SELECT STAGE #4 – Dragon Power October 1, 2009
Posted by Rebel in Rebel, SELECT STAGE.3 comments
When some of us were little, we would turn on the TV at (insert time here) to watch a show. That show was called Dragon Ball (Z/GT). I’m completely sure a lot of people remember Goku and him growing up in the original Dragon Ball series. I’m pretty sure everyone watched the episode where Goku got shot by Piccolo’s special beam cannon, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people were shaking when Goku came back from the dead to kick Vegeta’s ass. Anyways, I don’t think I need to write much about the Dragon Ball series as a whole, so let’s talk about Dragon Power. Dragon Power is a game made in 1986 for the NES. It was the first Dragon Ball game to be localized (game had to be edited due to lack of license), and it is pretty bad.. Anyways..
DRAGON POWER
“The adventure begins!”
“The quest is for the dragon’s 7 crystal balls; the prize, your greatest wish. Together with Goku and Nora you must face obstacles that lead to each of the balls. Each obstacle seems greater than the last, but with your skill and the help of Swift Cloud and Magic Pole, anything is possible. It’s Dragon Power!”
_STORY//
“Okay, okay. Let’s go on a trip.”
Imagine the "Kung-Fu" song being played here.
The story is pretty much the same as Dragon Ball’s storyline. You search for the Dragon Balls (crystal balls in this game). There are seven of them, and you start off with three. As mentioned earlier, the game was heavily edited. The graphics were edited, and the character names were edited (Goku stayed as Goku, but some characters like Master Roshi become Hermit), and some things were even censored. Remember this scene? Instead of Roshi asking to see Bulma’s panties, Hermit asks for Nora’s sandwich. However, the old Dragon Ball story is still recognizable in this hilarious mess (though in some cases, it doesn’t even resemble Dragon Ball). Still worth a check for the laughs, though.
_GRAPHICS//
“Come on! Swift Cloud!! Jump on well.”
Goku, you look lovely...
The graphics are pretty bad. Like I said earlier, the character sprites were edited. Nora (Bulma) has purple hair, Hermit (Master Roshi) now looks like Gandalf, and Goku (Goku) looks like a monkey faggot that flips you off every time you fight a boss battle. The level tiles are pretty generic, but then again, you won’t really see much different in any NES game. The sprites are comparable to the original Legend of Zelda sprites, but the visuals seem kind of… colour lacking, compared to games like the original Super Mario Bros. The environments aren’t varied enough, so it looks pretty boring at times.
_SOUND//
“I want it too.”
“OK. Give me your sandwich.”
The game doesn’t have much sound variety apart from the four songs you hear constantly throughout the game. Not much to say about this, except that the songs really suck.
_GAMEPLAY//
“Yeow! Help!”
“Oh no. Did she get caught?”
Yeow!
This game consists of 10 stages. The stages have some variety; some parts have platformer style gameplay (kind of like the GBC Legend of Zeldas, except for the notorious boss fights, which I will talk about later). The regular stages are pretty simple. They’re like a Legend of Zelda style game, but more beat-em-up. You don’t get any puzzles, you just blow past enemies and punch them. Sounds solid, but there are some pretty huge flaws. For one thing, the enemy design is stupid. Some enemies attack horizontally only. Although they can move vertically, you can easily kill them by going above them and slapping them with Goku’s Magic Stick. You can jump, but it’s utterly useless, as you can’t jump on most platforms in the plane. The biggest flaw in this game is probably the problem where when you stand still, you constantly lose HP. Hard to believe that a character that is stronger than any person on Earth has trouble standing on his own two legs. There is also the horribly designed Stage 2, where you have to repeatedly go to treasure chests and look for “Pudgy” (Oolong). When you find him, you punch him to make him drop a key. Rather stupid and unnecessary, and they never explain what you’re actually supposed to do.
No, Goku isn't sticking his finger out at you... yet.
As Goku progresses in his adventure, he will fight bosses. Most of the bosses are pretty stupid to fight. They have swords, and Goku has hands, feet, and a stick (that, like I said, looks like he’s flicking you off when he uses it). When the bosses touch you, you get hit. Fair enough, but their swords already give them more range than they give you. If you kick in mid-air, you automatically drop like a rock. You can also use a “Wind Wave” projectile (the manual explains how you do it incorrectly), but they are limited in quantity. The bosses are fairly inconsistant (the last boss involves you punching a giant mech that shoots missiles at you, you can literally stand right beside the boss because he doesn’t hurt when you touch him). Either way, while the bosses occasionally have variety, they are horribly boring to fight. They don’t restore your health after you beat them either, so if you die, you have to fight them again. Although you get HP item drops, they are completely random, and your HP will probably run out from you walking around before you get them anyway.
