What I'm Playing (Volume 63): Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is the seventh game in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. It doesn't bear that moniker, but it has very similar controls and gameplay to the earlier games, and is developed by the same team, so I'll stick to it. The THPS games are some of my all time favorite of the early 3D era, as I played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 extensively during middle and high school (THPS 2 is also excellent, but I never owned it, so I don't have the same attachment to it). The earlier games in the series were filled with a delightful amount of charm, huge areas in which to skate, infectious punk/rock/rap soundtracks, and most importantly, an insanely fun control scheme. The maps from those three games are indelibly etched in my brain, and upon starting up a replay of any of them, I know exactly the areas to which to go to rack up the highest score, how to find the secret tapes and decks, etc. So I was feeling another run through a Tony Hawk game, and decided to play one of the ones in my collection that I hadn't touched yet. As a note, I have never played Tony Hawk's Underground or Tony Hawk's Underground 2, so many of the changes that I note may have been introduced in those games, and I never knew.

This game is primarily notable for having one interconnected area in which to skate, rather than the older approach of having various levels which you could select from. The story mode, which comprises the vast majority of the game, features you getting on a bus to Los Angeles and trying to make it as a member of the skating community. You meet various people who give you challenges to establish that you can, indeed, skate, you earn their respect, and get involved in trying to prevent a sinister plot (seriously). While cheesy, the story works for the most part, and leans into the chaotic "us against them" skating culture that the other games in the series embrace as well. The story will lead you from area to area as you go, uncovering more of the plot as well as new areas in which to skate.

In theory, the "one big area" idea is pretty cool! In practice, however, it is very lame. Rather than having one true big area, you just have levels connected by bland hallways that just cover for the fact that instead of watching a loading screen, you can skate in a straight line for a minute to get to a new level. Call me a grumpy cynic, but I'd rather load for 8 seconds than skate straight for 60. Additionally, if they had taken a THPS 4 approach and had all challenges in a level available from the start, with you having the option to move back and forth between challenges at will, this would have been a FANTASTIC inclusion! In practice, however, you have two or three challenges available in each area, and completing these will unlock one or more. By trying to make it open, but also have a coherent story, they actually made this game feel the most linear and constrictive of all of the games in a series which has always thrived on freedom and creativity.

The levels themselves lack a lot of the charm of the levels from the first four games. Maybe this is pure nostalgia speaking, but I'll always remember levels like the Foundry from THPS, the Airport from THPS 3, or several excellent levels from THPS 4. I don't think any of these will be imprinted on my brain for a while, and a bunch seem positively barren and boring, like the Casino level.

The skating itself is excellent, again. The controls are tight and they don't destroy any of what works. Some of the new moves, like the Natas Spin, are really cool and add a ton to the game. Others, like the sticker slap, are dull and I found little to no use for them aside from clearing the challenges in which you have to perform them. Other additions to the game were even worse, including the option to get off of your skateboard and run (lame) and ride a BMX game (positively awful). THPS games have always been the best when they focused on level design and challenge, and less on gimmicks. Some of the new options in later games, like manualing and reverting, added hugely to the game. But now it feels like they're adding features for the sake of adding features, which is a good way to wind up with a messy game.

The challenges in the story mode were pretty lame. A lot of them felt like tutorials simply reminding you how to perform the nearly endless number of possible mechanics, and were typically over in about 10 seconds if you knew what you were doing. The game shines in situations where you have challenging and creative situations to enjoy, but these are mostly replaced by "do x over/on y" challenges, lining you up behind y, and ripping them off quickly.

The game's sense of humor was also a little less playful and a lot more malevolent this time around. Apparently this trend began in Tony Hawk's Underground, but it was a bit shocking to me. The game replaces ollie-ing the Magic Bum and hitting people with snowballs with intentionally causing huge car wrecks and destroying the top few floors of buildings. A note to the developers, this is not pranking, this is terrorism and attempted murder.

Maybe I'm just being a Stiffly Stifferson

The music is good again, with a bunch of standout tracks that I really enjoyed. Showing their continued good taste, they included a track from Mastodon's Leviathan, also known as the greatest metal album of all time.

The shining light of the game which saves it from an overwhelmingly negative review is the inclusion of a classic mode, which lets you reskate a selection of levels from old games with the old 2 minute time limit. There were levels from THPS, THPS 2, and others that I didn't recognize, but this was a really nice inclusion to be able to skate old levels with all the most recent additions to the game.

