The Great Playthrough: Game 73 - World Cup Italia '90

World Cup Italia '90
Released on: Sega Mega Drive, Sega Master System
Played on: Sega Mega Drive
Release Date: 1990 (D'uh!)

Before I start this review, I feel I should make a confession. I don't watch football, I don't play football. In fact, I'm not a football guy at all. The only reason I even own this game (as you may be able to tell from the photo above) is because it is part of a compilation cartridge.

But having said all of that, I do remember playing certain football games in my youth (most notable Sensible Soccer) and not hating the experience. And I do like a large selection of video games, so maybe I'll be surprised by this one.

Well, that was my hope. Sadly, though, it was not to be.

There's very little I can say about this game that is positive. I plugged it in, started it up, and then spent five minutes selecting which members of my team I wanted to use. "Ooh," I thought, "This looks like it might be some tactical suggestions, that's always a good start."

Well it would be, but then, when I started the game, I realised that it looks like this.

It's a top down football game. Where every player is white-skinned with black hair, and there is no indication of which player is which - so why ask me to select my team in the FIRST F@*#ING PLACE??

And speaking of the top-down situation, you'll see that the characters are quite large, so you can't see very much of the pitch at all... but that's OK, right? Because you've got a map? Let me show you that map closer...

Yes, that map shows lots of little dots where the players are. However, it makes no discernible difference between your players and the opposing team's players - so how the hell am I supposed to know where any of MY players are???

Sensible Soccer got around the inherent problems of a top-down football game by having the players the size of a couple of pixels, so you could see a lot of what was going on around you - but this game just stumbles badly at this first hurdle.

The controls are - OK. You have a ground pass button, a high pass button and a shoot button. However, the computer teams also appear to be able to head the ball, but try as I might (and even after much reading of the instruction manual) I couldn't find an option to do that. So that put me at a disadvantage anyway.

You also cannot select which player you are controlling at any one time. The computer automatically selects one - and it automatically does so about 30 seconds after you wanted it to. So you'll still be controlling a player at the top of the screen, the opposing team have the ball and are running down the pitch, and it changes your control to the player the opposition run past JUST AFTER the opposition have already run past him!

Seriously, it's a nightmare.

There's also no polish to this game - if you score, then you get the following screen:

This is actually the computer team scoring, because I didn't score any goals.

 

Please note - this isn't a representative still of a moving image, this is the picture that comes up on the screen for thirty seconds once you've scored.

*Sarcasm Mode engaged*

Wow - I'm having trouble containing my excitement.

*End Sarcasm Mode*

Look, I know I was never going to be the target market for this game. I don't do football - never have, never will. But I do know what makes a good video game, and this is quite definitely NOT a good video game.

Rating: 2/10Time Played: 15 Minutes
Would I play it again? No, no I would not.

Thanks for reading - and please do let people know if you regularly read this blog - they can also find the facebook page for this group here.

Also, I'm considering doing a video blog for a future entry - anyone got any advice/suggestions?

The Great Playthrough - Game 65: Fantastic Dizzy

Fantastic Dizzy
Released on: Mega Drive, NES, Master System, Amiga, Game Gear, PC, CD32
Played on: Mega Drive
Release date: 1991

Have you ever tried to navigate your way through a complicated one-way system, while wearing a blindfold, some Slipknot playing at 130db in one ear and a parrot reciting the contents of a Delia Smith cookbook backwards?


Well neither have I (as that would be silly), but that's what playing Fantastic Dizzy feels like.

Now that's not to say that it's a bad experience - in fact, I enjoyed the game quite a lot, but it has a certain feel that you don't get from modern games. An overwhelming feel.

For those of you who don't know, Dizzy is an Egg (with arms, legs and a hat - just because) who lives in the Yolkfolk Kingdom (there are a lot of egg puns in the game!) and ostensibly it is a platform game in which you explore various areas of the world in an attempt to find all 250 stars, get to the evil wizard's castle and confront him! But it's slightly different to most modern platformers in the sense that although there are enemies that damage you, there is no way to eliminate them.

Instead, avoidance is the name of the game, which is actually quote a refreshing change of pace! Don't get me wrong, I love traditional platformers - I've gone on about that enough for you guys to know that by now - but having to avoid enemies instead of defeat them gives the game a completely different feel.

So if you don't have to kill enemies, what do you do?

Well, you have to traverse far and wide, locating all the stars so that you can get to the final confrontation. And a lot of this you do by solving puzzles - puzzles in the traditional adventure game mould - using an item with a situation to solve the problem.

For example, very early on, you find a plank of wood. You then find a gap you cannot possibly get across. You use the plank of wood and.. voila! It becomes a bridge.

Now, if someone were making this game in this day and age, you would be able to carry everything you picked up, and then just cycle through them all when you hit a puzzle, but Dizzy isn't that simple. You can only ever carry three things at once. So if you find something, and then put it down, you have to remember where you put it down so you can get back to it if you find the puzzle that requires that item as a solution!

And theis is where the overwhelming feel of the game starts to come into it. The game world is pretty large, with levels that scroll horizontally but are flip-screens vertically, and it can get very easy to forget where things are, where you left items, and where you have and haven't been. Add to this the slightly obtuse nature of some of the puzzle solutions, and before long you have been completely sucked into a world where your entire raison d'etre is "I know I had that, where the hell did I put it down!" Just to make things even harder, it is often possible to put items down behind trees... so you won't even be able to see them...

