses. Especially the last one, which is one the most unfair, impossible encounters ever. I had to save hit-to-hit because, during one phase, bubbles rise up from the floor so fast and so randomly that it’s really sheer luck to not get hit by one. If anyone gave a shit about Kid Niki, it’d be in the discussion for the worst boss in gaming history. I’d show you a clip but it has video capture disabled. Likely because the game sucks so badly.

Probably the best thing it has going for it are its boss fights. The tone, ahem, RADICALLY changes. The game does a neat thing I’ve never seen before, where hitting the boss inflicts damage upon it but causes your sword to go flying behind you, where you must retrieve it. Mind you, this doesn’t happen while making your way to a boss. It’s a neat mechanic that actually works to add tension and nuanced challenge to an otherwise bland game. I wish it did more things that changed up the formula like that. I think if Kid Niki had been remotely creative in its level design, enemy design, or play mechanics, the bosses would have gone down as some of the most memorable in classic gaming. They’re grotesque, they’re legitimately frightening, and pretty fun to battle. And that’s the travesty of Kid Niki’s mediocrity: that these quality boss encounters are lost to history.

Maybe it’s just me, but Kid Niki checks off so many gaming 80s gaming stereotypes that it almost seems like a movie prop.

If Kid Niki is the poster child for being less than the sum of its parts, Elevator Action is the poster child for being more. Unlike Kid Niki, my fans largely recognized it, which, duh. Of course they did! The franchise had legs. As I was typing this, I discovered Kid Niki actually was a franchise, at least in Japan. It had two Famicom sequels and a Game Boy spin-off. Who knew? Well, very few outside of Japan did. On the other hand, Elevator Action was at least well known enough to get a global sequel and a slew of remakes. I had one on my PlayStation 3 and it was the shits. But you have to be at least X amount recognizable to get a modern remake, so Elevator Action was remembered as a classic.

What’s really weird is Elevator Action isn’t a particularly good game if you focus on it mechanically. It’s slow, often feels unresponsive, and movement is pretty clunky. And yet, the fundamental gameplay is fun and genuinely exciting. Plus, for a 1983 game, it sure has an air of violence. What can I say? I love violence, and Elevator Action has this macabre vibe about it. When you fire a bullet at someone and it hits, it makes this incredibly satisfying popping sound that never failed to put a smile on my face. Also, I might have something wrong with me.

I actually played this in early September and deleted all my media for it. Whoops.

Don’t get me wrong: I think Elevator Action is a borderline bad game. It just does so many things wrong. You can’t duck in elevators because.. reasons. There’s too much waiting around for one of the slow-moving elevators to come to the floor you’re on. The level layouts can be so bad and nonsensical that they kill the pace of the game dead. And, frankly, I got fucked by unavoidable deaths more than once. So, why is Elevator Action fun? It really shouldn’t be. It’s a very badly made game.

It’s not exactly Mortal Kombat, but the murders in Elevator Action feel like murders, and that’s good enough for me.

I think it’s a matter of the concept is so smart and so immersive that you really only had to get the bare minimum working to create something worthwhile. Which is not to say the concept just works, period. Elevator Action Deluxe, the aforementioned PS3 game, was terrible. But what is here does feel like you’re a real spy really shooting bad guys. I’d love to see the exact same concept redone today with sharper controls and a little bit of blood. Make it feel like a real, white-knuckle espionage via elevator arcade experience. But what we got here defied all my beliefs that a retro game needs to handle well to be fun. Elevator Action plays like shit. Elevator Action feels sloppy. And Elevator Action is kinda, sorta, just a little teeny tiny bit fun. Well, fuck me.

Arcade Archives: Elevator Action was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4

$7.99 legitimately giggled at shooting bad guys in the balls in the making of this review.

