Griffin (Game Gear)

Griffin has a few odd similarities to a game I reviewed a while ago, Pop Breaker: they're both Game Gear games about tanks, that are decorated (the games, not the tanks) with inconsequential pixel art of anime girls. Seperating them, however, is a much bigger difference: while Pop Breaker was a bit of a shooting/puzzle hybrid thing, Griffin is a pure shooter.

Some commendation should actually be offered to Griffin's devs, even, as they've clearly made a pretty valiant attempt at recreating the essence of contemporary arcade shooting games in 1991 on the humble Game Gear hardware. There's power-ups, screen-clearing bombs, and even a second, significantly more difficult loop that starts right after you finish the game. Between each stage, there's also some fullscreen art of your tank's female pilot after the first three stages, with the fourth and final stage being followed by the text telling you that the next loop is about to start. Frustratingly, I got right up to the final boss of the second loop before dying, so I can't tell you if there's an ending there or another loop. Sorry.

Anyway, it's a tank-based vertically scrolling shooting game. You roll up the screen, shooting enemies, avoiding bullets, and so on. Nothing really innovative on show, except for the aforementioned courage in making a game with the same design principles as then-current arcade games specifically for low-powered handheld hardware. There is one neat little graphical trick on show regarding the bosses, though. The parts of the boss you actually fight are very small, like the arms of a giant robots, or the cannons of a battleship. These aprts would be sprites, while the main, non-interactive "body" of the boss was part of the background. This meant the game could have you (appearing to) fight huge enemies, albeit huge enemies that are almost totally static. There's also one stage that only appears in the first loop where you pilot a squat, unaerodynamic-looking plane instead of a tank. This stage is the worst part of the game, having a repetitive, ugly background and incredibly boring enemy patterns. I assume the developers realised this and decided to leave it out of the second loop (but I guess they needed it to pad out the first?)

Griffin's a pretty good game. I won't say it's the best shooter on the Game Gear, as I know there's a port of Galaga 88, as well as two specially-made Aleste games, which are all probably better than it (though I haven't played any of them yet), but it is a pretty good one and definitely worth a look.

Korokoro Post Nin (Playstation)

It's a trite, lazy and annoying thing, when someone describes a work by calling it a mix of other works, but I'm going to do it now anyway: Korokoro Post Nin is like a combination of elements from Cameltry, Paperboy and Sonic the Hedgehog. This really is a description of it at its basest level, though: it's a game where you rotate a maze to move a character inside, and that character is not only tasked with delivering small packages to mailboxes, but her movement speed is also heavily dependent on the slope of the surface on which she's stepping, and the momentum she's built up.

So yeah, it's some kind of (possibly post-apocalyptic?) future, and you're a delivery girl working for some kind of robot guy. You're tasked with delivering to every postbox in the area, then getting to the door within the time limit. Although, referring to the game's protagonist as "you" isn't exactly accurate, as like I mentioned earlier, you actually control the maze in which the delivery girl, postboxes and door exist. It's a mystery why this game was released for the Playstation in 2002, as it's exactly the sort of thing that would have become a beloved cult hit, had it been released on the GBA in the same period.

Playing the game is incredibly simple: R1 and L1 turn the maze left and right. If the ground upon which the delivery girl is standing is a slope, she'll walk down it. If it's a steep slope, she'll run down it (which is not only faster, but also essentially for smashing through certain obstacles). If there's no ground directly beneath her, she'll fall. The thing is, though, this game is actually a masterclass in old-school game design, by which I mean that it is entirely based around these (and a couple of other) simple rules, and the stages are all tests of both your knowledge of these rules and the precision of your dexterity in pulling them off.

On a larger scale, it also introduces new elements every few stages: first there are obstacles, both moving and stationary, which will knock three seconds off your remaining time you you hit them while you're not running. Next, there are spikes, which you are to avoid altogether, with a brutal penalty of five seconds for each violation. Further than that, I can't tell you about, as I'm just not good enough to get through more than the first couple of stages with spikes. However, that's fine, it doesn't feel like an unfair game, or an artificially difficult one. In fact, I'd love to see this game make the rounds in the speedrunning community, as each stage is obviously designed with an optimum or perfect path in mind, and I know there are people out there who would love the challenge of learning the layout of each stage by heart, and mastering the controls so that they can get through perfectly, and it's clear to me that this game was designed with that in mind.

In summary, Korokoro Postnin is a game that was slightly too hard for me, but it's also a game I can't help but respect, and I hope it somehow, someday gets the attention of the audience for whom it's truly intended. (Even if it is well over a decade too late for it to matter to the developers or publisher).