To make matters worse, you have two lives to start with, and Dizzy takes damage quicker than Mo Farrah runs a race (I know that's an unconventionally sporty metaphor for me - I had the TV on and I've just seen the advert where kids can win an Ultimate Sports Day, and every time I see it I think "I wouldn't like that as a kid, cos surely Mo Farrah's gonna win everything??) so you have to be very careful when exploring - as (unless you get them later in the game) you don't get any continues either, so once you have lost your lives, it's back to the start. Mostly this is OK (there's quite a lot of fruit around to boost his health back up) but there are a couple of slightly unfair situations where you lose a life straightaway with one slightly wrong motion - jumping across the waterfall is one, and the minecart minigame.

"Minecart Minigame?" I hear you say, "Well that sounds fun!" It sort of is - it's a vertically scrolling minigame where you are controlling whether Dizzy's minecart goes left or right at junctions - and it's a neat idea. However, it is implemented very slowly - it feels a bit like a video game version of that bit in Austin Powers where the henchman gets run over by the steamroller? It just doesn't quite get the adrenaline racing...

I know I've listed some negative points there, but I don't want you to think I didn't enjoy the game - I absolutely did! However, if I was going to play it again, I'd be sitting down with a pad of paper and pen, and lots of time to spare, and mapping my progress as I go through!

Graphically, it's lovely. When I was much younger I played a couple of Dizzy games on 8-bit home computers (Commodore 64, Spectrum etc) and even to this day it amazes me how much nicer the Mega Drive version looks. I've spoken about my love of 16-Bit Graphics before, and these really appeal to me. The music, on the other hand, is fun, but VERY repetitive - not so annoying for you, the player, but if there's anyone else in the room, they may want to break the speakers after a while!

On the whole, it was a fun experience, but it's very much an all or nothing game - I'd want to play it to complete it, not just for a half-hour play or anything...

Rating: 7/10
Time played: 1 hour 10 minutes
Would I play it again? Yes - but only with a lot of time to spare!

The Great Playthrough - Game 60: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - Tournament Fighters

This is George and Elliot (our turtles) posing with the
Turtles games. Because why not :)

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: Tournament Fighters
Released on: Sega Megadrive, SNES, NES
Played on: Sega Megadrive
Release date: 1993

Does anyone else remember the period in the 90s where all the computer games in the world seemed to be one-on-one fighters all chasing the success of Street Fighter II? I remember it being a huge craze, and every time a game came out, particularly a licensed game, it seemed to be a one-on-one fighter. So it was no surprise to me when I first discovered TMHT: Tournament Fighters.

It is exactly as you would imagine - it looks as if someone took Street Fighter II, removed 90% of the character from it and dropped six characters from the TMHT series, one from the comics and one random newbie in to create the game.

(Seriously, why create a new character for a licensed game? Could they not use Bebop? Or Rocksteady? Or Shredder? Or ANYONE already created for the comics/TV series?)

Firstly, the positives. The graphics are pretty good - I'm a huge fan of 90's 16-bit era cartoony graphics and these are good, well animated, large colourful sprites. OK, so the health bars etc at the top of the screen look a bit rough and unfinished (in comparison with the SFII ones, which is what I will compare them with as they are obviously designed to be the same!) and the backgrounds are a bit lacking, but it's not too bad.

And then we get to everything else. And I'm sorry to say, but the rest of the game alternates between dull and ridiculously hard. It has just the one punch and one kick button, which makes the game rapidly diminish into button mashing, and with four very similar characters included (the four turtles of course), there doesn't seem to be much in the way of variety.

The other big negative point for me is the difficulty, which is hard. Really hard. We're talking harder than a baked diamond embedded in a block of Marble wrapped in adamantium.

And I know what you're all thinking - "Maybe it's just cos you're crap at playing the game!" And that is probably true. But still... damn, it's hard!

There's not a lot more to say. The two-player mode is slightly more fun (because the ridiculous difficulty isn't an issue), but even so, the dull button mashing gameplay just bored me extremely quickly...

Rating: 4/10
Time played: About 25 minutes
Would I play it again? No, I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

Next blog to follow very, very soon....

The Great Playthrough: Game 58 - Sonic Adventure Primal Rage!

Some sad news I'm afraid - this review was supposed to be of Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast, but sadly my disk appears to be scratched all to hell. Cartridge games are so much more reliable!

I did get to play a few minutes of it, and basically it seemed like it would be fun, although the voice acting is brilliantly atrocious! Never mind, hopefully one day I shall get a replacement copy....

So I was stuck. I couldn't play my next game, and who came to my rescue but my lovely wife who had bought her own retro game this week - so I hand the rest of this blog over to her, for our first ever GUEST REVIEW!!

Primal Rage
Released on: Arcade, Megadrive, PC, Playstation, SNES, Saturn, Amiga, 3DO, Game Gear, Jaguar
Played on: Sega Megadrive
Release date: 1994/1995

It's thousands of years into the future (but somehow also the past)! Giant dinosaur gods and the odd pallette swapped simian fight for domination of Earth, shifted into a Pangaea-like structure that resembles a t-rex skull and imaginately re-titled...URTH.

Meanwhile, back on Terra Firma, two little oiks with a love for dinosaurs and itchy button fingers discovered this Gorn-fest of an arcade game in an Exeter pub. My little brother and I watched the demo mode and the accompanying film with gruesome delight. Dinosaurs! Coming out of the sea! Eating people! And you fight until their hearts explode! And that monkey just PEED that dinosaur's FACE off!

My Mum did eventually come and see where all of her spare 50ps were giong, and she reasoned that as long as we weren't going to have nightmares, she didn't mind us playing a fighting game. Score one for eleven-year-old me!

