What I'm Playing (Volume 61): Mega Man and Bass

What am I doing with my life? More Mega Man? I simply can't help myself.

Now I can finally say I've beaten all of the main series Mega Man games, and am finally free to branch out to some other series in the Mega Man universe. Hooray!

I played Mega Man & Bass in its only American release, on the Game Boy Advance. Originally developed for the Super Nintendo, bizarrely after the release of the underrated Mega Man 8 on the Playstation, the game is another conventional ride through the Mega Man formula, with a few small tweaks. In this game you can play as Bass, first introduced in Mega Man 7, in addition to the lovable Blue Bomber. The game also introduces a unique branching level path, in which you can complete levels split into three trees, rather than being able to pick from all of the levels from the beginning.

Graphically, Mega Man & Bass is a technical marvel, and I don't say that lightly. What the Super Nintendo was capable of is still astounding to me. Basically, the graphical look of the game is based off of the animations from Mega Man 8, which is amazing. Unlike Mega Man X3, which was developed primarily for the Super Nintendo with a few changes made for the Playstation version, this is built on the achitecture of a 32 bit game, and adapted extremely well to fit the hardware. The sprites are big and far better than anything seen in Mega Man 7, and the levels are well done, although the backgrounds are definitely not to the level of Mega Man 8.

The graphics become even more remarkable when you consider that this is a 16 bit handheld port of an essentially 32 bit game, and it really works! There are a few understandable hitches here and there, and these are definitely annoying. The biggest problems with the graphical style definitely interferes with the gameplay at points due to the fact that the displayable amount of screen is much lower on the GBA than it would be on the SNES. There are parts of the game in which you'll unwittingly jump up into spikes that can't be seen, or drop down onto them, and one boss in particular is made far more challenging due to the fact that you can't even see the top of him, making reacting to his attacks much more difficult. But the gains here are bigger than the costs, and if you play it you'll see why.

The controls were actually significantly tighter in this game than in Mega Man 8, which is pretty remarkable. Mega Man generally does what you want him to, and you won't die due to controls very often.

The gameplay and level design here are good, but not great. It feels like the game was primarily designed for Bass to finish levels, rather than Mega Man, and playing through the game as the Blue Bomber can be a chore. I liked the increased difficulty, though, and found that this forced me to use my secondary weapons a bit more than I otherwise would in a Mega Man game. The game keeps up with some of the innovations of Mega Man 8, but rather than leaning into the idea of making the secondary weapons more broadly useful as done in the 8th game, and perfected in the 9th, there are just a few useful ones in this game, such as a pillar of ice that can be pushed and then ridden on across spikes or to clear big gaps. Some of the boss fights, however, were among the most creative in the series, including one in which you must push the enemy into spikes to win, and another in which you have to destroy anchoring pieces that heal the boss before killing him.

The soundtrack had some high points, but was mostly average. Definitely not a high note for the Mega Man franchise, but neither is it Mega Man X 3.

Mega Man & Bass was a solid entry into the franchise, but not quite up to the handheld wonder of its superior cousins in the early days of the Mega Man Zero series. It's a good game, and definitely worth checking out for its technical accomplishments alone. I'll give it an 8.0/10.

Next up on handheld will be me scratching an itch I've had for a few weeks now, and should be a longer playthrough, so check back in a few weeks or so!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 60): Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario is a delightful puzzle game to which I was reintroduced thanks Ultimate NES Remix. I rented it once as a kid, but never owned it, so I had completely forgotten about it. Luckily, I had grabbed a cart in a lot off craigslist this year, so I had a copy sitting at the house that I started to play once I had finished up with the genre bending remix.

Dr. Mario is, as I mentioned earlier, a puzzle game that is probably most similar to games in the Puyo Puyo (probably best known in the U.S. for its Genesis version titled Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine) franchise, although Dr. Mario came first. My puzzle game history isn't great, but I know that Tetris is obviously before Dr. Mario, but Dr. Mario definitely takes a different approach from Tetris in that rather than setting up lines of blocks of different shapes, Dr. Mario has you dropping different colored pieces on different colored viruses, and the viruses only disappear once you have four of the same color in a row. Dr. Mario is definitely a bit more basic than Puyo Puyo, in that you can't do some of the crazy things like snapping pieces in half or clearing colors by having shapes other than straight lines, and setting up multiple clears of pieces in one turn results in fairly pedestrian drops on your opponent, and nothing for clearing them in single player mode.