Elevator Action (and not Kid Niki) is Chick-Approved and will eventually be ranked on the IGC Arcade Retroboard.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , ,

Arcade Archives: Pinball (Review for Nintendo Switch)

September 7, 2019 by 8 Comments

Another day, another Nintendo coin-op that’s damn-near identical to an NES launch counterpart that costs $7.99, which pretty much only nets you the same game that’ll inevitably be ported to Switch Online for free. Joy. (UPDATE May 25, 2022: it took two-and-two-thirds of a year, but the prophecy was fulfilled. Pinball is now part of the Switch Online lineup. Sucks here, sucks there, sucks everywhere). Today, it’s 1983’s Pinball by Satoru Iwata of all people. And it’s not good at all. It’s horrible. It’s one of Nintendo’s worst published games.

But Mario has a very brief cameo in it, so Nintendo fanboys of the past convinced themselves it was awesome. That’s par for the course on those Nintendo black box releases. Imagine if he’d made an appearance in Urban Champion. It wouldn’t have the unjust reputation as the worst game Nintendo ever made. While we’re on the subject, Pinball somehow managed to not be that either despite busted physics and some of the the most cheating gameplay ever. Of all time.

I see London. I see France. Pauline ain’t wearing underpants!

You can tell Pinball wasn’t made by someone with a deep understanding of what makes real pinball work. A lot of people describe the pastime as “controlled chaos.” But I grew up in a house with pinball machines (specifically the Williams classics Firepower and Black Knight, both from 1980 and both by the legendary Steve Ritchie, both of which my Dad bought in the mid 80s before I was even born. I got two things from my father: a love of pinball and a predisposition to high blood pressure. Thanks Daddy). Pinball, when played at its top level, is anything but chaos. With enough time and patience, anyone can clock a table, learning every angle, skill shot, and the risk/reward factors of each target. Pinball is a very precise sport. Yes, sport. Fuck you. If curling, golf, or League of Legends are sports, so is pinball. And pinball, which is one of the great joys of my life, has only recently been successfully recreated digitally. It took gaming less time to figure out proper online play than it did to get digital pinball right.

This isn’t the snobbish “real pinball is the only pinball” hot air that you get from many silver ball enthusiasts. A lot of people don’t have the money you need to truly get into it. A decent pin will typically run you $1,500 – $2,500 minimum, $4,000 for iconic tables, going as high as $10,000 for legendary tables. And that’s not even considering the amount of work you need to put into them to clean and maintain them. Turning pinball from a hobby to a passion is very expensive. The majority of people who do buck up and buy a table end up not liking it as much as they imagined they would. That’s why I like video pinball’s potential. If you don’t fall completely in love with the experience, you’re only out a couple bucks. As opposed to thousands.

And, in 1983, this is probably as close to looking like a real table as video pins got. But it’s also not pinball in the sense that you can play it like a real machine. You can’t, because you simply can’t clock Nintendo Pinball. For starters, the ball is alive and always vibrating. Because it’s always having a seizure, even if you hold the ball with a flipper to set up a shot, you can’t control what trajectory it’ll take or how the ball will react upon hitting walls and surfaces. It’s completely random and never consistent from one shot to the next. Nintendo Pinball’s reality lives up to the greatest misconception of real pinball: it’s governed by random chance. The ball also does weird things like somehow retaining inertia that it should have lost when you grab the ball for a tee shot. And the plunger is not easy to use either since there’s no analog way to fire it off. Probably 49 shots out of 50 had me getting the in one of the 500 point lanes instead of the 1,000 point one. Which also tells me that the game does more than just rely on its limited physics to dictate the ball’s path. It must be doing something more to pull the ball away from targets. Simple random chance odds tell me that the ball should be able to go down the center chute one out of three times, instead of once every fifty shots. So something is not on the up-and-up with Pinball. Other parts of the game make this even more clear.