_CONCLUSION//
“It’s only that it’s a waste of time.”
The quote says it all. This game is a waste of your time. Crappy music, average visuals, and horribly flawed gameplay. If you’re a fan of Dragon Ball, and you absolutely MUST play the first localized Dragon Ball game…. don’t bother with this. It’s not worth it… Seriously!
BLEGH!
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Eehhhhhhh, this could have been way longer, but I still haven’t finished my homework… ’till next time, I guess! Bye!
SELECT STAGE #3 – Kabuki Quantum Fighter August 1, 2009
Posted by Rebel in Rebel, SELECT STAGE.5 comments
Remember back in my last SELECT STAGE post on Life Force, I said that NES games weren’t big on story? Well, they weren’t, but some of them had awesome premises that are barely passable for any game in our current generation. Well, how does this sound; you’re a military soldier, volunteering to have your brain transformed into raw binary code to combat the viruses in the Main Defense Computer; Earth’s last hope to survive… as a kabuki! Most producers would turn down a premise like that without hesitation, but if any of you think this is interesting, read on for a brand new SELECT STAGE post about…
SELECT STAGE #2 – Life Force January 21, 2009
Posted by Rebel in Rebel, Rebel's Rants, SELECT STAGE.3 comments
Anyways, welcome to the second “SELECT STAGE!”. It was going to be a feature that just talked about classic games, but now I’m going to revise this feature a little. Make it more specific. This feature is now going to be about obscure gems (or not so shiny tin caps) on the NES, SNES, and the Genesis. At the end of each SELECT STAGE post, I will give the game a thumbs up, or a tentative thumbs down. Anyways, here we go… Uh…
Has anyone heard of a game called “Life Force”? For those of you that haven’t, Life Force is a shoot-em-up on the NES. Okay, there were a lot of shoot-em-ups on the NES, but this one is a fun shooter by Konami. “Life Force” (also known as Salamander in Japan) that resembles Gradius. Actually, it was actually supposed to be a Gradius spinoff, so it should resemble Gradius. Well, actually, it IS a Gradius spinoff, but whatever. Anyways, Salamander was popular enough in Japan to get a sequel, Salamander 2. Since Salamander was released at arcades at 1986, it has undergone multiple remakes and “ports” on the PC Engine, the NES, and surprisingly, the Playstation Portable. Now that I think about it, I think Salamander and Life Force somehow became two different games even though they’re the same game, or something. I don’t really know too much about this game, personally, so I’ll make myself sound stupider if I continue with talking about the game’s history. Anyways, enough of this! Time to sink our teeth into this game.
“You’ve saved the innocent people of Gradius from the vile Bacterions. But now, an even deadlier plague has slimed into the neighbourhood! It’s Zelos, an all-engulfing planet-eating alien who’s hungering to take a bit out of you!”
Story
NES games have never been huge on story. This is no exception. If you haven’t gathered anything from that snippit of text I just gave you, basically, the premise is that… you’re in the Gradius world, somewhere, and there’s an alien named Zelos (har har) that is going to eat your planet. What that little snippit DIDN’T say, was that you’re going to be flying a plane called the RoadBritish space destroyer… into the alien’s body. …that’s pretty much all there is in the way of story.
Graphics
This game looks and plays like your every day shoot-em-up. It’s nothing special, but it’s still pleasant to the eye. Who plays NES games for GRAPHICS nowadays anyways?
Travelling through Zelos' mouth~!
Sound
The music is good, but it’s what you’d expect from an NES game. Some songs DO stand out though; for example, the stage 2 song. Man, that song is catchy.
Gameplay
Look familiar?
This game is a pretty deep shooter. Life Force has 6 stages, each representing a different part of Zelos’ body (first stage being his mouth. you even get to travel through his blood stream!) This game has both vertical and horizontal scrolling stages, alternating between level and level (stage 1 being horizontal, stage 2 being vertical). You get three lives; the standard for schmups. You don’t get any continues, which makes the game pretty damn hard. Fortunately, you can use the Konami Code to get 30 lives, just like in Contra… which makes the game a lot easier. This game, like Gradius, has power-ups.