The gameplay is pretty simple to both learn and master, and the primary challenge comes from increasing levels, which increases the number of viruses on the screen. By the end of the game (there's no technical end, as far as I could tell, but the game only lets you manually increase the difficulty to 20, with increased difficulties coming by consecutively beating levels from 20 and up) pretty much the entire screen, save for 3 or 4 rows at the top, will be completely filled with viruses. You can also change speeds from low to medium to high, increasing the challenge of managing your new pieces while also whittling away at the viruses.

The single player mode is fun at first, but definitely grows dull after a while. The challenge of the game only grows marginally, and then basically becomes impossible after level 20 without a very favorable setup of pieces at the end (I beat level 21, but the board was just too packed after that, so I'm counting this one as beaten, especially since level 20 is the highest level you can select). The single player also lacks part of the challenge of the game, which is attempting to chain together multiple clears on one play to dump new and unwanted pieces on your opponent. This is the big gap between Dr. Mario and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, in which you are always playing against an increasingly difficult AI who is constantly trying to dump pieces on you, which means you have to play very skillfully and swiftly to prevent the onslaught. The other improvement which the Genesis game has over Dr. Mario is that the speed gradually increases at a very fast rate in the Genesis game, which means that you really have to win quickly, increasing the challenge of the game.

But the two player mode of Dr. Mario is where the game really shines. My wife and I spent several happy evenings together playing the game against each other for hours, and it never really got dull. Facing off against each other is made fun by the ability to customize difficulties for each player, making it so that you can still have fun against people of different skills, and the gameplay itself is ratcheted up significantly due to the absolutely crushing disappointment of hearing the chime that your opponent has just made a multiple clear, and the sight of new pieces dropping on exactly the wrong spot of your board! My wife isn't a big gamer, but she now attests that Dr. Mario is now her favorite retro game, and even spent some time playing around with the challenges on Ultimate NES Remix, which we similarly love. I'll definitely be on the lookout for other games in the series to be able to play together, and that's what makes Dr. Mario such an exemplary experience, the competition you get to enjoy with other people. Nintendo has always been really good at this, and Dr. Mario is just another great example.

The music has two tracks, one of which is iconic and fantastic, and the other which is super weird. No matter how many times it looks, though, I still love to hear "Fever" playing in the game, and it adds nicely to the game.

The controls are excellent, and you'll only be beating yourself (or your opponent will), not be beaten by bad controls.

The graphics are very simple but appealing. The board is colorful, and the aim of the game is made really clear by the animations.

Dr. Mario is a must own for NES owners who enjoy playing games with friends. This one is a tremendous multiplayer experience, and grabbing a copy in a random lot resulted in a really fun week for myself and my wife, and I guarantee that we'll circle back around to play a few rounds here and there regularly. I'll give it a 9.4/10.

Up next for the home console addition is a game that I routinely got trashed in as a kid, and I'm happy to report that I'm closer to beating it than I ever thought possible! Now I just need to get past a few of the toughest battles in video game history!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 59): Ultimate NES Remix

Ultimate NES Remix is a 3DS game which is essentially a compilation of two Wii U games, NES Remix and NES Remix 2. The first two games in the series featured small challenges from a wide variety of classic NES games, with some unusual twists and turns on the mechanics of those games. While I haven't played either of the previous two, I believe that all of the challenges on this game come from the previous two, although Ultimate NES Remix certainly represents a "greatest hits" approach to the game, both in terms of the games selected, and the challenges included. The game, however, lacks any third party NES games, which will obviously limit its appeal to those who fondly remember Castlevania, Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden, or dozens of other very high quality games on the system.

For example, the original NES Remix seemed to focus primarily on black box games released in the early days of the NES, including classics like Super Mario Bros. and Balloon Fight, but also stinkers like Pinball and Baseball. It also omitted notable late release games for the system like Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda, which takes away a lot of the nostalgia for the system, particularly as the NES really didn't start to sell very well until those quality later titles appeared. The number of people who have positive memories about Golf are dwarfed by those who enjoyed Metroid, but the focus on the truly retro games in the first one was at least admirable! The second added in the vast majority of those classic first party games, but also included a few weird titles like Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, which was never released on the NES.