Those slots where the cards are became the most maddening aspect of the game. Because the ball is so erratic and doesn’t have consistent weight or gravity, even if I slowed it down so that it should drop into one of the slots, it’d inevitably suddenly become a high-density rubber ball and bounce off. Also, this almost always happened to the left, leading me to believe there’s invisible suction that draws the ball away from targets.

It also doesn’t help that the table layout isn’t very good. The game is split into two screens. The upper one contains a slot machine that you activate by going down one chute. The numbers don’t stop on their own, and instead you must hit a moving target when it’s hovering above the reel that’s spinning. In over ten hours spent on this game, I only successfully pulled this off three times. This mostly owes to the upper level having three ways for players to be sent down to the lower level: the drain (the gap between the flippers), a portal that fires you past targets on the lower level, and finally a outlane on the left side. This outlane I genuinely believe is rigged with some kind of suction. It has to be. Too many times the ball bounced into it when it had none of the required momentum to even come close to the opening, let alone go through it. Inevitably, if the ball even came near the entrance to it, it was like crossing the event horizon of a black hole: no escape.

And then you have the lower level, where the majority of available points are (if you’re playing the five minute caravan mode, getting points in the upper level is so slow you practically have to let the ball fall down to it). Here, there’s five slots that reveal playing cards. Get all five cards revealed and you get a drain stopper and score points. You can also enter a bonus room here. This is where Mario shows up, and it’s possibly the most busted aspect of the game. Ironically, the BONUS room ruined my best runs of the five-minute mode because sometimes the ball’s momentum would just stop on a dime and it would proceed to very, very slowly roll towards a drain. It could eat up thirty seconds by itself. In the NES/Famicom version of Pinball, my understanding is you’re not guaranteed to be able to enter the bonus room. In the arcade version, you enter it every time you hit the portal to it. Assuming you’re actually trying to score points in it, you must reflect a ball with a paddle similar to Breakout. Mario holds the paddle, thus earning the game acclaim from slobbering Nintendo fanboys the world over. If you successfully do this, Pauline will fall from her holding chamber. You must then catch her and deliver her to an exit (which again, she walks VERY slowly to). If you successfully pull this off, you only get 5,000 points. It’s such a little amount of points for such a high-degree difficulty challenge. But, far too often, the ball will launch in a way where it’s unplayable from the start. And, since you only get the points earned in it after losing your last ball, it’s not desirable to enter this room at all in the Arcade Archives Caravan Mode. Even killing yourself to get those earned points isn’t worth it, because it takes forever for them to be added to your real score. Why is everything about Pinball so slow? Pinball ain’t slow!

This is NOT exactly the NES version. In it, the flippers apparently don’t disappear as often, the physics are altered, and you have to unlock being able to successfully enter the bonus room. I guess. I have no means to play it. I suspect it’ll be coming to Switch Online soon. But the disappearing flippers becomes insanely annoying. They’re still there. You just can’t see them. You can cheat like I did and mark where the optimal spot on the screen they are.

In fairness, this bonus room wasn’t designed around a special mode of the game being surgically grafted to it 36 years later. But that doesn’t excuse why the bonus room is so miserable to begin with. Or why knocking down all the drop targets makes your flippers invisible. What in all the fuck is that? Why invisible? Why is the scoring balance so off? Why are the high degree difficulty shots in the upper level worth so little points, while the relatively easy to hit bumpers on the lower level worth so much? High scoring is as simple as getting the ball trapped in a cycle in them, having them knock around, and up through the card slots. I posted the fifth highest score in Caravan Mode’s global leaderboard doing this. It’s pretty much the only way you can do it. I also finished 28th in Hi-Score mode, where you must play with the machine’s default options. So nobody can accuse me of disliking Pinball because I sucked at it. I’m high up on all three global leaderboards.

Especially the normal mode, where high scores count no matter what options you use. I kept all the default options but gave myself five lives instead of three. And then I posted the second highest score ever recorded on the Arcade Archives Pinball original mode global leaderboard: 843,020. A pretty amazing achievement.