All in all, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is a mixed bag. I found myself enjoying it, but basically purely for the tried and true mechanics that make any Tony Hawk's game fun. But it just missed out on some of the charm and polish of the older entries, and ultimately the highlight of the game was just replaying some of the classic levels again. This is a good one for true fans of the series, but go jump in with the nearly perfect THPS 3 or 4 if you've never played one before. I'll give it a 7.0/10.

Next up is another clearout of an old denizen of the dreaded backlog. I should have this one cleared in fairly short order, so check back in soon!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 62): Punch-Out!!

Just when I think I've finally beaten the oldest game in my backlog, I find a new one, although I think this truly is my oldest game in the backlog. Punch-Out!! was one of my original NES games, although I had the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! version that most people had. For the uninitiated, Punch-Out!! was an existing Nintendo arcade franchise that was technically extremely impressive in the arcades. Porting it to the NES meant some serious downgrades in terms of graphics, but the essentials are very similar, or so I'm told by the internet. The game was released in two versions, one with Mike Tyson as the end boss, and one replacing him with a sprite swap named Mr. Dream (following the expiration of the three year license obtained from Tyson). Other than the sprite swap, the games are identical. I've never played the arcade version, and up until I got my SNES classic, I had never played another game in the series.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! destroyed me as a child. I could beat Glass Joe and Von Kaiser routinely, and also was able to win the first fights with Piston Honda and Don Flamenco on occasion, but was never able to get past stinking King Hippo. I did, however, have the codes somehow, so was able to try out most of the fights, getting savagely crushed by nearly every other fighter in the game. I was drawn to the game's simple controls, big gorgeous sprites, and sense of humor, but didn't really have the reflexes or the resources to clear this game or even come close. Now, however, as a grown man with fully developed reflexes and access to google, I finally dropped Mr. Dream over the weekend, and didn't cheat at all to do so. My copy of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! couldn't be saved, however, resulting in needing to get a copy of the much cheaper and nearly identical Punch-Out!! instead.

The game is a series of boxing matches in which you have access to a very limited set of punches and movements. You can jab with your left and right hand, throw body shots with your left and right hand, throw an uppercut, dodge left, dodge right, and block. Success in the game is based on your ability to dodge opponents' attacks and deliver your own in return, which depends on your ability to identify your opponent's patterns and react to them with sufficient reflexes. Such a pattern based game becomes largely about your ability to grind the game for a while until beating the opponents becomes nearly second nature. By the end of my run I was capable of polishing off every fighter in the game while barely being hit up until Mike...Dream... But up until the end, I would get capped off against various fighters, spending probably the longest times trying to get over Soda Popinski and Mr. Sandman. But once the patterns are learned, the game is reassuringly simple.

You box against opponents possessed of various degrees of offensive racial stereotypes including the drunk Russian, lithe and romantic Spaniard, and mystical turban wearing Indian. I don't believe any of these were intended in bad faith by Nintendo, as each is an impressive fighter in his own right, save for Glass Joe, but if this is the kind of thing that bothers you, stay away. You must work your way up the boxing circuits (Minor, Major, and then World) in order to secure the dream match against Tyson or Mr. Dream, depending on your version. By the way, for my money, just get the vanilla Mr. Dream cart. It sells for nearly $20 cheaper than the Tyson version, and is almost exactly the same. Also, stay away from this game on emulators like the NES Classic Edition or Virtual Console. The slight input lag from emulation makes this game extremely tough for anyone, so I'd go for the NES/cart option if at all possible, and certainly if you want to have a prayer of beating Tyson/Mr. Dream. Everyone else should be beatable, although Mr. Sandman and Super Macho Man might be pretty tough on an emulator.

So how does this game stand up today? It was absolutely fantastic! The beautiful art style, perfect controls, and excellent conveyance of plot with only the tiniest bits of text make this a true hallmark of the potential of 8-bit gaming in the 1980s. It is certainly in the top 10 of NES games, and one of the most original concepts/executions that I have seen in a video game up until the modern day.

The graphics are perfect. I would want absolutely nothing changed about the way the game looks. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the game's graphics is the way in which they used the limitations of the NES to advance a narrative in the game. In the arcade version, your boxer is a wire-frame person of similar size to your opponent. This allows you to see through yourself to your opponent, which allows you to react to his moves. It is a technical marvel for the time (released in 1983! Seriously, go look at this gorgeous baby!), but the wire frame boxer would have been impossible to replicate on the NES hardware. They had to find a way to make the experience similar, but placing the camera behind the boxer would have resulted in an obscured version of the opponent, which detracts from the core gameplay mechanic.