The game selection is not ideal due to its lack of third party games, but I think they did as much as they could with it. Paying Capcom, Konami, and Tecmo for some third party games would likely have cut into the margins heavily, but also probably would have sold more copies. I think a partnership with Capcom probably would have worked best, as you could have included a few of the highlights from the legendary run on the NES including Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, Duck Tales, and 1942. But if the only option to maintain profitability was to limit it to first party games, I don't think they excluded any that should have been there, and only included a few average to above average filler titles like Kid Icarus, Mario Bros, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Below is a list of all of the games included in the game:

• Balloon Fight
• Donkey Kong
• Donkey Kong Jr.
• Dr. Mario
• Excitebike
• Kid Icarus
• Kirby's Adventure
• Mario Bros.
• Metroid
• Punch-Out!!
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
• Super Mario Bros. 2
• Super Mario Bros. 3
• The Legend of Zelda
• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

The challenges themselves were fun, for the most part, and definitely were a walk down memory lane for me, having owned several of these games during my time with my beloved NES, and having played and enjoyed others at several other points in my life. The challenges start in a sensible way, asking you to perform basic actions within the game such as jumping over barrels in Donkey Kong, or getting a mushroom in Super Mario Bros. As you advance, however, the challenges get more and more difficult, and frequently focus on navigating more challenging or iconic parts of the game.

The challenges are generally divided into two sections, with more remixed challenges, such as defeating Bowser in Super Mario Bros. 3 with Princess Peach from Super Mario Bros 2, in one section, and little sections taken directly from the games themselves in another section. As you complete more challenges, you earn more stars based on how quickly you finished the challenges, and as you earn more stars, more games and challenges open up to you. This gives you a nice positive feedback loop for completing challenges and trying to improve your times to get more stars. There are also online leaderboards which keep track of your progress relative to both your friends and players in your region, which is a nice feature.

In addition to this, a few extras are included in the game. The first is the Nintendo World Championships Remix, which is very fun. This is a take on the classic NWC approach, only instead of playing Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, and Tetris, you're playing through Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, and Dr. Mario, which is frankly much more fun the original. Like the original challenge, most of your points are scored in your success on the final challenge, which means you need to finish the first two as quickly as possible and then crush some viruses! I enjoyed playing this a lot, and ended up getting in the top 100 on my regional leaderboards, although I was absurdly behind the top guys. The other new challenge is a game they call Speed Super Mario Bros., which is a sped up version of Super Mario Bros. It sucks, and I really wish that they had just included the regular version of Super Mario Bros. with the game instead.

The game largely delivers what you might expect, namely, a shot of nostalgia and good old fashioned fun playing around with great games in bite sized chunks. I do wish that they had included a few third party titles, but understand why they didn't. I also feel like there were probably too many basic challenges and not enough truly difficult ones. The final challenge in each game should have been to finish off the end boss of the game, but in games like Punch-Out!! you never even get to move past Bald Bull, let alone face off with Iron Mike...errr...Mr. Dream. Yeah... The game truly sparkles in the times in which the games are mashed together, such as when you are facing off with the tree boss from Kirby's Adventure, but Boos from Super Mario Bros. 3 are chasing you, necessitating you to turn around to stop their advance, or when you have to climb to the top of the first level of Donkey Kong as Link, who can't jump! I wish they had included more of these crossover challenges, and fewer straight challenges from the games, as I had far more fun with the unique ones. The regular challenges tend to drag on a bit, and you'll find yourself doing ones that aren't terribly fun just to get more stars and unlock more games and challenges.

I also appreciated the tutorial/reminder aspect of some of the challenges, as they inspired me to revisit some old games I haven't played for a while with some new strategies in my arsenal. After finishing up Ultimate NES Remix, I immediately started playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! on my NES, and used the knowledge of timings that I learned from the compilation to advance farther towards beating Iron Mike than I ever had before. Unfortunately my cart was glitching, so I'll have to wait for a replacement to move past the Major Circuit, but I had an absolute blast stepping into Little Mac's shoes again, and only have this game to thank. I also remembered just how fun Dr. Mario is, and spent about 3 hours facing off against my wife in the game last night, and she's now officially hooked, much like Dr. Mario's patients are on his prolific prescription medications.

One thing that I didn't like about the game was the controls. Rather than do the sensible thing and swap the controls so that you use the B button as A, and the Y button as B, they made it so that you could either use the buttons as they're labeled, or used X as an alternate B button. I ended up, as would all rational people, using the A/X combo, but it would have been nice to have both options, or at least allow you to reassign buttons. The dogbone controller sucks due to the button layout, and recreating it was a bad idea.