Primal Rage was developed in 1994, at the height of digitised sprite video-nasty fighting game fever. To my delight, while on a business trip back to my home city I found the Mega Drive console version in a retro game shop, and for the princely sum of £6, it was mine.

So, does it stand talon to toe with the likes of Street Fighter, or should it belong in a museum?

The arcade version was a four-button/joystick affair, so translation to the Mega Drive should have been trickier than it is. Various combinations of buttons are required, and thankfully the A, B and C buttons are about the same width apart as the sections of my thumb (my phalanges, if you will – you at the back, stop laughing) and so I could pull off tricky combos with relative ease. You can also use the start button as a basic close-range attack, although it does mean you can't pause the game (you know, in case real dinosaurs start taking over, or you have to pee).

If you have any experience of fighting games, you probably have some kind of preference as to how quick or heavy you like your characters, what kind of attack they provide (close range, melee, projectile) and how hyped up their defence is – bear in mind that I was about eleven when I first discovered this game and therefore just smacked buttons until somebody's heart exploded, but I'm pretty sure now that it's where my predilection for lightning-fast bruisers comes from. There is a small roster of seven playable characters in Primal Rage:

Sauron (no, not that one), your common-or-garden Tyrannosaur (medium weight)
Diablo, a fiery red pallette swap of the former (medium weight)
Blizzard, a frost-wielding monkey (light)
Chaos, a farting, vomiting pallette swap of Blizzard (light)
Vertigo, a cobra/platiosaur hybrid (medium, long-range)
Armadon, a heavily armoured stegosaur/ankylosaurus hybrid (slow and heavy)
Talon, a raptor (very light), and my personal favourite.

Despite only 7 characters, there's a bloody good range of attack styles – Vertigo in particular has a good variation of long-range and projectile attacks, as does Chaos (and with the game being targeted at young to teen boys, these are all to do with farting, vomiting and flinging nose nuggets).

But enough of this! What of the game, mortal?

Well, this was definitely worth the £6 I paid. In fact, I would have quite happily paid thrice that amount for sheer replay value – I cleared the required hour that Brawny set me, and then got up this morning with itchy fingers, dying for another play. I favoured Talon, and while he was more than a match for most of the heavy characters, I noticed interesting attention to detail: Brawny played me for a bit as Sauron (until he got fed up of being sorely trounced), I noticed that his throws were dealing me a lot more damage. When we swapped again and played as Vertigo vs Sauron, I noticed whenever Sauron fell, he took more damage. Things like that can quickly turn around an unfair advantage in a fighting game. I remember the arcade version came with a hilarious “NO CHEESE!” message, flashing up a block of Swiss cheese with a line through it, if you kept using super moves. So it's not a game that can be won with button-mashing, which is a common criticism of fighting games right up to the present day.

Any downsides? Well, the game is spectacularly gory, which weirdly didn't bother me as a kid (and I had some weird childhood fears). Hearts explode; brains wither, there's acid vomit and piss flying about everywhere: it's like backstage at London Fashion Week. The game was cert 15 back in '95 and would probably get the same treatment nowadays, but further research uncovered an action figure range and a novelisation – how 90s can you get!? So it was presumably bound for greater things, and possibly it suffered from bad publicity, hence the reason its sequel is virtually unheard of and supposedly a pile of droppings.

But if you like fighting games, dinosaurs or chimps, you absolutely have to own this game.

(Interestingly, the arcade version will probably never be experienced ever again – despite being featured in Midway Arcade Treasures 2, the arcade version is locked with an unbreakable encryption, and none of the people involved in the games seem to want to help. Presumably they were sick of having to censor different parts of it. Word from Uncle Internet claims that the PC version is the closest you can get to the Arcade version, including all of the endings, so if you can find it, grab it with both claws!)

Rating: 8/10
Time played: Way over an hour
Would I play it again?: Does dromiceiomimus enjoy a varied diet including berries and leaves and also the odd small lizard and bird? (Yes, yes it does – and don't get me started on the “raptors” in Jurassic Park) 

The Great Playthrough: Game 51 - Road Rash II

You're going to get box art pictures for the
next few blogs - Neety and I are in the midst of
moving, so photos are impractical!

Road Rash II

Released on: Sega Megadrive
Played on: Sega Megadrive
Release date: 1992

If you know me, you would think that this game would be a perfect fit for me. It's an arcade-style-racer (and we know I've spoken about my enjoyment of those before, most recently here) - it's also a 16-bit game, and it involves motorbikes, so I should love it beyond belief, right?

Well......

*Makes awkward noise*

.... I like it. Sort of.

After my recent run of games that are either brilliant (Street Fighter II Turbo, House of the Dead III etc...) or awful (yes, I'm looking at you Sonic the Fighters - I'm looking right into your polygonal face!) it is both a change and a disappointment that I'm back into games that I remember being better than they are.

But that's right where Road Rash II sits, sadly.

Don't get me wrong, it's got some good bits - beating up Policemen on bikes, beating up other people on bikes, stealing weapons from passing bikers so you can use those weapons to beat up people on bikes...

.... oh wait. That's all the same bit isn't it. That's the "beating up" bit.

So how's the racing bit?

Well - it's distinctly average. And yes, this is one of those situations where maybe I have been spoilt by the advances in racing games over the last few years, but the controls feel strange, there's very little sense of speed, and whether you win or not seems much more down to luck than skill. And the less said about the "progression" through the game, the better.

I don't know if you can tell from the segmented style of this review, but I'm finding it really hard to be negative about this game - because somewhere in my heart I know I should love it. You know when you buy an an album that's recorded by a band you really love, years after they are past their best? You are happy to own it, you know you should like it, but every so often you put it on and are disappointed. So it sits on your shelf, and you gain pleasure from knowing it's there, even though it's disappointing? Well Road Rash II is like that.