Too bad it’s fake.

To my credit, the game kept cheating me. What’s good for the goose..

Yep, I cheated. It’s a bullshit score that I achieved by exploiting an absolutely galling oversight on developer Hamster’s part. Anyone can beat if they have enough time and patience, skill level be damned.

Here’s how I did it. Pay attention Hamster: I’m about to close a loophole in your games for you. You’re welcome.

Unlike Hi-Score and Caravan Modes, where pausing the game to the menu forfeits your score and session, original mode allows you to access a menu, where changing anything but the game’s dip switch options keeps your current session alive. Included in this is a Save State Interrupt feature. For most emulators, Save State Interrupt should only work to save a game if you need to power down the platform you’re on. When you resume the session, it erases the save state. Hamster forgot the erase part. Erasing the state only happens when you game over. Using the save state, I could quit to the game’s main menu if I died or the ball wasn’t where I wanted it to be. I would just replay sections bit by bit, creating a new state every 10,000 or so points and dropping balls occasionally to make it look like it was a believable score, finally laying my ball down once I cleared the 2nd place score to make it look realistic. In reality, I considered taking the top spot (which is over two-million points, significantly higher than the next highest scores) but it took me hours just to get to second using this trickery.

It’s absolutely fucking insane that Hamster didn’t think of this, and it puts a taint on every previous Arcade Archives release. I went back and checked them. All the ones I own have this exploit in their original modes. And yea, I feel bad about it (my apologies to everyone with real scores I beat out making this point). That’s why I put effort towards posting impressive real scores in the other two modes. But, ultimately, even my fifth play finish in Caravan Mode was via dumb luck. My ball at one point got stuck in a cycle in the middle of the bumpers and went through the queen’s slot a dozen times in a row. I also managed to avoid the bonus room and the ball, for literally the only time the entire time I was playing, seemed to bounce in my favor. But when my best accomplishment is based on dumb luck, it sort of mutes the point of being one of the top five scorers ever, does it not?

I’m going to guess the top score isn’t legit either. Looking back, all the Arcade Archives titles have massive gaps in the top scores. You can tell which ones are real and which ones aren’t just by noting those gaps and at which point on the list scores start to cluster closer together. This is also why the scores in Hi-Score Mode and Caravan Modes tend to be closer together. Still, I can’t believe the Vs. Super Mario score is legit. Meanwhile, I cheesed Kid Niki’s global board too in another way (that review is coming up).

So yea, I hated Pinball too. And I’m not even willing to give it kudos for ambition for its era. It’s a horrible layout. The scoring is all out of wack and not balanced to factor in risk/reward, it has a busted bonus room, and it’s almost entirely based on luck. It’s more pachinko than pinball, and since this was made for a primarily Japanese audience, that’s probably by design. I hate to bring back this old chestnut, but I’m sort of forced to: gaming has come a long ways. But the Atari 2600’s Video Pinball from 1980 did predictable, reliable physics better than this warped version of pinball on a more advanced platform three years after-the-fact did. I have to believe Nintendo’s version could have done it too and simply didn’t. Pinball isn’t the worst early Nintendo game. But it is maybe the most broken. We exist in a world that has Ice Climber, so that’s saying something.

Arcade Archives: Pinball (despite this being a Vs. System game, it’s not called “Vs. Pinball”) was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 studied under Rosie Ruiz in the making of this review.

