Mobile Fighter G Gundam (SNES)

 Round about the turn of the century, when access to SNES emulation became more widely available, there were a few previously Japan-only games to which a lot of people (especially young teenagers) flocked, due to their being tie-ins with anime that were becoming popular in English-speaking countries at about the same time, thanks to the multi-year delay that that process had back then. Sailor Moon: Another Story, Dragonball Z: Hyper Dimension, and most relevant to this review, New Mobile Report Gundam Wing: Endless Duel were three such games.

 

Sailor Moon was an okay RPG, and Hyper Dimension had the distinction of being better than the only other Dragonball game me and my friends had played at that point, the awful Dragonball GT: Final Bout on Playstation, but Endless Duel was a legitimately excellent game. Like, probably the best fighting game on the SNES, and definitely the best-looking SNES fighter. G Gundam had not yet had any kind of release in the UK yet, and I think wasn't very well-known in the US either, so no-one really paid its game any mind. It's also a fighting game, though, and in retrospect, it should have been excellent: the show was, after all, essentially Street Fighter II but with giant robots.

 

It won't be much of a surprise to careful readers of the preceding paragraph, but G Gundam just doesn't match up to the following year's game in any way. The easiest way to put it is that it feels like Endless Duel was developed to be as good a game as possible, and it also happens to be a licensed game, while G Gundam fits right alongside a lot of the other bog standard SNES anime tie-ins. It even has the presentational quirks a lot of similar SNES games have, like loud, low quality voice clips taken from the show, background screens where the show's logo scrolls by diagonally, and so on.

 

I will say, though, that it is a perfectly okay fighting game. Every character plays differently, they all have special moves with proper input commands, and there's also a desperation move for each of them. There's even a few features you wouldn't necessarily expect from a 1994 fighting game: seperate story and arcade modes, and a team battle mode, for example. Plus: the stages have different colour palettes showing the progression of time from round to round! SNK had introduced that feature a few years prior in Fatal Fury, but it was still very rare at the time.

 

I actually do really like the way the game looks, too. It's a shame that it's doomed to be compared to the vastly superior Endless Duel, because just as it plays perfectly fine, G Gundam also looks fairly decent, too. The sprites aren't very big, but they are nice to look at, and detailed in a way that reminds of a particularly great-looking Game Gear game. Which does sound like damning with faint praise, I admit. The aforementioned backgrounds are also very well-drawn, all depicted places in which fights took place in the actual show, too.

 

I've spent most of this review comparing G Gundam to other games, which might not seem fair, but I'll be honest here: it is a very standard, okay, average fighting game. If it weren't for the license, it would have been even more forgotten than it actually is, and if it weren't for the massive shadow cast by the other Gundam SNES fighting game, there'd be very little to say about it. Play it if you're a fan of the show and/or you're curious about it, but don't expect to unearth a lost classic or anything.

Shadow Brain (NES)

 I think it's a pretty prevalent stereotype of 8-bit console RPGs that they're ugly, difficult, and just generally hostile to the player. It's not a completely unfounded stereotype, and I know there are people reading this who play those games specifically looking for those qualities. I'm not one of those players, but I do occasionally dip my toes into the genre, to seek out diamonds in the rough, and because I think the developers of games like these often came from the world of indie development on microcomputers, and there's a similar kind of creator-led energy to a lot of them to that seen in OAVs of the same era.

 

I found Shadow Brain in one such toe-dipping session, and I instantly took a liking to the way it bucks the trends in the genre at that time, both thematically and mechanically.  Thematically, it immediately stands out: it takes place in some kind of futuristic cyberpunk dystopia. There are only towns, no dungeons, but the streets of the towns are all plagued by roving criminals, rogue cyborgs, and mutated animals. The grimy look of both enemy and NPC characters juxtaposed with the incredibly sterile look of the faux-3D blobber maps really gives off the impression that this is a world that's still being maintained in terms of things being kept working, but also a world in which the actual inhabitants have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves. The closest thing I encountered to any kind of law enforcement are the gates between towns that require security ID to get through.

 

Mechanically, the first thing that proved promising is that while you're a solo adventurer who never gets any party members, you aren't punished harshly for dying. You're simply whisked away to the nearest ressurectionist, who provides the service you'd expect him to, and takes half of your current money as payment. Other than that, there's a lot of interesting little quirks. In battle, you have three attack options: punch, sword, and gun, and you can equip weapons to all three. There's no reason not to only buy and use the weapon that has the highest attack, but it's still a sign that the devs had a lot of ideas they wanted to include. Front Mission 3 fans might also be interested to learn that Shadow Brain also includes an in-game internet!