I also have to say that having never played Balloon Fight before, I'm now a big fan!

Anyway, there's plenty of value here, even with a few little flaws. If you like NES games, you'll definitely enjoy this one. And just like my wife, you may find that the simple pleasures of the NES strike you better than you might think, even if you are a cold-hearted modern gamer demanding technical complexity in your video games. Relax and live a little! I'll give the game a 8.9/10.

I still haven't the slightest clue what I'll be playing next on handheld, so stay tuned!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 58): Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D

I have been in a big platforming mood after getting burnt out on RPGs, so I decided to move onto another handheld platformer which I'd never played before after running through Super Mario 3D Land. I'd played a tiny bit of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on the Wii U, so I had a bit of a sense of what was going to be in the game, but I knew very little about the level design, controls, etc.

The game is a port of the Wii game Donkey Kong Country Returns, which was original developed by Retro Studios. The port was developed by Monster Games, but is largely identical to the original, save that it does not include motion controls, and has additional levels added. Also, it's handheld, which rules.

The game is a return to the basic control and gameplay style featured in the original Donkey Kong Country series, with a few extra tricks including the ability to climb on mossy walls and ceilings, and blowing things (seriously). The plot is pretty different, featuring a brand new series of villains, a set of hypnotic instruments who mind control the innocent creatures of your world to steal all of your bananas. Ok, maybe not that different. But King K. Rool and the Kremlins never appear here, so it definitely is a bit of a break in tone from previous games in the series.

The controls are generally very good, and are even better than for the SNES games. Slippery controls were always a bit of an issue for the classics, and they've tightened up substantially here. My only complaint about the controls is how Diddy is controlled. Rather than a tag up system like in the original trilogy, Diddy rides on your back in this game, and his use is essentially limited to holding A to hover. However, part of the design of many levels is that you need to hit A precisely at the time you hit an enemy to bounce higher to clear gaps or reach secrets. With this control scheme, it makes it so that if you just hit the button a fraction of a second too soon, you'll hover rather than land on the enemy's head. I wish that they had made the hover button something separate, like the bumpers, or L, which would have made the precision just go up a hair and result in far fewer deaths in which you are cheated by the controls rather than your lack of skill.

The graphics are fine. They're not the remarkable spectacle of the SNES games, but they capture that spirit again, and look good. The backgrounds are nice, the enemies are charmingly designed, and there's little to complain about.

The sound for this game is magnificent. The music is excellent, clearly drawing inspiration (and many songs) from the original trilogy, and it all works very well. The sound effects are absolutely fantastic, with every action being accompanied by a very satisfying sound that fits the action.

The game truly shines in its level design, and really leans into the heritage of the SNES games. Levels are crushingly difficult, and embrace a more iterative style of gameplay in which you need to play through the levels many times and remember all of the obstacles in order to complete them. While I generally prefer a more intuitive style of learning about games, this one recaptures the tone of the originals, and the levels are fun despite the repetition. The most fun levels in this game are the toughest ones, although there were a few that just had unfair portions that were not fun. For the most part, though, I really enjoyed the process of grinding through each level and the associated joy that accompanied the completion of a really tough one.

The game's boss fights are really good, and are probably the best in the series. The SNES games rarely had consistently good boss fights, but each boss in this game has its own theme to it, and learning the boss patterns is great fun.

I really did not like how they implemented Diddy Kong. Part of the great charm of Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Country 3 was the highly differentiated playstyles of the two characters. Need to kill a big tough guy? Better call Donkey! Need to jump far or move quicker? Get Dixie! This game treats Diddy Kong like a temporary ability for Donkey, and it suffers for that. Getting Diddy is basically an extra health bar for you, and that's a really boring way to implement one of the aspects of the original trilogy that was one of the most original things about it.

I also thought the new levels for the 3DS version were very boring. I was looking forward to getting to play through a hyper tough world at the end, especially given the challenge of unlocking it (you need to find the KONG letters in every other level, which is really tough in a handful of levels). But I actually just received 8 cupcake levels, and one extremely tough one. This was a disappointment for me, but seeing as they were just bonus levels, I can't knock off too much from it.

