PixlBit

The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang is a really strange game published by Naxat Soft for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was a somewhat difficult game to play and a somewhat difficult game to review. Not because it's a bad game, per se, but because there isn't much to say about it. Well..... it's an action-y game, but you gain levels (a few of them) and buy items (fewer of them) and get gold and stuff. It's cartoony and light-hearted. Let me get a little more specific.....but only a little.

The game is a Zelda-esque adventure platformer with extremely lite-RPG elements. There are safe areas where you will spend a minute or two speaking with friendly NPCs, and dungeons where you will fight monsters and walk down hallways. (The "exploration" and battles are seen from an overhead perspective reminiscent of A Link to the Past, which you should play for the tenth time instead of this) The battle system is simple and accessible- you have a spin attack that is the standard, and a projectile hat that freezes your character but hits the enemies multiple times. Sometimes there are environmental hazards to overcome, and Spike can (somewhat stiffly) jump from platform to platform when necessary. It's all so standard, so harmless, so lacking identity. Again, not bad. Everything works the way the designers want it to, but.....

                       
I worry the anime-ish pics might convince you that the
game has some depth, but sadly, it doesn't.

You explore mini-towns consisting of a house or two and a shop. You don't enter the houses or shops; you press the Y button and the resident meets you at the door. You can purchase a few replacement weapons and healing items, but your gold limit is 999. You will have achieved that amount soon after you fight the first boss. The dungeons and safe-zones are extremely linear and there is absolutely no back-tracking once you push the story along. On occasion, you’ll find a key or gold-spitting enemies one screen off the beaten path, but there is no real exploration to speak of.

The game can be challenging, but grinding a bit mitigates any frustration that you might find if you are underpowered. Bosses are conveniently labeled by their strength level, and if you simply build Spike to the level above, they fall pretty easily. Enemies can be cheap and often damage Spike for more than they should, and traps can spell a quick end to the impatient adventurer. Once you pick up a few party members (who you cannot control, and who possess execrable AI) you will collectively damage enemies sufficiently enough to make things much easier. Overall, the balance seemed a bit wacky to me..... I often felt like there was too much real estate between healers, and the pointless repetitive enemies just wore me down over time. I had to replay the first dungeon a few times until I forced myself to earn a level or two. Of course, I could've purchased more healing items in town to speed things along.....but I was always waiting for another shop with better items just ahead. Those shops never appeared.

There's a whole lotta this in the game.

The game has an offbeat sense of humor, and when the game was released, its personality probably set it apart from some of the other titles out there. None of the characters seem to be taking the vampire invasion (oh, the story is about a vampire invasion) seriously, from the captured Queen to the Princess whose kingdom is under siege. Random characters join up to help you, but you think nothing of leaving them stranded in the desert because they forgot to set their alarm clock. Most of the enemies and their attacks are exaggeratedly cartoonish, your vampirish protagonist quaffs tomato juice instead of blood, a Nessie-type creature uses its giraffe neck to help you gain altitude, you drive a bat car that is destroyed by falling boulders on the screen outside of town..... that kind of stuff. It's clearly meant for kids, but the translation is humorous enough to squeeze some amusement out of jaded twenty-somethings. But, as with the rest of the game, it's just not enough. None of it is. Spike McFang has some interesting components and a solid foundation, but not enough meat to make it worth the effort.

But meh. Have you cleared out your backlog and have about four hours to kill? Then you won't hate yourself for spending it on this game. But of course your backlog is not clear, and of course..... what..... it was only four hours long?! Yeah..... for an RPG-lite, this is super-lite. There isn't much complexity to the game, either in its mechanics, its exploration elements, or in its story. Graphics- serviceable, music- inoffensive, I can see some players enjoying the humor, but I pretty much just jammed the button and held out to see if it got better. Not a bad game exactly..... just the very definition of an average one.

OVERALL SCORE- (20/40) - The Definition of Average