Sort of.

(Wow, that was a convoluted analogy - I hope you understood what I meant!)

I think the final thing to say about this game is that I think it was massively ahead of it's time. As I played it I just kept thinking

'If someone remade this for current generation consoles, it'd sell by the bucketload!'

And I think that's the first time I've ever longed for a remake...

Rating: 5/10
Time Played: About 45 Minutes
Would I play it again? In a couple of years, when I've forgotten the disappointment of this attempt.

Next time on Brawny's Great Playthrough - you'll laugh, you'll cry, and most importantly you'll wish a certain blue hedgehog had remained in two dimensions.....

The Great Playthrough - Game 45: Bubsy the Bobcat

The pictures are back! Look at me, clutching
that very damaged looking cartridge. It still plays though :)

Bubsy the Bobcat

Released on: Sega Megadrive, SNES, PC
Played on: Sega Megadrive
Release Date: 1993 (except PC, which was 1995)

This should be a game that I absolutely love. It's a colourful, 2D platformer on my favourite (non-Nintendo) console.... but do I love it? Well that's a question I shall answer throughout this blog...

(See! I learned from my last blog and am retaining a little mystery at the start! Look at me, I'm learning and growing...)

From the title screen, my hopes were high. The game has bright, lovely graphics and the full title is the brilliantly pun-tastic title "Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind." But as soon as I started to play, I started to notice a whisker of a problem.

This tail was not garnering a lot of A-Paws as I began the playthrough. The difficulty was quite high, with the game often making me-owt to be a much worse player than I am.

(Ouch - That's four Cat-Based puns in just over one paragraph. Oops. I'll stop now, I promise.)

But anyway, behind the awful puns, this game is far from purrfect...

*Ducks*

Sorry.

But it's sadly true. And while I am not usually one to bemoan a difficult game, the difficulty really is a problem here. And it's a design flaw - I'm not complaining that the levels are badly designed, or that the enemies are over-powerful, it is simply that one hit kills Bubsy stone dead. Which is a problem with a speedy platformer. Sonic has his rings, Mario has his mushrooms, even Earthworm Jim has a health bar! But no, Bubsy gets no second chances whatsoever. Run into an enemy, or get hit by a falling egg, or fall off a too-high ledge, and that's it. You are dead.

Which is bloody irritating.

Especially when coupled with really erratic collision detection, which this game is sadly riddled with.

There are other faults as well, the levels are awkwardly designed - not necessarily badly designed, just so large (both horizontally and vertically) and repetitive, that on successive playthroughs you tend to get completely confused as to which sections you have done, and which you don't recognise. The music is repetitive and irritating, which isn't a game-breaker, but is mildly annoying, and the fact that there are two different jump buttons (a normal jump and a high jump), just adds confusion to the whole thing.

It isn't all bad news - the lovely 16-Bit cartoon-style graphics are a joy to look at, and the controls (apart from the jump buttons issue) are reasonable, if slightly wooly. But at every turn you are thwarted by the awkward difficulty level.

It's such a shame, because it is SO close to being an entertaining game, but the difficulty issues just totally ruin it for me. And the programmers were obviously aware of the issue, because instead of starting with 2 or 3 lives (as you would do in either Sonic or Mario), you start with nine. And I get why (yes, he's a cat so he has nine lives! Isn't that funny!) But it just highlights quite how easy it is to die in the game.

Sorry Bubsy, You may have come within a whisker of greatness, but you definitely failed to land on your feet...

Rating: 5/10
Time Played: 35 Minutes
Would I play it again? Unlikely....

Next time on Brawny's Great Playthrough, it's another Star Wars game! But which one? Come back and find out!

The Great Playthrough: Game 42 - Sonic The Hedgehog 3

I look like a lunatic in this picture!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Released on: Sega Megadrive and then ported to.. *deep breath*.. Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, Wii Virtual Console, PS3, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Sega Saturn and Sony PSP.
Played on: Nintendo Wii (via Gamecube emulation)
Release date: 1994

So, I expect you all think you know the drill by now. It's a Sonic game, and I'm reviewing it, so I'm likely to shower it with praise and then insist that it is the best thing since sliced bread.

"We've heard you review Sonic, Sonic 2 and Sonic Generations now Brawny," I hear you all cry, "Why are you bothering with Sonic 3? We all know you're going to love it..."

Well here's a shocking piece of news for you. I didn't love it.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it. It is eminently playable, and has great moments, but it just doesn't feel anywhere as coherent or as much fun as Sonic 1 or 2. I would even say that it didn't feel as much fun as Generations! *ducks as enraged Sonic fans throw all sorts of missiles at my head*

And why? Well that's a good question. Neety will tell you that as I played it I was just sitting there, saying "This isn't as much fun as the others. But I'm not sure why..."

And then after a while, it clicked. It's the level design. I don't know why, and I'm sure it's just a personal opinion, but the levels just don't seem anywhere near as well designed and as much fun as earlier games.

I don't play Sonic to stop running and do pixel perfect jumps. I don't play Sonic for lots of different power ups that are occasionally useful and mostly pointless. I play Sonic to run very quickly through the level, jumping, spinning and running until I reach the exit, or die. One or the other.

But in Sonic 3, there's all sorts of things that stop you running and building up that head of steam to dash through the level. Stupid blue things that you have to spin against to make bits of the world move and new platforms appear. Random little boss fights all over the place. Platforms that appear and disappear.