Instead of the wire frames, thus, they replaced the titular Little Mac with an actual little version of the character. Your character is perhaps 1/4 of the size of even the smallest opponent, and is positively dwarfed by the bigger boxers. Little Mac must literally leap to punch his opponents in the face with even a simple jab, which makes his path from unknown challenger to world heavyweight champion that much more compelling. At no point in the game after your fight with Glass Joe do you feel like, based on the look of your opponent, that you should be favored in any match. You have to win the game with your brains and your guts, because your body simply will not do. You need to hit dozens of punches on your opponent to score enough knockdowns to win, while some can knock you down in one or two hits. After each circuit title, you're treated to a montage of Little Mac running behind your trainer's bike, reinforcing the notion that Little Mac must work to get everything. Nothing comes easy to this little guy, and you can really identify with him, all because of a clever adaptation by a skilled development team.

The sounds are great as well. There is only one real song to the game, and it works pretty well in the background. It's definitely in the background, however, as some of the signals you can work with come from the sound effects (apparently some people can beat this game blindfolded, which makes my week and a half trek through the game feel a bit embarrassing). You can score stars by hitting your opponent at the right time of his moves, and can use these stars to unleash devastating uppercuts on your opponent. These stars pop up with a nice visual and sound effect, rewarding your skillful play.

The controls and gameplay are absolutely perfect, and this ultimately is the key that makes the game. If Little Mac didn't react on time, or did things you weren't telling him to, you'd have no prayer of beating this game. But ultimately only you can defeat yourself, and the controller just becomes an extension of Little Mac, a tool to bob, weave, and sting your way to victory. The game is as simple as could be, but so deep once you dive in that it provides the perfect curve of mastery.

The game is continued at various points by password, and you basically have to continue from the beginning of the last circuit. This is one weakness of the game, in that unless you use cheat passwords, you won't be able to grind an opponent repetitively, needing to reclear the same old fodder on your way up to your nemesis over and over again. Even with Tyson/Dream you'll still need to beat Super Macho Man before making your way to champ, which is extremely irritating. This comes across as and unnecessarily difficult part of an already difficult game, and create a lot of busy work to get to the payoff that you are looking for. By the way, you have my full permission to use the codes to practice any given opponent, as long as you go back and beat them the hard way once you've mastered it.

The game is one of the rare ones that has aged better as time has gone on. At the time I was playing it, there was very little way to know how to beat some of the trickier boxers in the game, save for a Nintendo Fun Club magazine subscription, or perhaps a Nintendo Power subscription. How, for example, am I to know that if I block while Soda Popinski is preparing to uppercut that he will stare stupidly at me and let me hit him in the face for a star? The entire game has reinforced the notion that only hooks and jabs are blockable, and that you can't guard against uppercuts. There are several annoying little tricks thrown in this game that make beating it really challenging unless you know them. And the most notorious trick in the game, the camera flash/guy nodding during both Bald Bull fights, was only recently discovered! This was a game made to be mastered in community in the internet era, so it really feels better now than it did then, with at least a small refuge there for you when you hit the wall.

This is not part of my review, but I just have to say that Tyson/Mr. Dream is definitely not the hardest boss of all time, unless you have average/poor reflexes. He would be pretty much unbeatable in that circumstance, but the developers give just enough time to react to his moves if you're paying attention, making him regularly beatable. I beat him the first time after probably a total of 45 minutes to an hour of grinding him, which is far less than I spent mastering the pattern of Yellow Devil in Mega Man, or even Dracula in Castlevania (this one was probably harder due to the fact that I was playing on an emulator with input delays). This boss is definitely beatable, so if you're holding out on the game due to thinking that it's simply too hard to beat, dive in! Part of the fun is getting routinely whipped, getting later and later into fights, and scoring more and more knockdowns until finally have your opponent's number. The grind is the game, and it sparkles.

This game is a true gem of the 8-bit era, and is a must play for anyone who enjoys good video games or the chance to experience a fun and largely unexplored wing of video game history. I feel like the concept of precision timing based combat could have been used in other games, but it pretty much died here, which is a testament to its brilliance of vision and execution. It definitely isn't perfect, but it's a true joy to play 31 years later, and should be a part of your collection and out of your backlog if you collect/play NES games. I'll give it a 9.6/10. Happy training!

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