racketboy.com

King Drool has once again stolen half the moon because why not? And Bonk doesn't take too kindly to this considering his pink dinosaur girlfriend lives there. One more time Bonk sets out to kill any dinosaur between him and crushing King Drool's face. That's about as deep as the story gets, so on to the specifics then.

Bonk 3 has barely evolved past what the first two games offered. The biggest difference here is that Bonk can grow or shrink in size thanks to special candies. This new feature is rarely used to any meaningful effect however, and comes across more of a graphical gimmick than much else. Outside that, the level designs have at least improved in complexity, with more climbing, mazes, and platforming than ever before (along with a strange fascination with tube traversal). Bosses still take too many hits to kill, but outside that aspect the overall gameplay is much more forgiving in Bonk's third game compared to his earlier efforts.

Graphically Bonk 3 continues its series' strength in large expressive sprite work, although quite a few enemies are recycled from earlier games. One big step down unfortunately is the OST isn't nearly as good as the first two games. Maybe Hudson was trying to encourage players to buy the CD version of this game instead in that regard (I played the HuCard version). Overall Bonk 3 simply isn't enough of an upgrade over earlier games in this series to competently show the developers are learning from their prior mistakes. If you want to laugh at a cave-baby-man eating narcotic candy and headbutting a transvestite nautilus this is your game. If you're looking for actual solid platforming the likes of Mario or Sonic, keep looking.

Super Hang-On was one of the first video games I have ever played, in it's Mega Drive iteration. I never really liked Super Hang-On as a kid. I found it to be too tough to enjoy.

Years and years later, I gave Super Hang-On another serious go. I beat the beginner course, I tried the Original and Arcade modes, and I still didn't like it.

Now, I've played this port of the Arcade original. It's not amazing by any means, but I actually found myself enjoying it. The arcade controls feel very responsive compared to the Mega Drive game, and I enjoyed playing this in short bursts.

New features added to this version include a tilting cabinet effect that moves the screen around as you turn your bike, optional motion controls for steering, an audio balancer and an unlockable world tour mode when you beat the game - all 48 stages of the original 4 courses in a row. You can also adjust the difficulty (the number of bikes on the course) and the amount of time gained when you past a checkpoint.

Super Hang-On still isn't astounding by any means, but this port has given me a new appreciation for the game I didn't have before.

As people around this forum may know already, I'm not a fan of Space Harrier. I've always thought it was both monotonous and cheap, and that outside of it's visuals it;s really not aged very well at all. But with my new-found appreciation of Super Hang-On, I was willing to give this one one more go.

The 3D port of Super Hang-On may be the best way to play the game outside of the arcade. The 3D helps the game have a sense of depth that could be awkward to percieve in the original version. The difficulty can be adjusted, you can start from any level you've already reached, adjust the points needed for extenstions, and can turn on both arcade style screen tilting (which is awesome) and even the arcade machine noises - IE the noises of the mechanics as it moved the seat around (which is really awesome).

So I started playing Space Harrier, and what do you know - this isn't as bad as I remember. The tilting cabinet effects make the game feel more exciting and I can start to see why it would've been so cool back in the day.

But then I carry on playing, and I keep getting hit by things I can't see. And I find myself feeling frustrated, and then just...bored. I keep chugging anyway. I even beat the secret optional boss exclusive to this port of the arcade game - Haya-Oh, which requires beating the last level without taking a hit. I still don't find myself actually having fun.

Sorry guys, but although I perhaps appreciate why other people like this game a bit more, I still think it's a bit crap. I probably won't try this one again.

So this is another Sega Super-Scaler shooter, but this one must be a later release - it blows Space Harrier away graphically, and the files size is huge in comparison to the other 3D classics.

You fly your ship into the screen shooting bullets and homing missiles at enemies until you reach enemy bases which you must fly though until you can destroy the core - it feels very Return of the Jedi, and the winding passages are awesome - doing full 180 U-turns in a 2D super scaler game is very impressive.

The gameplay is very basic - like Space Harrier it gets very repetitive. It feels much fairer though, if not a bit too easy - I didn't use a credit once, even though it was my first time playing on Normal. It's also much shorter - only 6 levels instead of Space Harrier's 20 or so, which feels like a more appropriate length to me too.

I'd never played Galaxy Force before. It's not an especially notable game. It's fun in it's own way, but like many of these old arcade games, it's a bit monotonous. The 3D is impressive and fits the game well, and adding tilting cabinet and the likes probably makes this the best version of the game outside of the arcade. I liked it a lot more than Space Harrier, and I'd be more likely to come back to this one, but it's not especially memorable to me. These arcade 3D Classics are much more impressive than the Mega Drive ones, but perhaps less enjoyable simply because the Mega Drive game choices are superior. Except Altered Beast. That one still sucks.