Plus, it just doesn't look as nice as Sonic 1 or 2. Levels are less vibrant, and the whole thing just feels a bit like a case of "been there, done that". Which is not an unheard of situation for the 3rd game of a series, but it just felt like a giant let down.

I played through the first three zones, and when I died (unfairly) in Marble Garden Zone Act 2, that was it. I felt no compulsion to load my saved game and continue on - I just put the pad down and turned it off. Which marks the first time this playthrough that I have stopped playing a Sonic game before my hour was up.

I feel like I have to point out, there is lots of good stuff. There are sections of the levels where it feels just like wonderful Sonic fun, and the Special Stages are nice (although not as good as Sonic 2's tunnel ones!) The new shields are pointless, but fun, and getting the options to play as Sonic or Tails is a bonus. But even so, it's just an average Sonic game - and that's the best thing I can say about it.

Talk about a disappointment...

Rating: 7/10
Time Played: 45 Minutes
Will I play it again: Maybe, in the hope that I'll be pleasantly surprised...

Next time - I don't know what game I'm playing! Because I'm writing this on the wrong computer so the list isn't in front of me!

The Great Playthrough: Game 40 - Flashback

Flashback

Released on: Sega Megadrive, PC, Amiga, Mega-CD, Archimedes, SNES, 3DO, Atari Jaguar and many, many others

Played on: Sega Megadrive

Release Date: 1992

I know that as a review of my opinions and feelings about the game I ought to start at the beginning, work through my opinions and then come to a conclusion at the end. To announce any conclusions at the start of the blog would ruin any essence of drama and suspense within the writing. So I shall try my best not to give it away before the end of the post.

For those of you who don’t know, Flashback is a 2D platformer with a lot of puzzles and a great (very Philip K Dick influenced) sci-fi story. I remembered playing it on the PC as a teenager, and finding it great yet frustrating in equal measures. So I assumed that when I re-attempted it that I would, in my grouchy old-age, find it to be an average game – spend half an hour playing it and then give up, awarding it somewhere in the region of 6/10 and then move on to the next game on the list.

And did I?

No. Because Flashback became one of the biggest surprises of this blog so far. I absolutely adored it.

(Sorry to those of you who love the drama and suspense, but I couldn't contain myself any longer. If you want real Drama and Suspense then go and watch the first 3 seasons of Lost, and then turn it off for a few years – that’ll give you Drama.)

I didn't mind that the difficulty level is quite hard. I didn't mind that there is no battery save – you have to remember passwords! (And seriously, there’s something nostalgically retro about passwords that you have to pencil into the back of the instruction manual.) I didn't mind that there are three different types of jump and you have to learn each of them by reading through the manual. I didn't mind the repetitive, minimalistic music, and the backtracking to make sure you had found everything you needed.

I didn't even mind that I spent over an hour playing the first level, dying and re-starting at least 4 times.

It’s such a well-built game. Well-designed, beautiful graphics, and great controls (which I found much easier than I remember finding the controls on the PC version) and the plot is genuinely engaging – which is something I very rarely encounter in games. I want to know what happens, which is one of the myriad of reasons I am likely to go back to this game time and time again.

I really cannot explain quite how much I enjoyed this game, and I know that most of you will not have a copy you can play, to see how right I am, but for god’s sake find one. It’s one of the few intelligent adult platformers I can ever remember playing where I was so gripped and enthralled that I didn't want to stop. I had to stop after 90 minutes of play because I realised that the rules of the playthrough meant I should not be playing more than an hour, but sod it, I let myself have the next half hour, and even now, while writing this, I want to stop and go and play it again.

Seriously, it’s that good.

I normally don’t advise people to play games based on my reviews. I assume that most of you know what you like and a lot of that isn't going to align with what I like to play, but this one is different.

Play it. Play it now.

Rating: 9/10

Time Played: 1 hour 30 minutes

Would I play it again? Hell yes.

The Great Playthrough: Game 38 - Super Hang On!

How cool am I!

Super Hang On
Released on: Arcade, Sega Megadrive, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga... Basically any non-Nintendo machine that existed at the time!
Played on: Sega Megadrive

Due to the random nature of choosing which game is next on this playthrough, my poor Megadrive has been much-ignored of late, a trait that I hope will be rectified soon. Because it's one of my favourite (non-Nintendo) consoles of all time. So it was with delight that I pulled out the console and spent five minutes locating the relevant cables for it, before plugging it in to enjoy it's horribly plasticky joypad once again.
As for the game itself? Well, Super Hang-On is a home conversion of the Arcade game that those of you who remember proper arcades will remember. It was the one with the silly fake plastic motorbike that you had to sit on and ride?

*Smiles as I hear people's memories click into place*

Also, it seems to be a running theme of these recent blogs about my love for arcade racers - so I had high hopes for Super Hang-On.

And my hopes were...mostly satisfied. The graphics are good - very retro, but I like that! The music's OK, and the fact that you can choose which piece of music is playing is a good thing (although the fact that there are only 4 different pieces can grate a little). All in all, my first couple of races were fun!

However, I did rapidly realise that the option for a difficulty level in arcade mode is a joke  - it changes the length of the race, but doesn't increase the ridiculously tight timescales that you have to reach the next checkpoint - so I was discovering quite quickly that I could make it to checkpoint 1, but would then run out of time before checkpoint 2. (Except for one time, on Medium difficulty, where I nearly made it all the way to checkpoint 3!)

