Small Games Vol. 8!

 This post represents the last vestiges of my fifth laptop, the worst laptop I ever owned, which could barely run anything, and which is the reason why there haven't been any arcade, PS2, Saturn, etc. games featured on here in a long time. Because the two games I'm writing about today were among the few it could actually run without any problems! They're also linked to each other by being deliberate throwbacks to games of the 1980s.

 

Anyway, the first of the two is Cinnabar Kamen, a tokusatsu-themed single plane beat em up that has you in the role of the eponymous masked hero, walking from right to left, punching and kicking monsters, until you get to a boss, who you proceed to fight. There's not much more to it than that, really. It doesn't bring much to the genre, feeling like a romhack of the oldest of the old, Spartan X/Kung Fu, that doesn't even feel as good to play. It's definitely worlds away from the quality of the excellent Fire Dragon Fist Master Xiaomei. Cinnabar Kamen was a huge disappointment, and the one positive thing I can think to say about it is that the sunset in the background is nice and colourful. Not worth the hundred yen asking price.

 

Next up is a game that oozes authenticity, with the only crack in its eighties facade being the option for online co-op on the title screen. Were it not for this one giveaway, you could easily think that Virus Crashers was a ROM from the early days of the Famicom running in an emulator, rather than a brand new PC game released in the twenty-first century (I'm not sure exactly when, though, since the title screen has two copyright dates: 2006 and 2013)! As for the game itself, it can simply (and accurately) be described as "Bubble Bobble, but you can fly", as it sees you tackle single-screen stages full of enemies by trapping them in bubbles, then popping them to get point-scoring fruit. You even get higher-scoring fruit and power-ups for popping multiple enemies at once! Also, you can fly by holding the jump button. Though that is slightly more difficult than it sounds, as theres a lot of momentum/inertia at play, so it's not as simple as just going where you like on the screen and popping enemies at your leisure. The only thing missing (at least as far as I can tell) is Bubble Bobble's plethora of esoteric Druaga-esque secrets. Unless they are in there and I just haven't found any of them, in which case: good job to the devs for hiding them so well, I guess!

 

So, that's two games, both will run on practically any PC, though only one of the two is really worth bothering with. I know this post is short, but the next one's going to be longer, and maybe even a little bit seedier, so please look forward to that!

Small Games Vol. 7!

This was originally going to just be a post about one PC88 game, a Buddhism-themed action RPG called Gandhara. It's definitely not a small game, as it takes place over a bunch of massive stages, and I only gave up on it, as after a few hours going around stage one, and even finding the entrance to stage two, it was becoming increasingly obvious that I wasn't going to get anywhere. Also, playing it got the ending theme from the old 1970s tokusatsu show Saiyuki/Monkey stuck in my head, and I hope reading the title earlier in this paragraph does the same to a few of you, too. If you want to try it, here's a little help with the controls: Space attacks with your sword, Shift uses your magic (once you get that ability), and 5 on the numberpad lets you pray to certain trees to regain your HP, at the cost of one hundred beads.

So, what do we have instead? First, an interesting little maze game entitled Daidassou, which is all about freeing your comrades from prison! First thing on each stage you have to kill a guard to get his key, then you run around opening cells and leading the inmates to the exit. If you're not careful, inmates can be taken to a special maximum security cell if they're caught by guards, or even killed in the crossfire. It's a cute little game, and it's fun to play, even if it's also very, very hard (it took several attempts just to get past the first stage!). I especially like the isometric look of the game, which results in some mazes looking kind of Escher-esque, and maybe impossible? Like the heights of different floors don't totally make sense all the time.

