PixlBit

It's kind of rediculous how many games I sampled here the other day. Some favorites were Minecraft Dungeons, Golden Axe, Beast Busters and Ikari III: The Rescue. Feel free to jump to whatever game interests you. This is a long one. 

Wizardry: I heard a song the other day by Morbid Angel called Maze of Torment. It seemed the perfect expression of how I feel about this game right now. The other day I decided to create a new group. I made two fighters, a samurai, a thief and two wizards. Turns out, you don’t get healing spells with wizards at level 1. On my second encounter I met Bushwhackers and they whacked my three fighters. I left this maze of torment in disgust. I really want to use wizards. You would think I could survive long enough to get one XP level and a few Dios spells, but no.

Minecraft Dungeons: There was a rewards quest for getting an achievement in the game this week but I was going to play a few levels anyway. I cleared the Redstone Mine, Cactus Forest and "Mine with a lot of Lava" (I forget it's title) leveling up to 12. I use a double-bladed staff and a rapid firing crossbow. I have explosive and fire arrows and a totem that gives me extra lives and the ability to create a shield on the battlefield. None of my friends were online playing this, so I went solo. I’m tempted to gift my friend Mark this game just so we can play together. It’s only $20.

Sega Genesis Classics: I finished the games released ’85-’89. Here are the ones I played yesterday:
Gain Ground: This game, graphically, looks like Gauntlet but it plays differently. You have three characters, one character has a spear, the other a gun, and another a gun and grenade.  You move vertically up the screen to get them all, one at a time, across a field full of enemies within a time limit. When one falls, you pick them up with the next character. It was tricky to avoid all the incoming missiles, so I only played three or four levels.

Galaxy Force II: This reminds me of the Star Wars vector graphics games but with colorful environments. You fly a ship straight into the screen and shoot everything that moves. Your ship auto fires its primary weapon and you control the missiles which lock on to tell you when to fire. You fly across landscapes and through tunnels. It’s ok. I felt I couldn’t move my ship very freely. There’s a weird resistance to moving too far towards the edges of the screen.

Golden Axe: I love the graphics of this sword and sorcery brawler but the gameplay frustrates me. In games like Streets of Rage, you can sort of tell where to stand relative to enemies to get a hit or grab. Here it is very uncertain. I’m like whacking away right on top of an enemy and nothing is happening. Riding creatures is my favorite part but you get knocked off them so fast, it’s barely satisfying. What is satisfying, though, is unleashing a full magic attack. Eat my dragon fire insalubrious infidels!

Space Harrier II: Why isn’t this game in VR right now? It seems perfect for it. Your character flies or runs towards the screen and enemies attack in simulated 3D space. It’s a bullet-hell shooter but in 3D. It’s kind of fun. I think it’s funny he runs as fast as he flies when you touch the ground.

Super Thunder Blade: This flying straight into the screen in simulated 3D sure was popular in the late eighties. Here you are flying a helicopter through city streets largely straight ahead. Even at easy difficulty you are bombarded with missiles, tank shells and suicidal enemy helicopters. Thank goodness for infinite continues. At the end of each section you have a boss. The first one is a mega tank and the second one is an aircraft carrier. I stopped on the aircraft carrier because I get sick of getting killed by a ridiculous amount of flak.

Revenge of Shinobi: Ninjas fighting ninjas? This is not supposed to happen. Ninja fighting samurai, that I can understand. In any case, you have your work cut out for you fighting enemies as badass as yourself. In Wizardry the Ninja character is the most badass requiring 17s in all stats. But anyway, the movement in this game is pretty great for the time. You crouch, jump, throw shuriken and use swords. And just a side note, only Ninjas can, and should, double jump. If you can double jump, you are a Ninja. No other character type should be allowed this skill. Just saying.

SNK Anniversary Collection: I noticed that each game has their arcade, console and region variants, which is very cool. I played the arcade and console versions where available for games released ’85-’89 and I’m not done yet.

Alpha Mission: This seems like SNK’s answer to Xevious. It’s a vertically scrolling scifi shooter. You shoot and bomb and grab pickups from exploded warehouses to boost your abilities. You also pick up ship fragments that do something I couldn’t quite figure out. Seems like you ship gets bigger. Anyway, game gets silly tough, and I tired of that pretty quickly.

Athena: The main character of this is what you see on the cover of the collection, the bikini clad female sword fighter. It’s a 2D side scrolling platform/brawler with some interesting elements. You drop into the world wearing a bikini and pick up armor along the way. You punch enemies until they drop weapons for you to use. You can dig through some parts of the environment and climb vines. I found the game very unfair though. You take a lot of damage from the slightest hit making it very frustrating on first play.

Baseball Stars: A really fun baseball game with intuitive controls but brutal against the computer. This would be great against a real player. You can create teams and play a season as well.

Beast Busters: This is a light gun shooter like Time Crisis or House of the Dead. I beat the game on many continues. I can’t see any player in the arcade putting up with the massive amounts of BS late in the game. There are more targets to shoot at than anyone can account for. It’s cool, colorful and gory though. An alien ship has made everyone, even the animals and fish into raving zombies that attack you on sight. I like the story of it, and if I was a movie producer, would option this for a film. I need to write out a screenplay for reals. I especially like the zombie animals. I don’t think anyone has made zombie animals in a zombie film.

Bermuda Triangle: This is another vertically scrolling scifi shooter. It has a neat mechanic where you pick up mini ships that become part of your defense. You can also rotate them around your ship to cover different angles. The screen also reverses direction so you fly backwards every so often.

Chopper I: A vertically scrolling helicopter shooter whose graphics and design remind me strongly of Taito’s Sky Shark, one of my favorites. Like that game, though, it is brutally hard.

Guerilla War: This seems like SNK’s answer to Taito’s Front Line. A vertically scrolling shooter that has something to do with revolutionary island warfare. I think it’s Castro shown on the banner art to each side of the screen. It’s pretty cool but also coin munchingly difficult. I like jumping in tanks and blasting and rolling over enemies.

Ikari Warriors: I guess their most popular answer to Front Line. I enjoyed this game up until a point and that point was cheap deaths.

Ikari Warriors II: This sequel is just plain weird. You begin with a rocket launcher and fight a floating head of rock and flame that makes me think of Sinistar. Then you are swarmed by green froglike creatures and flying vampire looking enemies. There is some kind of weird pickup that gives you armor and then you make a gigantic hole in the ground which you jump into and fight the head of rock again. I didn’t go much further. I think I’m beginning to learn that spamming the buttons like a 12 year old is maybe the best strategy.

Ikari III: The Rescue: My favorite of the trilogy, I got past the first act and will continue next time. This is mostly a brawler. You punch and kick enemies most of the time only picking up a gun to fight off a tank or armored car every so often. I really like brawlers and will persist despite the difficulty. I want to beat this one.

I’m just about done my month of ’85-’89 retro gaming. The NES era is about to give way to the SNES/Genesis battle era. I’m looking at Turbographix-16 and Game Boy games as well. Atari Lynx is of lesser interest, although, there is an exclusive Gauntlet game for it I wish I had.