The appearance of other racers on the track are simply a minor distraction, as the point of the arcade mode isn't to beat anyone apart from the clock - and as it was designed for the arcade, it's bloody hard work! Anyone would think that this was designed to make you keep pumping in coins until the machine was so heavy that it would crash through the concrete floor and not stop until it reached the centre of the earth.
In fact, I would like to postulate a theory that the centre of the earth is full of arcade machines so full of cash that they have sunk through the earth's tectonic plates and are now the new core of the earth.

*Presents theory to scientists.*

*Waits*

*Is sectioned, tied into a straightjacket and locked in a room where the key is thrown away*

*Escapes with the help of the imaginary cartoon squirrel that exists on my shoulder*

*Time-travels back to two minutes before now and persuades myself not to submit such a stupid theory in the first place...*

Sorry, I appear to have got distracted by my strange side-quest. So where was I?

Ah yes - because Super Hang-On started as an arcade game it has an unforgiving difficulty - although it is a lot of fun.

But then, I discovered Original mode! Which has a rival you have to race! And elements where you can upgrade the bike! And hire a mechanic!

Except... This was a less exciting game than the arcade game. I don't really know why, it just didn't grip me as much, and the handling was a bit worse (probably because you have to upgrade the parts of the bike!). And then something happened which ruined it.

I crashed the bike once too many times, and was informed that I had broken the frame of the bike, so I was forced to retire. The problem? The cost of fixing the frame was $1200 in-game dollars... How much did I get for entering the race? $400.... Could I race again? No, because the frame was broken.

*Gets stuck in vicious circle. Gives up and turns off the Megadrive*

And that was where my Super Hang-On adventure ended. Arcade mode is fun, but I can't play it for more than 20 mins or so, and Original mode just didn't grip me.

Rating: 6/10
Time played: 30 minutes
Would I play it again? Yes I would - Arcade mode only though!

Next up - It's a music-based game! Which one? You'll have to wait and see...

The Great Playthrough: Game 27 - The Lion King

All together now.. "It's the Cirrrrcle of liiiiifffeee......"
(Notice George the Turtle in the back of the photo, acting out the part of
every animal in the opening of the film, i.e. standing still with head raised.)

The Lion King
Released on: Sega Megadrive, NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Game Boy, Game Gear, Amiga and PC
Played on: Sega Megadrive
Release date: 1994

Before we get into this blog post - let's address the elephant in the room. (Not that there's an actual elephant in this room you understand - apart from Trundle the Elephant of course - but he stays in the corner and generally keeps himself to himself)

DISCLAIMER for RSPCA/PETA/Any other militant animal rights campaigners - THIS IS A JOKE!

The elephant I'm talking about? The fact that this is a tie-in game, and you know what they say about tie-in games, they are notoriously pieces of rubbish that are knocked-up quickly with no consideration to game quality, right?

Normally I'd agree with you. And indeed, if this was a modern tie-in game, the odds would be weighed heavily against it. Tie-in games nowadays tend to be less entertaining than playing "Watch that Rock" for 3 consecutive hours, followed by spending the rest of the day cleaning a rug with a toothbrush. That wasn't always the case, though, as The Lion King proves.

This game contradicts both of the most commonly held beliefs about tie-in games:

1) They are badly made and awful to play.
2) They are short and/or incredibly easy.

Tackling point 1 first (as any sensible person would do), we'll look at the quality of the game. And I'm telling you now, it's a good game. It's a well-designed 2D platformer with great graphics (the individual sprites were designed by Disney animators) and it plays funky 16-Bit audio versions of the famous songs from the film. How can you not love it?

Point 2 now, and I can only disprove one half of this question, because of the other half. (I know that's a confusing sentence, but bear with me, I'll make sense of it, I promise.) I don't know if the game is short - not from personal experience anyway. I guess I could answer the question if I cheated and looked it up on Wikipedia, but that's true of anything. You can cheat and look up anything on Wikipedia. Granted, an answer from Wikipedia can often have a dubious relationship with the truth, but there you go.

Wow, I digressed there, where was I? Oh yes - difficulty.

This game is hard. Bloody hard in places. In fact, it's harder than a Diamond coated in Kevlar and surrounded by Titanium Reinforced Concrete. (I did have a cruder analogy, but I decided that it would be too rude for your sensitive ears, so I spared you it.) I'm not proud of this fact, but I lost all of my lives and used all of my continues, and still did not get past level 3 (Elephant's graveyard) on my first attempt. So I went into the menu system, changed the difficulty to Easy, and started again.

And that time? I made it all the way to.... level 4. (The Stampede). Now I could complain about that particular level being unfairly hard, as it is a level where you are controlling Simba (as you do throughout the game), running away from the stampeding buffalo. (You remember the relevant bit of the film, don't you?) The problem with this level? It's designed so that you control Simba as he runs into the screen. And then you get to the bit where rocks are appearing in front of you....

Yes, I got frustrated at this point, but it didn't stop me trying over and over again - until I had once again lost all of my lives. This coincided with my time running out, so I stopped.

I know it seems that the vast majority of my opinion about this game is complaining about the difficulty, but that does become the one overbearing feature. I have played the opening two levels of this game hundreds of times, (Which isn't a problem in itself, level 2 in particular (Just can't wait to be King) is an absolute delight to play - as long as you figure out which pink monkeys you have to roar at), but I genuinely don't know what levels happen after the Stampede... maybe one day I will find out.

So all-in-all, it's a fun 2D platformer, brought down, in my opinion, by it's ridiculous difficulty level (and the fact that it has no save game/password system to help you carry on) but it's still great.

Rating: 7/10
Time Played: 1 hour 10 minutes
Would I play it again?: Yes. Definitely.

Next time - It's a return to the 3DS for another retro game - It's Metroid.