A fan purchased this game for me. All indie games reviewed at this blog are purchased by me. Retro AAA games I accept fan donations on. I matched the purchase price of this with a contribution to the Epilepsy Foundation. And then I blistered my thumb playing it. Also, I think Iwata haunted my Switch.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Arcade Archives: Ice Climber

July 9, 2019 by 5 Comments

THIS, my friends, is the worst Nintendo game. Well, maybe not. Donkey Kong 3 is pretty damn shitty. And Nintendo has made a lot of games that are uninspired at best, if not actively horrible. Now granted, I haven’t played Stack Up, and unless Nintendo does a digital simulator for R.O.B. it’s unlikely I ever will. I’m not sure why Stack Up has such a bad reputation besides being a game that requires players to keep score via the honor system. It seems like totally functional concept that wouldn’t be bad if it weren’t controlled by an accessory so slow that you have to measure its movement speed in epochs. I know that part is true because I have played Gyromite. With actual gyros. It’s plodding, but it works. But, I don’t think the NES robot games should be in the discussion. They were never meant to be good. They were part of Nintendo’s trojan horse strategy to get the NES into retailers. Expecting them to be good would be like a pothead giving glaucoma a positive review because at least it gives them a legal excuse to smoke weed.

We’ll never see Stack Up again. I mean, that Ron Howard likeness license ain’t cheap.

Well hell, shouldn’t part of the requirement for a worst-game contender be that the game had aspirations of high quality? People find charm in Ed Wood’s failures because he was trying so gosh-darn hard to make something good. That he was giving his maximum effort and still ended up with Plan 9 from Outer Space is adorable in how pitiful it is. That’s why I found Press X to Not Die so obnoxious. It’s not just because it was bad, but because it was trying to be deliberately 90s FMV-bad. But those games like Sewer Shark or Night Trap weren’t trying to be badly acted or horrible to play. That’s just how they turned out. They have camp value specifically because everyone involved didn’t know they were making bad games. Being bad on purpose takes no skill or effort. Anyone can do it. Being remarkably bad takes ambition and the belief you’re making something good. Remember, it’s not really failing if you didn’t even try. Which, coincidentally, is what New York Knicks management have to say to themselves just to sleep at night.

The one less-negative thing I can say about Arcade Archives: Ice Climber is that it controls not-as-horrible as the NES version. I don’t want to use the word “better” to describe anything related to this game. It doesn’t deserve even the slightest hint of positivity.

I suspect Ice Climber was considered a high-prospect game at Nintendo. Developed alongside Super Mario Bros., Nintendo probably thought jumping and scrolling were the keys to why Mario’s new game was so fun and decided “well, Super Mario is working horizontally, so let’s quickly make a vertical scroller and corner that market too!” If true, that’d be a solid theory. But the problem is Super Mario Bros., for all the shit I’ve given it for its relatively bad control (compared to how the series evolved at least), was probably the best controlling game Nintendo had ever made up to that point. Ice Climber goes the other way. It has bizarre jumping physics that severely limit how much horizontal distance you can cover each jump, presumably to make it clear that this is the vertical game. It honestly feels like something is physically pushing into your character while you jump. So the characters can jump fairly high vertically but not to the left and right. Fine. And then they built a game not tailored to these specific physics that requires you to jump up and to the left or right. Not fine.

Ice Climber is so putrid that it’s insane to think anyone could have been satisfied releasing this in the state it’s in. It’s horrible. Maybe with tight level design built to the strengths of the jumping mechanics it could have been something. But Ice Climber often requires quick jumping reflexes and precision movement. Some of the floors are like conveyor belts that push you one direction. Sometimes there’s wind blowing against you in addition to the strange leaping physics. Sometimes progress is dependent on waiting for slooooooooowwwwwww moving platforms. If there’s multiple moving platforms, they obviously weren’t programed with any form of synchronization in mind. You might end up having to wait a long time for them to line up in a way that’s useful. That mostly happens in bonus section of levels, where if you fall to your death you don’t lose a life. But, sometimes you end up getting stuck waiting in the actual level part of stages. And mind you, there’s a penalty for lingering. Simply atrocious. Gaming has come a long way and we should all take a moment to be thankful that little things like moving platform design have evolved to the point they have. But, even when everything seems like it’s working right, something will happen like trying to jump to the level above you and clipping through the floor instead. Really, Ice Climber’s most amazing aspect is how little time you spend playing it where nothing is wrong or off at that specific moment.