 

In the same way that Front Mission 3's internet reflected the real internet of 1999, featuring simple, charmingly gaudy webpages, Shadow Brain's internet reflects how things were in 1991. You can only access it via terminals that are dotted here and there around the towns, and when you do, there's a "live chat", where your character can converse with a few recurring characters, a BBS, where people post questions and information about what's going on, and an online shop where you can buy and sell things. It's very rudimentary, but it's still a fun little addition, and it really adds to the feels that this is a sci-fi game, and not just a fantasy game with a shiny metal skin. 

 

Another thing that you might be surprised to hear about is that you can go to the arcade and play minigames! In a 1991 Famicom game! There's futuristic Pong and futuristic clay pigeon shooting, and you can play them as much as you like to win money, plus there's a couple of points in the plot where you have to play special "if you die in the game, you die for real" versions to advance the plot. 

 

Anyway, though Shadow Brain is a lot more player-friendly than a lot of RPGs from that time, I'd say it's probably still a bit of an acquired taste, and while dying isn't a problem, there are still moments when it's not really clear what you have to do to progress. Still, I enjoyed the few hours I played of it (I got as far as the fourth town). I also really loved the way the game looks: the enemy and NPC sprites all look amazing, the world itself is really atmospheric, and even the UI elements feels as if they've been designed as a part of the game's world. This is a high quality work, and was clearly made with a lot of love. There's an English translation patch out there, and if this review has at all piqued your interest, you should definitely give it a try.

Sylphia (PC Engine)

 With this being a vertical shooter by Compile, you might be tempted to think that it's just a fantasy-skinned Aleste game (Though to be honest, that wouldn't really be a negative). But while there's some slight similarities to the Aleste series (there's a few different weapons to try out, and you gradually power up your shots by collecting multiple little P items), it's got enough stuff of its own to be considered its own unique entity.

 

It starts with a really nice pixel anmation intro, showing a female soldier in anceient greek times protecting some civilians from an invading demon army until she's mortally wounded. With her last breath, she crawls into a temple, where she's rewarded for her bravery by a glowing orb that turns her into a battle fairy, and sends her off to destroy the demon hoards. Of course, that fairy is you. After the great-looking intro, the rest of the game doesn't diappoint visually, either: the game itself is full of cool backgrounds, lots of varied monsters that are both well-animated and well-drawn, and the out-of-game presentation is really interesting. Between stages, there's these unique sepia-toned pieces of pixel art that show what the next stage's theme will be, and even the game over screen is cool! It has Sylphia floating above an open, ark of the covenant-style casket, and when you choose not to continue, she descends into it and the lid closes!

 

The game itself, luckily, is also pretty good. There are four different elemental weapons you can pick from (by collecting items, you can't just switch at any time), with wind being the best, fire second, and earth and water being totally useless. As well as the items for changing element, and the aforementioned P items for powering up your shot, another item that appears a lot is something that looks like a little winged CD. Collecting this fills up a meter, and when the meter's full, you get an extra bomb attack. As well as this, the game's pretty generous with the extra lives, giving you one for every seventy thousand points, and if you play well, you'll be getting more than one per stage on average. 

 

It only took me a few tries to get all the way to the final boss! The problem is, though, that after getting a game over, it's a little demoralising to try again straight away. The reason is one you might have predicted if you're familiar with Compile's other PC Engine shooting games: Sylphia is really long, like well over an hour. It flies by while you're playing, but after playing that long and dting, it's hard to get up the energy to start again right away. Still, if you want an easy 1CC, I can't imagine this taking most people more than a week at a rate of one or two attempts a day.

 

Something I'd also like to highlight is the excellent theming, with regard to the stages and enemies. There are no generic enemies in this game, or at least none that are generic enough to appear in every stage. This is because every stage has a theme, and all the enemies fit that theme and are unique to that stage. For example, the second stage has you going through an area full of statues of various stages, and all the enemies are mechanically-animated statues of various kinds: flying cherub heads, fire-breathing colossi, and more. An especially cool little touch in this stage is that when you beat the mid-boss, you see a tiny little pilot escape into the cave its guarding, and at the back of that cave, you see the pilot climb aboard the stage boss: a gigantic mechanical statue, only the top half of which is visible.