The Great Playthrough: Game 23 - Virtua Cop 2 and Game 24: Sonic the Hedgehog

As promised - it's time to break out the Sega Saturn for...

It's shooty  bang fun-time!

Virtua Cop 2

Released on: Sega Saturn, PC, Sega Dreamcast and (later on) Playstation 2

Played on: Sega Saturn

Release Date: 1996

I love light-gun shooters. They take me back to the wonderful times I used to spend in the local arcade before it became so full of fruit machines and "win-a-teddy" grabbing machines, that it makes me depressed to go anywhere near the place. And Virtua Cop was one of my favourites. That, and Time Crisis (which I also have at home, so you will hear about that at some point soon...). 

So I was excited about sitting down with the polygon-tastic game..... and then I had a problem.

It turns out that the Gun controller for my Saturn is broken. It doesn't like to shoot in the same place twice - even if you don't move the gun. At all. And also, it doesn't like aiming at the left hand side of the screen at all... 

So I tried, but I failed - and 5 minutes into it, the control issues proved too much. So, in a first for this blog, Virtua Cop 2 gets no rating, as I feel it is unfair to judge it when I can't play it properly.

Instead, let us move on from this sad moment, and move to Game 24.

YAAAAYYYY!!!

Sonic the Hedgehog

Released on: Sega Megadrive (and later re-released on almost every console of every generation since)

Played on: Sega Megadrive

Release Date: 1991

OK - I'm warning you all now. If you've got fed up with hearing me say how great 2D platformers are - especially Sonic and Mario - then the rest of this blog is not going to be for you...

As you already know from reading earlier editions of the blog - I love 2D Sonic games. And now I get to revisit the original - the 16-bit wonder that is Sonic the Hedgehog. 

It's a great game - as you all know. Any game that launches a franchise that is still running 21 years later must have a lot going for it - and it's very true here. I could tell you all the wonderful things about this game - the fact that the level design is superb, the wonderful graphics, the music that burrows into your mind like a particularly vicious earworm and doesn't ever leave - but instead, I'm going to take a slightly different tack with this blog.

So here it is. The five reasons why Sonic the Hedgehog is not as good as Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

1) There is no spin dash. That magical manoeuvre where you can hold down on the D-Pad and then press the button in order to zoom off in a magical blue ball of speed doesn't exist in this game. Yes, you can spin dash by running up to full speed and pressing the down button, but it makes smashing blocks etc out of the way much harder.

2) There is slightly less level variety - and indeed, fewer levels. Plus, Sonic 2 has Casino Night Zone, which is one of the best levels of all time.

3) Sonic 1's special stages are good (they're the wierd twisty rotating mazes in case you had forgotten) but they're not a patch on Sonic 2's multi-coloured tube runs with the music that goes "Da. Da-da-da-da-da Da daaaa de-da-daaaa.... Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.." (Wow it's hard to write music out when it doesn't have words. Still, you all know what I mean - if not, click on this link.)

4) There's no Tails. And yes, I know that Tails is one of the most annoying of Sonic's friends - but he was the first, and consequentially he at least had some use in Sonic 2 (as opposed to Sonic's friends like Vector the Crocodile, Charmy the Bee and the ever-irritating Amy Rose - who have never had any use apart from being rather irritating ALL THE TIME!). Plus, Tails means that you can play Sonic 2 in two-player, which is a cracking idea.

5)...... I can't think of a fifth.

And that (in a very roundabout way) is my point! This game is almost perfect - bested only by it's sequel - and, after playing the first two games in the Sonic series, it becomes very clear why the series went downhill from Sonic 3 onwards (and I'm hoping that this opinion of mine will be amended when I re-play later Sonic games). When you start with two games that are as close to perfection as Sonic and Sonic 2, then everything else just becomes a minor disappointment.

Sonic the Hedgehog is an awesome game. Play it now. Then play the sequel and enjoy the masterful pairing of these two superb 2D platformers.

Rating: 9/10
Time Played: 1 hour 10 mins
Will I play it again?: I'm tempted to do so right now!!

Come back soon for my next game - what will it be? Well, it's a surprise (mostly because I don't have the list in front of me right now...).

The Great Playthrough: Game 17 - Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe

I have resolved my RF issues! Well, by resolved, I mean I've had to move a VHS player into the lounge to run the RF through, but anyway, I can play the consoles again! So here it is, the long promised...

Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe

Released on: Acorn Archimedes (yes, that's right), Atari ST, Amiga, CD32, PC, C64 (Yes, really!), NES, Sega Megadrive, Sega Master System, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance.

Played on: Sega Megadrive

Released in: 1990

So, I can now fire up the Megadrive again - and as a result, I can review Speedball 2, a game that a lot of retro gamers rave about, and believe is one of the greatest sports games from the 8/16 bit eras.

My problem with it? It's still a sports game. And there's not many of those I like to play. But I approached it with an open mind - mostly, it has to be said, because I'm always a fan of sci-fi and futuristic settings, and I hoped that it would turn out to be a fun and entertaining time.

Sadly, it was about as entertaining as watching Ann Widdicombe perform a striptease to a Jedward song (and I apologise for the image, but you'll appreciate now how I feel about Speedball 2). The game drops you right in with nothing in the way of an introduction (a common situation in 16-bit games) which is fine, but instead of dropping you into a game, it lets you choose whether you want to play 1 player or 2, and play a single match, or a league, or a cup game.... and then you get into a horrendously confusing stats screen where you can enhance your team. Except I didn't really understand what I was doing, because none of the abbreviations seemed to make any sense.