Finally, The Demon Crystal, which, despire its grandiose title and plot about a demon invasion, seems to take place in a series of suburban houses. You run around these houses, picking up keys to open locked doors, looking for the big key that opens the door to the next stage. It's a nice touch that the rooms behind the locked doors are shrouded in darkness until you enter them, and generally, this is a fun game, mechanically speaking, at least. Unfortunately, it's let down by the fact that the behaviour of most types of enemy is randomised, which can in some cases make the very possibility of being able to complete a stage entirely down to luck. If each enemy type had a learnable pattern, or a specific way they reacted to your presence, then this would have been a great lost classic I could have shown to you all, like an archaologist showing off an amazing artefact. Unfortunately, though, it's not only frustrating to play, but also frustrating to think about what could have been.

Small Games Vol. 6!

It seems like it's been a while since there's been a small games post, and I just happened upon three candidates while exploring the X68000's roster, so here we are! First up is Hard Battle, a nice little shooting game. In it, you control an X68000, flying over scenery made of circuit boards and chips, and shooting disks at various other flying microcomputers, who return fire in kind. All while a demented little chiptune plays. It's pretty good! Play it, set a high score, try to beat the high score, there's not much else to it, really. There's no bombs or power-ups, and there's no scoring system besides "get points for shooting enemies", so it's pretty much as simple as a shooting game cane be. Not bad, though.

Next up is a game that doesn't fair so well, to the extent that I think it was probably just a bit of practice for the developer, and not meant to be enjoyed as a full, finished game at all. Its name is Death Fighter, and in it, you play as a martial artist who looks a lot like Ryu from Street Fighter, but whos repetoire is limited to punches and judo throws, locked in combat against a heavily armoured gladiator/knight-type guy. Your enemy doesn't really have any AI beyond charging forward and constantly attacking, and you've got to try and get your offence in when you can. You can block by pressing down, but since the enemy never stops attacking, there isn't really any point. A curiosity, and nothing more.

Finally, the best game of this trio, Ikari Blade. It looks like a pretty typical old-fashioned single-screen shooting game, but it gradually escalates to the point where the screens is full of enemies and their bullets, with very little room to maneuver. The main problem is that the escalation is a little too gradual, and your first five minutes or so of play will have you wondering why the game starts you out with ten shields, and why it's so generous in giving you more of them. It's also a shame that the game's not so generous with weapon power-ups, as even after three or four of them, your gun still feels incredibly feeble. Like I said, though, Ikari Blade is the best game out of these three, and despite its flaws, there's just something about it that's compelling and even slightly addictive.

Small Games Vol. 5!

It's time for another batch of lower-key games, and once again, it's an MSX edition, simply because everyone loves the MSX, right? Unfortunately though, it, like all systems, played host to some pretty terrible games over the course of its life, and today's post is a bit of a good game sandwich, with bad games as the bread. The first slice being American Truck. It's one of those top-down see-how-far-you-can-go crash-avoiding psuedo-racing games that longtime readers will know I love. It's a pretty bad example of the genre, though.

It's just got a lot of little things wrong with it that all add up to a game that's no fun to play. The scoring system is bad: you only get points for destroying other vehicles, so there's no points gained for distance travelled or leftover fuel or time (though this does make me wonder if the developers were inspired by Goliath, the evil truck from Knight Rider). Instead of the usual fuel meter that acts as a combination time limit and health bar, you have three lives, one of which is lost if you touch the edge of the road, or if you so much as graze one of the black circles (presumably open manholes?) dotted around the place here and there. Also, at least once, I died from crashing into a vehicle, even though this is the only way to score points. I wish this game was better, but it just isn't. Don't bother with it.

Next up is a much better game, A.E., a simple single-screen shooter that was recommended to me years and years ago, though I've unfortunately forgotten by whom. If it was you, sorry! Though this game might like incredibly simple and primitive in screenshots, in motion, it's a different story. The backgrounds are completely static, but the enemies fly around them, and a kind of primitive psuedo-sprite-scaling effect has the swooping in and out of hollow meteors and slaloming through stalagmites and stalactites, and so on. It's a really cool effect that really shows how creative the devs must have been. The game itself is okay, too. Mechanically, it manages to stand out by giving you a fairly unusual weapon: your shots travel upwards for as long as you hold the fire button, detonating into an explosion that lasts a couple of seconds when you release. The enemies come in waves of six that fly away after a few passes. You clear a stage when you manage to successfully wipe out three waves. A.E is a decent game, and I pass on the recommendation I received onto you.