Pictured here: the climber clipping right through the blocks. This is incredibly annoying. The NES version of Mario Bros does this too. The arcade version of Mario doesn’t, which is the only reason why I bought Arcade Archives: Ice Climber. I figured if Mario Bros’s coin-op fixed my biggest complaint about the NES port, maybe Ice Climber’s would too. It doesn’t. I was constantly trying to jump to above platforms only to go straight through them because I didn’t land flush-enough, even though the majority of my body was over the platform. If Ice Climber was a little more forgiving, it might be a fun game. Probably not, but you can’t rule it out. Also, in Japan, instead of furry little monsters, you club seals. I’m not kidding.

And so, yeah, this is the worst Nintendo game. The most annoying mechanically. The most boring in level design. The least rewarding to complete. And it’s not even historically important. Finally, it’s not even fun in a campy type of way. Being a bad game isn’t like being a bad movie. Movies are a passive experience. You just sit back and watch them. Games you take an active role in. I never thought there was value in bad games. Ice Climber is worthless in every way a game can be. If not for the fact that they wanted some obscure gag characters for Smash Bros. Melee and thought Mr. Game & Watch was too obscure, Ice Climber would be completely inconsequential to gaming today. Donkey Kong 3 is bland, but Ice Climber is bland AND bad. It’s the worst combination imaginable. It’s terrible in ways that almost defy reality. This was developed alongside Super Mario Bros. Someone looked at both games and said “yep, we’re on the right track!” It’s unreal that nobody said “look at how the Super Mario project is going. We can do better!” Ice Climber deserved to be lost to history. It almost was. And then Sakurai needed a joke for Melee and snatched it from oblivion. Funny joke, but not that funny.

Oh, right, Arcade Archives release. This cost $7.99. HAH. There’s, that’s my review of this port in its entirety.

Arcade Archives: Ice Climber was developed by Hamster.
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 said honestly using a gun would be a kinder form of robbery than charging $8 for Ice Climber in the making of this review.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , ,

Arcade Archives: Urban Champion (Review)

July 8, 2019 by 9 Comments

Reputations are a fickle thing. They happen for a reason, are usually rooted in some form of reality, but just as often as not, are completely inaccurate. I have a reputation for being a tough but fair game critic, which I take great pride maintaining. But among some, my reputation is also that I’m anti-retro and anti-Nintendo. Those are fiction. The anti-retro thing comes from the fact that I don’t bend the knee to every legendary older game based on their legacy alone. I hated Super Mario Bros. I hated Centipede. I owe them nothing and have no problem telling people I think they suck. But anti retro? Are you kidding? If the rep were true, would I have needed to pause my session of Gunstar Heroes just to cry tears of joy at how awesome it was? Because I totally did. It was so good and I was so blown away. And I even wrote a two-thousand word essay on how amazing Super Mario Bros. 2 is. If that’s hate, by all means, hate me that way.

The anti-Nintendo rep comes from the fact that I’ll criticize Nintendo when I think the situation calls for it. That’s really it. That alone makes you “anti-Nintendo” to the generation of latchkey kids raised by an NES or a Wii who live their lives under the delusion that Nintendo is their bestie. Or, even worse, an insecure deity, and if they stop kissing its ass for even a split second, they might end up never seeing more entries in their favorite franchises. Because, right, Nintendo is totally going to stop making Metroid or Zelda games if anyone expresses even the faintest hint of rejection. Uh huh. By the way, my rep there is, again, obviously untrue. I’ve named two Nintendo-developed titles my Game of the Year since starting IGC (Link Between Worlds in 2013, Mario Odyssey in 2017) and my site has been focused recently more on Switch indies and releases. Strange way of being anti-Nintendo: covering games that would serve to help their bottom line. So, I’ve learned to take reputations with a grain of salt and judge people and things by my experience with them.