Once you've finally made it out of the statistical hellhole, (by clicking on the ESC button no less.... Surely common sense would mean that the ESC button cancels what you've done? Or is that just me), then you end up playing your game. And this is where the game really lost me.

I don't know if this applies to any of you who read this blog, as you might all LOVE sports games, but I felt that this game suffered from the basic issues that tend to plague sports games, particularly of that era.

Now before we continue, let me explain what my problem is with sports games. It's not (surprisingly) that I don't enjoy sport in real life. (I don't enjoy sport in real life, but I don't enjoy fighting, or jumping on the heads of wierd shaped beings, or dropping strange shaped blocks down a well in real life either - however I do enjoy games that involve these other activities - just not sport.) It's that whenever you have a sport that is a team game, you end up having to control the whole team. And the computer just doesn't seem to understand that it would be a good idea that you can choose which player you control at any one time. I know more modern sports games have (mostly) fixed this issue - and that's why I can play the occasional game of FIFA [insert year here] without flinging the controller across the room in disgust - but sadly, Speedball 2 is from the era where you control whichever player you were controlling until the computer decides another player is closer to the ball, and swaps your control. This is OK if they are both on screen, but often, as the screen follows the ball, the player you are controlling can be left behind, and then there's none of your players on screen, and you don't know who you're controlling - and then, when your player finally appears on the screen, it turns out that you've been making them run in the wrong direction for several minutes....

I had other issues with the game too - although a lot of these may well be blamed on the fact that I'm not very good at it - but I found that the shots were hard to line up, the tackles hard to exact and it was not very clear what things award you points in order to win.

I've got not much else to say about Speedball 2 - I didn't make the full hour of play, and to be honest, I'm quite happy that I didn't. Although, it has put the worrying thought into my mind that all the other sports games in my collection are also going to be this unplayable for me... ("But Brawny, I hear you cry, why would you buy the sports games if you don't enjoy them?" - Answer: They usually came with the console....)

For now, however, I am done with sports, as the next game is Zelda: Four Swords on the Game Boy Advance (played on the 3DS). 

Rating: 1/10

Time Played: About 10-15 mins.

Will I play it again?: Nope.

The Great Playthrough: Game 9 - Sonic the Hedgehog 2

I know I left you all on a cliffhanger at the end of my previous post, when I stated that the next game would be one of my favourite games of all time. And here it is.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Originally released on: Sega Megadrive (And then on just about every platform ever concieved after Sega stopped making consoles)

Played on: Sega Megadrive and Nintendo Wii. 

Release date: 1992

For the first time in this series, I have arrived at a game that I choose to regularly play anyway, and I wondered whether that would affect my review - either in the sense that I will automatically love it, or that I will wonder why on earth I play it so regularly. And do you know what? It's a brilliant game.

It is one of the best 2D platformers of all time, and there's no easier statement for me to make. 

Firstly, though, let me explain why I have two consoles listed in the 'played on' description above. I intended to play this through on the Megadrive, the way it is meant to be played. In true 16-bit console style, I then spent about ten minutes trying to make the cartridge load successfully. Eventually it did so, and I played through the whole of Emerald Hill Zone and into the second zone, Chemical Plant Zone. Where it crashed. Then, when I tried to restart the machine, it wouldn't load the cartridge at all, so I gave up and loaded up my Gamecube copy of Sonic Mega Collection into the Wii and played on that instead.

I tend to find it's tough to write about things that I really like, without just saying how great they are over and over again. In many ways it's like a biscuit. (Bear with me, this will make sense... I hope). I like most biscuits. I like custard creams, I like cookies, but my favourite biscuit ever is a double stuff Mint Oreo. With a custard cream I can complain that they're normally quite dry, or there's not enough filling, or with cookies you can complain about the lack of chocolate chips. But with double stuff Mint Oreos? All I can say is that they are extra-tasty and the best biscuit ever.

And that's the problem I have with writing this about Sonic 2. It's brilliant great (checks thesaurus for a word I haven't yet used) fabulous - but there's not much else to say! The graphics are wonderful. The gameplay is exceptional. The music is infectious.

The only problem I have with the game is that the final level is frustrating. And not frustrating in the sense that I could get better at playing the game, it's frustrating because you have to jump and grab onto these little pipes hanging off the bottom of the airship, (Incidentally Dr Robotnik, why do you have an airship? You don't need to steal ideas from Bowser, do something unique!)  and half the time Sonic fails to grab them, and you fall into a bottomless pit of death. It feels very strange that the final level of a game based on speedy platforming requires you to keep stopping and have to utilise dodgy gaming mechanics.

But that aside, there is no way I can not recommend this game. Even the less-interesting levels (Oil Ocean Zone, I'm looking at you) are ten times better than 99% of platformers out there, and on the zones that are perfect (Emerald Hill, Casino Night, Chemical Plant) it is one of the best gaming experiences of your lives. And I haven't even mentioned the wonderful special stages and the multiple routes through each level.

So whatever current generation console you may have, you need this game. Thanks to Sega's insistence on pimping their games to every possible marketplace, you can download it for Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii or PS3 - and if you have a DS/3DS there's recently been a cartridge release of the 4 original sonic games called Sonic Classic Collection. Hell, there's even an iPhone version (although I have no idea how well the controls work).

So if you don't have this game, buy it. And if you have never played it before? Shame on you - do so immediately!

Rating: 9.5/10 (And that's only because I hate giving anything a perfect score)
Time played: 10 minutes on Megadrive, and then an hour and a bit on Wii. 
Would I play it again? Of course. In fact, just the act of writing this article kinda makes me want to go and play it right now. 

Next time - another game that is already played regularly in our house, it's time for Super Smash Bros Brawl!