Finally, the second slice of bad game bread is The Komainu Quest, a game that I almost feel bad for badmouthing, since it was originally made as a promotional game for the town of Seto in Japan. I still will though, because it's awful. In contrast to A.E, which seemed to be made by developers who knew both the hardware they were using, and the extent of their abilities in using it, The Komainu Quest is rendered pretty much unplayable, apparently thanks to developers biting off more than they could chew in attempting a scrolling shooter on the MSX hardware (though that has been done by others, before anyone points out, and with spectacular results, too. But that's a story for another day). I say "attempting", because this game doesn't actually have scrolling. Instead, the screen slowly updates as you play, in columns a few pixels wide. The result of this is that sometimes you have enemies already firing at you several seconds before they actually appear, and even stationary obstacles pushing your ship out of the way when all you can see is empty sky. I feel bad for saying it, but The Komainu Quest is only worth playing out of historical curiosity.

Small Games Vol. 4!

All the games in this post are for the Epoch Game Pocket Computer, from 1984. Also, I'm going to at least mention all the games for the Epoch Game Pocket Computer, as there's only seven of them. And only two (maybe three) that are actually worth playing. Now, I'm not 100% on this, but while it definitely wasn't the first handheld games console, I think this might have been the first to have all the true hallmarks of what we think of as a handheld console: interchangable ROM cartridges, processing power in the console itself (as opposed to being inside the cartridges), and a pixel-based display (as opposed to a bespoke Game and Watch-style display for each game). If I'm wrong, please correct me, but I can't see any earlier handhelds that have all three properties.

The first game I'll talk about is Astro Bomber, which is mostly a clone of Konami's arcade game Scramble, though it does have a few of its own original elements, such as fuel-eating clouds, and a final bossfight against a ship that shoots giant snakes at you. It's fun enough, but it's both incredibly easy and far too generous with the lives: you start with six of them, and on my second play, it took until midway through the second loop to lose one of them. I guess that'd make it great for a long train journey, though? Oh, also when you beat the boss, it plays a little bit of Star Wars music, which gave me a laugh the first time.

Next up is Block Maze, which is an original idea, as far as I can tell: you play as a thing in a maze, and you have to kick four blocks from the middle of the maze to the four corners. There's also enemies to avoid, and balls to kick at the enemies and kill them. Plus, after the first stage, the blocks and corners get marked with letters, and you have to get each block to its matching corner. Unforutnately, it suffers the same problem as Astro Bomber: six lives that are way too easy to keep ahold of. Also, the scoring system relies heavily on a little roulette minigame that plays whenever you get a block to its corner, and you know I hate luck-based scoring systems.

The third game isn't even a game, it's the console's built-in art program! That's pretty impressive for a mid-eighties handheld, right? Of course, there's not much you can do with a 75x64 screen and 1-bit colour, but it's interesting nonetheless. I couldn't get much out of it, but I bet pixel artists who love limitations would have a lot of fun with it! The two biggest shames are that there's no way to save your work (on the original hardware, at least. Obviously in an emulator, you just take screenshots), and that every  time the cursor moves a pixel, it's accompanied by a hellish beeping.

As for the rest of the line-up, there's a puzzle game that's also built in, but it's unfortunately a sliding tile puzzle, which doesn't even make a picture, you're just putting letters in order. There's also Sokoban and Mahjong games (I absolutely hate sokoban, and I'm useless at mahjong), and there's an Othello/Reversi game, which might be okay, but there's not really anything to say about it. And that's the Epoch Game Pocket Computer! We hardly knew ye.

Small Games Round Up Vol. 3!