 

Every stage has cool moments like that in it to keep you engaged, too. The third stage takes place over a sea, with both archer-manned ships and marine monsters trying to kill you, and it's incredibly satisfying to sweep across the screen with your bomb attack (which takes the form of a big laser), destroying a whole fleet of ships, seeing them all break in half and sink. Then in the second half of the stage you go under the water, and Sylphia's flying animation is replaces with a swimming one! One strange point that's worth mentioning when it comes to the presentation is the music. Specifically, the music used for the boss fights at the end of the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages. In this 1993 greek mythology-themed shooting game, you're suffenly fighting huge monsters to the sound of some Jock Jams dance track, complete with that little "woo!" sample. Bizarre!

 

I feel like I haven't spoken much about the game's actual mechanics, but at the same time, I think that like a lot of pre-1994 shooting games, it's mostly pretty simple. Furthermore, I have said a lot about how the game presents itself, and I think it does that so well, and it's such a large part of this game's appeal that it's the right decision to have taken. Anyway, Sylphia is a game that's has enough concessions for beginners to the genre, while being satisfying enough for existing fans, plus there's always lots of cool details and things to see. I definitely recommend playing it if you haven't already. With the Aleste series getting a small revival in recent times, I hope someone at some point decides to bring back Compile's other shooters (including this one) too, as it'd be nice to see them reach a wide audience, and I definitely don't recommend or even condone anyone paying the ludicrous prices legitimate copies of this game fetch.

Blades of Vengeance (Mega Drive)

 I wrote a few years ago about Sword of Sodan, a western-developed barbarian game that's infamous as being one of the worst on the Mega Drive. Blades of Vengeance is also a western-developed Barbarian game, but it's thankfully a lot better, and in pretty much every way! Though to be fair, it was also made specifically for the Mega Drive, and also came out a few years after Sword of Sodan.

 

You play as one of three characters, Huntress, Warrior, and Sorcerer. Huntress and Warrior are very eighties fantasy-looking people with perfectly chiselled bodies and long, luxurious hair. Sorcerer is a balding, dirty-looking elderly man with a beard. He gets the last laugh, though, as later in the game, you can buy an "armour" item that completely upgrades your character, giving them a new look and weapon. Warrior gets the worst of this, replacing his cool axe with an awkward-looking flail. Huntress covers herself up a bit and gets an incredibly useful crossbow in place of her sword. Sorcerer gets a voluminous white robe worn over a short red dress and fishnet stockings, plus a more powerful staff for his spells. 

 

The game starts out taking place in hellish mountain/volcano landscapes, later changing tack towards labyrinthine castles and dungeons. It also feels like this change in location marks a change in the design style of the stages, too: the wilderness stages are mostly straightforward platform stages with a few secret rooms hidden around, while the later "man-made" stages focus more on switches, keys, doors, and ladders, looking and feeling a lot more like the Bitmap Bros. game Gods. As well as the stage design, something else worth mentioning is the inventory system. The only items you'll get a lot of use from are the healing potion and the keys, but there's another subtle design choice in the inventory that seperates the early game from the late game.

 

Early in the game, enemies and chests will drop a moderate amount of coins for use in the between-stage shops, but as you get later in the game, money becomes a significantly more scarce resource. But there's a rare item you might find here and there (and which is available in the shop, too): the Midas ring. Using this kills all onscreen enemies instantly, and turns them into money. I don't think this change is something a lot of players might notice on their first play, and I think it adds a little extra strategy to the gathering of a resource, so different players will end up with different amounts at the end of each stage, dependent on more than the time they spent finding hidden rooms with more chests in them.

 

There's a lot of other little things to like about the game, too. It all looks great, but one thing the I liked especially is that a lot of the early one-hit enemies are a lot shorter than the player characters. It looks weird at first, but then you realise that they're the exact right height to make it look like Huntress and Warrior's attack animations are smashing their heads in when they get killed! And the fact that all three characters have two complete sets of sprites and animations for when they power up is great, too, and something not seen too often in games from the early nineties.

 

It's a little odd that I've never seen anyone talking about Blades of Vengeance in real life or online (other than a post I vaguely remember seeing on Livejournal around twenty years ago). It's an EA game, and back then, everyone seemed to have at least a few of those distinct tall cartridges with the weird yellow tab on the side. Furthermore, it's actually pretty good, too, and the Mega Drive's library and its high points have surely been combed over enough times to have brought it to light by now. Anyway, it's not an incredible all-time classic or anything, but it is definitely a game that's worth your time if you haven't played it before.