I also thought that the new villains lacked the quirky charm of K. Rool and co., and kept hoping for a Mega Man situation in which it turns out the K. Rool was the villain all along, but was left disappointed. Facing off with K. Rool at the end is as much a part of the Donkey Kong experience as is fighting Dr. Wiley, so losing it here doesn't feel great, especially since the new villains lacked an interesting hook.

The single most annoying thing about the game was the lack of control customization. You have the option to use either the control pad or the d-pad, but the schemes completely change the controls around depending on which scheme you want. This is silly, and they should have either created more control schemes or made it so that you can assign buttons. The d-pad scheme basically made it so that the rest of the buttons were unusable, so the game can basically not use what I can only describe as The Greatest D-Pad of All Time. No, I am not joking, the 3DS d-pad is that good!

All in all, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D was an excellent game and scratched the platforming itch I had been feeling for a while. It has its flaws, but if you enjoyed the SNES games, there's a lot here to like, and a lot that actually improves on the formula of the originals. I'll give it a 8.8/10. I'll definitely get to Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, developed by the same team, at some point soon, so keep an eye out!

Next up on my handheld queue is a game that translates to an extremely tough teaser! Good luck!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 57): Mega Man X 4

Yup. Back where I started. Again.

 

Due to my illogical love of the series, I felt like playing a Mega Man game again, but rather than replaying one of my old favorites, I decided to press onward with the series. So the choice was between Mega Man & Bass and Mega Man X4. I decided to go with the latter, as I really had no sense of what to expect of it, while the former seemed pretty set in stone for me.

 

Being the absolute maniac that I am, however, I decided to beat Mega Man X, Mega Man X2, and Mega Man X3 first, for the simple reason that beating all three of them on my copy of Mega Man X Collection would result in me unlocking Mega Man Battle & Chase, a Mario Kart clone in the Mega Man universe! Great, right?!?!?!

 

Well, I ended up really enjoying Mega Man X, as always, and slogging through Mega Man X2 and Mega Man X3 to get back here, so I was already a bit burnt out on Mega Man by the time I reached my goal. But now I can race go-karts using Mega Man, so it all paid off.

 

Mega Man X4 is the sequel to Mega Man X3, and features very similar controls to its predecessors, albeit with a few of the innovations from its Playstation peer Mega Man 8. Like the other X games, you can dash and climb up walls, but like Mega Man 8, you get more of a 32 bit look to the game, and there are additional buttons coded so that you can quickly switch between special weapons and your X-Buster.

 

Unlock previous X-games, however, you can play the complete game as both X and Zero, which is a nice feature. I admittedly didn't play at all as Zero, but its nice to know its there, and other people seem to enjoy playing as him. Compared to the pathetic appearance of Zero in Mega Man X3, this is a really nice feature.

 

The game looks excellent graphically, but definitely has a strong Mega Man 8 vibe to it. The controls are similarly kind of clunky, and the hitboxes don't feel quite right for his size. The bosses and enemies generally have cool looks and designs, and feel the freshest since the original Mega Man X. The game also features some anime cutscenes into it, and they are certainly better than the absolutely dreadful ones from Mega Man 8.

 

The levels are generally fine, but the bosses are far too easy. Most have a long period of stun after getting hit with their weapon weakness, and can be hit again before they can even hit an attack. Even the first two rounds of the end boss were so easy that I literally didn't get hit once after a few practice rounds. The final boss was at least challenging, though.

 

The music was definitely not memorable, although it wasn't nearly as dreadful as the flotsam and jetsam that populated Mega Man X3. 

 

The story was actually extremely interesting, though! The plot, rather than focusing from the get-go on Sigma or some wicked team attempting to bring back Sigma, centers on a side group of Maverick Hunters in a kind of morally grey environment that really leads you to question which side of the battle you really should be on. There are several pretty good twists along the way that makes this probably my favorite Mega Man story ever! If only the gameplay could have matched the story...

 

All in all, this game wasn't bad. There were definitely things about it that struggled to impress, but it was a pretty nice first fully 32 bit entry into the series for Capcom, and they played around with several ideas here that, if refined, could have been done really well in a subsequent game. I'll give this game a 7.2/10.

 

Next up in console entries, I'm still working on Mass Effect 3 while I can, and I'm thoroughly enjoying a nice luxurious replay of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I'm also working, when my kids are not awake, on a playthrough of a throwback for me that I began in high school and never finished. Here's a tease below:

 

 

-TRO