It's another round up of three games that aren't big enough to support posts of their own, and this time I'm looking at a trio of SG-1000 games, starting with Golgo 13. Obviously the middle-aged fantasy world of Golgo 13, the stoic sniper who assassinates people and beds women is an ill fit for the pastel-palleted world of the SG-1000, so in this game he's using his skills for a non-violent purpose: rescuing people from a runaway train by shooting out the windows so they can escape. Between Goglo and the train, though, there's an infinitely long cargo train and a road. If your bullets hit one of the boxcars on the cargo train, or a truck passing by on the road, it'll bounce back at you, and you have to avoid it. After a few stages, some misanthropic helicopter pilots will also start tryng to bomb you, plus there's a time limit. Unfortunately, if the time limit runs out, the train just goes offscreen, there's no sequence of it hitting a wall or going off a cliff or anything.

Golgo 13 is an okay game, but it's really let down by the fact that once the helicopters start appearing, that's as hard as the game gets. It doesn't speed up or add any more elements, it's essentially just that stage over and over until you run out of lives. Even something as simple as the train going up and down hills occaisionally would be a big change, forcing the player to aim vertically as well astiming their shots and aiming horizontally. Never mind. Hustle Chumy is a more standard game for the time, being a single-screen platformer about a sewer-dwelling rat that just wants to bring home some food. To do so, you leave the sewer and brave the world above, filled with cats, bats, crocodiles, astronauts and an invincible fishman. All the enemies except the fishman can be killed by throwing dots (stones, maybe), with the fishman acting as a slow, but unrelenting terminator-type figure.

The big twist in Hustle Chumy is that the more bits of food you pick up (it's impressive for a game on such an old system that they vary from stage to stage, including fruits, sweets, pudding, and so on), the heavier and slower you get. You can still jump at the same speed, though this carries its own risk, thanks not only to the bats flying overhead, but also the fact that your jump is a set arc, over which you have no control. Hustle Chumy is a pretty good game, well worth a look. Plus it has some very cute sprites, with the cat enemy in particular looking great.

Finally, there's GP World, a racing game that feels like a genetic forebear to SEGA's more well-known sprite scaling racers like Outrun and Hang On. It makes a decent attempt at looking like a sprite scaling game on hardware where that couldn't possibly support it, and it features simpler versions of mechanics that would appear in those games, like Outrun's two-gear system, and the fact that there's no actual placement in the races, you're just racing against time, and the other vehicles are present just to ct as obstacles and to provide points bonuses for passing them. One odd little touch that really speaks to GP World's prototypical nature is that rather than having a timer that counts down to zero, the timer counts upwards, and each stage has a different time limit that gives a game over when the timer gets that high. It's only a little thing, but looking at this game, and the games that came after it, you can see how they streamlined things and improved them bit-by-bit over time.

As for GP World itself, it's a good game. It's fun enough on its own merits, and it's a nice little curiosity: a look at the DNA of some later, more polished games that we all know and love.

Small Game Round Up Vol. 2!

It's time for some more ancient games that are too simple to support entire posts on their own! Today I'll be talking about just two games, both on the MSX, and the first is Godzilla vs. 3 Major Monsters, also known as Gozira 3D, for some reason.

It's a single-screen action game, that's just barely above the level of complexity of a handheld LCD game, or possibly one of the more advanced Atari 2600 games with slightly better graphics. The action all takes place in a classic tokusatsu rocky desert, and starts with Megalon emerging from holes in the ground. Obviously, you play Godzilla, and you just blast him with your atomic breath. Do this 10-15 times (I think Megalon has to have dug at least eight holes before this stage ends, as opposed to reusing ones he's already dug), and Megalon will be replaced by two Kumongas (they're really being generous with the term "major monster" in this game, aren't they?)