“I told you to make my hair look like Elvis! This isn’t Elvis! His hair wasn’t green!”

I bring up reputation because Urban Champion is, by reputation, the worst Nintendo game ever made. There’s of course outliers who argued that the title belongs to Ice Climber, Clu Clu Land, NES Baseball, Stack Up (the R.O.B. game), or even later stuff like Wii Music or Pokemon Channel. Hell, I’d throw Kid Icarus: Uprising into that mix. The fact that they had to include an accessory just to play it without causing damage to your hands should have been a warning to them that maybe the game needed serious re-thinking. But, Urban Champion is the game that comes up most, at least from what I can tell. It’s not even close. The argument is never that it’s unplayable or broken, but rather that it’s so bland and uninspired that it almost defies belief. Even while I was playing it and uploading videos today, people pointed out that, after five seconds, you’d seen everything the game had to offer. A baffling argument in my opinion. I mean, how many seconds do you need to see everything Pac-Man has to offer?

I’d never played Urban Champion properly. I’d played it as part of NES Remix or a microgame in WarioWare, but I’d never played the real deal. I wasn’t sure what to expect. And then I turned it on, and I started playing it, and now I’m sitting here wondering how in the world this of all games became the worst Nintendo game title holder. Because it’s not. It’s not even the most bland early Nintendo game I’ve played. It’s fine, honestly. There’s not a whole lot of depth here, but the concept of two guys throwing punches on the street, high and low, jabs and heavy punches, works. And, in fact, being a fan of games where attacks feel like they have real world weight and impact, I liked Urban Champion’s violence a lot. The punches feel like they’re connecting and hurt. I’d be nice if the characters looked like they had damage, like a black eye or swollen faces just to really sell it, but still, it’s not bad. It’s almost unreal that a rushed, half-assed 1984 arcade game genuinely feels like a real fist fight between two angry people, but Urban Champion pulls that off.

You’ve got to appreciate that citizens of Urban Champion City keep confetti by their windows so that if someone below their apartment happens to punch some other poor SOB into a sewer, you can help them to celebrate their almost-certain manslaughter.

And it’s slightly more than a button-masher. It’s basically rock-scissors-paper with a fourth option. There’s two types of punches: a jab and a “knock-out punch” that, if you land it, always knocks a person to the ground. Both types of punches can be thrown to the face or to the gut, giving you four total attack methods. Every landed punch moves your opponent backwards. After a character is knocked back two screens, the third screen will always have an open manhole, where to win the fight you have to punch them into it. It’s a novel version of the round format, and really, a sort of precursor to Smash Bros when you think about it. They’re both fighting games where you’re trying to knock your opponents off the screen. I’m not saying Urban Champion is the grandfather of Smash Bros, but there’s some shared DNA for sure. In the same way humans are related to sea sponges, but it still counts.

Of course, the problem is that there’s not a lot of meat on these bones. Each opponent is identical in model with only the coloration changed. The difficult does ramp up, but rounds of Urban Champion are still long and slow. I can’t imagine arcade operators ever liked this. Then again, most of my fans weren’t even aware this was an arcade game. In fact, this (along with other current Arcade Archives releases like Clu Clu Land, Ice Climber, and Excitebike) were part of the Nintendo Vs. System that were basically made of slightly upgraded NES hardware. The games were interchangeable, with operators simply being given different marquees and other decorations to change the look of the cabinet. This is why the arcade version of Super Mario is called Vs. Super Mario Bros. It was a hugely profitable set-up, but it was limited to one, maybe two games, per unit. Nintendo eventually discontinued it in favor of the PlayChoice-10, which many of my older fans describe as “playing an NES, five minutes for 25¢ at a time.” Anyway, Urban Champion was part of the Vs. Series, though it’s so rare that not a single person registered to the Killer List of Video Games owns one, or even the board for it. As an NES game, it’s not hard to find, but it’s not exactly wanted as anything but a curio either.