There are 6 power-ups; speed, missile, ripple, lazer, option, and force. To power yourself up, you shoot differently coloured enemies and collect orbs that they drop upon death. Speed increases your speed, missile gives you two floating orbs that shoot wall-crawling missiles, ripple changes your regular shot into a kind of sonar-ish shot, lazer changes your regular shot into a lazer, option makes a certain aircraft thing float around you, shooting when you shoot, and force is a forcefield that protects you from the weakest of enemies.
Each orb shifts the glowing square to the right by one square.
The actual shoot-em-up part is rock solid. You shoot enemies, enemies, and more enemies until you reach the boss. Wait, that’s not all you do! You navigate through the dynamic stages that WANT to kill you. For example, in the first level, there are clear passages that get blocked by Zelos’ gums. You have to fly through those passages fast enough to get through. If you’ve played this game, you’d remember the chaotic fire level that shoots fireballs that you have to fly under (or over). This game does the shoot-em-up part really well, and the level designs are extremely inspired.
Remember the firebaaall?!
Life Force also sports a simultaneous two-player mode! Something that every Gradius (until Gradius V) didn’t have! (thanks for the heads-up, MinhT)
Overall
For those schmup purists, this is the game for you. 6 stages; some may say it’s too short, but this schmup pretty much excels in its genre, with challenge and fun packed into one bundle. It’s a game that is pleasing to hear and nice to watch. It still stands as a great game in our current gaming generation, and for that, it gets a whole-hearted…
RECOMMENDED
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Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed the second “SELECT STAGE!”. In the future, I’ll try to add some gameplay videos. Thanks for reading!
SELECT STAGE #1 – CUT….MAN! September 26, 2008
Posted by Rebel in Rebel, Rebel's Rants, SELECT STAGE.add a comment
So, I was going to rant about how much I hate a certain Final Fantasy game, but I’ll leave that ’till later (most people will hate me for hating that certain Final Fantasy game). Instead, I’ll talk about some of the games I’ve played recently. Hmm hmm, let’s see… Oh, I’ve got something to write! I’m gonna get started on one of the things I’ve been planning! Revisiting the Old Days. I guess I’ll explain a little bit about this. Basically, I’ll be recording a few short videos of games on legacy consoles. Of course, these videos won’t be of the whole game, unless I change my mind and decide to do full videogame playthroughs. As compensation for the last blog post, I’ll talk write up… well… a lot less. I think I wrote too much last time. Okay, okay, less rambling, more ranting!
Mega Man (NES)
Everyone loves Mega Man, and with the release of Mega Man 9, I’ve decided to start off RVTOD with… well… Mega Man. Mega Man is a game with a huge legacy. Of course, I won’t really talk about its legacy. YOU GUYS CAN GO LOOK THAT STUFF UP ON YOUR OWN! Anyways, Mega Man featured great graphics, fair challenge, and revolutionary gameplay. In fact, the front cover said it was State-of-the-Art, with High Resolution Graphics. By the way, even though I say fair challenge, let me just get my point across: this game will kick your ass. I don’t really know what to say right now, so I’ll write a description, and keep this short. Mega Man is about a boy dressed in blue, with an arm cannon. Of course, he fights evil, on the side of Dr. Light, against the evil scientist Dr. Wily and his creations; the 6 Robot Masters. At least, that’s what I think the story is. All I care about is blasting random enemies with Mega Man’s arm cannon, while navigating through tough, but fun stages. Mega Man plays like your average platformer. Navigate through linear levels, and fight a boss at the end. What split it apart, during its time, was the fact that Mega Man got powers after kicking a boss’s butt. For example, when you beat Cutman, Mega Man would gain the ability to throw circular boomerang scissors at people. Mega Man featured charming visuals that were above average for an NES game at the time and its music was quite memorable (although, the most memorable songs came from first-party Nintendo games). It’s kind of hard to delve into old 8-bit games and review how good the games were for their time. The sounds effects are what you’d expect from an NES game; nothing special, but it still sounds great. Well, like I said earlier, I’ll be featuring some level recordings in these types of blog posts… and… well…. Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the last 25 or so years, you should have already seen Mega Man in action already… But I’ll show you guys anyways.
EDIT: Revisiting the Old Days is now called “SELECT STAGE”.