The Kumongas will pop up out of the holes at random, to shoot webs and energy bolts at Godzilla, like a more aggressive whack-a-mole game, and I think you have to hit each one three times to be rid of them. The final, and easiest enemy you have to face is King Ghidorah, who slowly flies down from the top of the screen occaisionally shooting a gravity bolt, but mostly doing nothing. Just blast him until he goes, and the whole thing starts again, but slightly faster. It's nothing spectacular, but it's an okay diversion for five minutes or so. Also, the Godzilla sprite looks great when walking left or right (but terrible when walking up or down).

The other game I hve to talk about today is one of possible historical significance, and very little else. Nyannyan Prowrestling might be the first ever women's wrestling videogame. It came out in 1986, the same year as SEGA's Gokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto, though I haven't been able to track down an exact date for either game, so I can't say for certain which was first. Even if SEGA got there first, this might still be the first home videogame about women's wrestling, if it came out before the 20th of July that year (when Gokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto's Master System port was released).

Anyway, other than that bit of trivia, there's not much positive to say about this game. All the wrestlers have the exact same sprite, it uses a bizarre menu-based control system (though to be fair, a few early combat sports games did this, including the Boxing and Pro-Wrestling games on the SG-1000. There's a lot of SEGA talk in this review, isn't there?), and for some reason, all the matches take place on basketball courts instead of wrestling rings. On top of all that, you have to play it with the keyboard, as it doesn't acknowledge controller inputs! There's not much more to be said about this game. It's an interesting historical footnote, but not much else. Don't waste your time, except to satisfy your curiosity.

Small Games Round Up Vol. 1!

I've long laboured over the fact that there are lots of games I'd like to tell you all about, mainly early arcade games, or ones on very old computers, but weren't complex enough to carry a post on their own. I could just write shorter posts, but then you'd be eagerly waiting five days for a new post, just to get a few lines an a couple of screenshots about some anncient relic. Then I realised I could just bundle them together, and for this inaugural round up, I've put together three little PC88 games, starting with Skyscraper. Another note before we start: the PC88 is known in some circles for being home to a lot of great music. None of the three games featured in this post live up to that, though, they just have bleepy sound effects.

Skyscraper is a single-screen shooter, in which you avoid or shoot various seemingly-random shapes and objects, while also catching tiny little people who are falling to the deaths (well, some are falling to their deaths, some have parachutes). Once you've met your rescue quota, the stage ends. There doesn't seem to be any penalty for letting the fallers die, other than wasting time (and losing a bit of your time bonus at the end of the stage), which is nice, since they die if they hit the bottom of the screen, any of the enemies, or even your own shots. Between stages, there's a very strange bonus "game" that simply asks you to press a letter on the keyboard. All in all, a fun enough game, with some really nice pixel art backgrounds.

Next up is Karakuri Ninpou, a very arcade-looking game, and, I suspect, possibly an influence on the Haggleman games on the first Game Center CX game for the DS. In it, you play as a green ninja out to rescue their red ninja friend, who gets kidnapped by god in the pening cutscene. To do so, you have to navigate a house full of enemies, stairs, and doors. Not every room is reachable by stairs alone, so you have to use the doors, which are all linked to each other in pairs, though it's up to you to figure out and remember which doors are connected to which. I have to admit that though I made many attempts, I never actually got past the first stage of this one, as there's an enemy that sometimes appears, a black ninja, who throws shuriken at you, and there doesn't seem to be any way of avoiding or deflecting that. Still, someone with the patience to build up superhuman skill (and probably a lot of luck, too) at playing this game might get more joy out of it than I did. It definitely feels like it's a game that might better than it first seems, at least.

Last, and also least, is Donkey Gorilla, a very simple, almost Game and Watch-esque game. It uses text mode graphics, so everything's very charming and simple in a geometric kind of way, and you play as what I think is a chameleon hanging onto a washing line while things that are probably gorillas dance around below you. You kill the gorillas by dropping hearts on them, and sometimes one of them will try to climb a tree, killing you if they reach the top. Also a bird-like thing occaisionally flies overhead to try and kill you with hearts, too. There's not much to say about Donkey Gorilla, really. You might get a minute or two's amusement out of it, at most, but not much more.