Imagine how hilarious it would be if Urban Champion was announced as the next Smash Bros DLC. There’d be an internet riot.

I think history was a bit unfair to Urban Champion. If this had come out for something like the Intellivsion or Colecovision, it might have been remembered as one of the all-time greats. It even feels like it belongs more on one of those consoles. Maybe if it had been, today it’d be considered the rightful patriarch to games like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Instead, titles like Karate Champ or Yie Ar Kung-Fu hold that distinction, even though I think Urban Champion is a better game. Compared to other early NES titles like Super Mario Bros. or Legend of Zelda, Champion feels so damn primitive. Maybe it was the victim of the worst timing in gaming history. And being slightly bland or limited in play mechanics aren’t the only flaw. The police periodically resetting a round, seemingly at random, is annoying as fuck. The people dropping pots out the window, sometimes in your favor and sometimes not, break up the game’s flow terribly. There’s no special moves and I hate having to move manually after every knock-down and to start every round. But, I liked the no-frills fisticuffs it offered. Urban Champion isn’t the worst Nintendo game. It’s not even a bad game. It’s genuinely decent. I liked it. I’m sure people will think I’m being sarcastic or taking the piss. I’m not. Urban Champion is underrated. It has the most undue reputation in all of gaming, positive or negative. I’m dead serious. Check it out if you get the chance.

Now, having said all that, the package and value of the Hamster release is pretty terrible. There’s only three modes. The first allows you to mess with options, though the game defaults to easy so really the only thing you can tinker with is your life count. Which, even if you do, you can post a high score to online leaderboards with it. The second mode is high-score, which you have to use the default settings. The third is caravan mode, which is the typical five-minute timer mode with online boards. Thankfully, for this release, the timer actually stops when the action does between rounds. Nice touch. The problem with this mode is that you’re playing a game where you’ll be hitting the buttons a lot, including the B button. If you’re doing that and the time runs out, you reject your own score and it doesn’t get posted. I had a top 50 score and threw it away, and I’m fucking pissed off about that. It’s such careless, lazy, stupid design. Have a fucking warning screen or something before tossing a score out. It’s just common sense. Just because your company is called Hamster doesn’t need you need to display the brainpower of one.

And finally, there’s the price tag: yet another $7.99 game. And that’s what presents a problem for me. If the game had been $1, I’d considered it one of the best dollars I’ve spent on a game in recent memory. EIGHT FUCKING DOLLARS FOR THIS? I bought six discounted Switch indies for that last night. All these Arcade Archives releases (and their Johnny Turbo cousins) are terrible values. $5 is a good price for an old game. That’s an impulse buy. $7.99 is something most people will want to think about. And that’s where I’m struggling here. You see, I liked Urban Champion. I just detest the price. But, my rule here is that price and value are not what I’m deciding on. I’m reviewing a game as a game, not a product. So, for that reason, I have to give Arcade Archives: Urban Champion the Indie Gamer Chick Seal of Approval. And I have to tell people to not buy it for $7.99. If you get a chance at $5 or less, give it a chance with an open mind and you’ll probably walk away agreeing that Nintendo not only has done a lot worse, but that Urban Champion shouldn’t even make the list. But for $7.99? Urban Champion and this whole series (which I’m not done with yet, two more to go) can jump in a manhole and become part of a fatberg. A fatberg is a congealed mess of wetwipes and cooking grease that clogs up sewers. There’s also dozens of overpriced arcade relics on home consoles holding it together. I’m almost certain of this.

Arcade Archives: Urban Champion was developed by Hamster
Point of Sale: Nintendo Switch

$7.99 said “maybe if I make the seal of approval smaller nobody will notice” in the making of this review.

Arcade Archives: Urban Champion is Chick-Approved but as a non-indie isn’t ranked on the IGC Leaderboard.

Filed under Nintendo Switch Reviews, Retro Reviews Tagged with , , , , , ,

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