Games Beaten 2020

[REPO Man]

Sega really should've ported it to the Saturn.

I'm not familiar with Openbor, thanks for the tip. Gonna look into it and Golden Axe Myth. I played Streets of Rage Remake (which I thought was awesome), if that's similar?

Well hopefully we'll get a home console release.

Also, there is a WEALTH of Openbor mods out there, including a Power Rangers one and a He-man one. It has ports on damn near everything, including Android.

As for Streets of Rage Remake, that's actually quite similar but it's a different project. I wish it had an Android port.

[BoneSnapDeez]

1. ACA NeoGeo: Cyber-Lip (Switch eShop)
2. Pengo (Atari 2600)
3. Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)
4. Knights of Xentar (PC)
5. Hoshi o Sagashite... (Mark III)

Hoshi o Sagashite... is a space-themed Japanese adventure game released exclusively for the Mark III (Japanese Sega Master System) in 1988. The game received an English fan-translation in 2009; for some reason the translators completely renamed the game, titling it The Story of Mio (as opposed to simply translating the game title to Searching for the Stars...). As such, The Story of Mio exists as an SMS reproduction cart, and this new title is typically used when discussing the game in English (not that many discussions about this game actually take place!).

The game progresses at a leisurely pace. It's about a guy named Roy who's searching for the perfect birthday gift for his cutie pie girlfriend, Lila. He settles on the most obvious thing: a random pink egg some dealer at the local marketplace is selling. Upon bestowing it to Lila, she mentions that it appears to be a "Mio" egg. Through some detective work, Roy finds out that Mios are a type of rare endangered alien. Sure enough, the egg cracks and the mysterious being emerges. Turns out the Mio is a sort of intelligent life, rather than a mere pet, so Roy spends the remainder of the game trying to uncover exactly what type of creature he's dealing with, and how to return it to its native habitat. It should be noted that Hoshi o Sagashite... appears to be (very casually) linked to the Phantasy Star series, or at least it occurs in the same universe. Palma and Motavia are mentioned as being nearby planets (though it's impossible to travel to them) and some key Phantasy Star staff (including Miki Morimoto and Rieko Kodama) contributed to this game as well.

Gameplay is very similar to Enix's groundbreaking Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken. It's first-person and menu driven, though certain choices will trigger a cursor to appear onscreen, which can then be used to select objects for further examination. Choices include the likes of move, look, talk, take, hit, eat, item, and quit game. All are rather self-explanatory, with the exception of the "quit" option, which actually brings up a password, should someone need more than one sitting to complete this. Using the cursor is pretty seamless here, especially in comparison to similar adventure titles, as all on-screen selectable objects are rather large and obvious.

This is an amusing little tale, and Roy's a pretty fun protagonist. I love how casual he is about everything. He cruises from one planet to the next with zero hesitation, gets drunk, steals multiple objects with the justification that he's "borrowing" them, breaks into a zoo by impersonating a janitor, burgles a laboratory, and much more. Just a typical day for a space pirate. The supporting cast is pretty funny too. The "actual" janitor at the zoo, for instance, doesn't care that Roy's an interloper; instead he just rolls with the charade. The game progresses in the standard trial and error fashion. Eventually a solution will appear, even if it takes exhausting all possible options to get there. One small annoyance is the fact that certain events can't be triggered until a specific command is utilized multiple times. For instance, there's a glass case towards the end of the game that must be broken: this requires four consecutive uses of the "hit" command. And of course there are those NPCs who don't give useful information until they're spoken to over and over. With that said, there doesn't seem to be any real way to "lose" the game. However, there are "good" and "bad" endings.

The graphics are great. Bold and colorful and very Sega. There're plenty of fantastic 1980s anime character designs, and the "science fantasy" backdrop is of course very appreciated. Something strange happens when speaking to characters: their mouths aren't animated within the "main" window, but a separate dialogue window pops up at the screen's bottom, containing animated head shots. Roy too appears in this manner when conversing, and he sports a great variety of facial expressions and eyebrow movements. I must say, I don't find the baby Mio very endearing. It's this weird cross between a teddy bear, a lion, and an angel. Creepy. The soundtrack is chill and pleasant and fits the game nicely.

Overall, Hoshi o Sagashite... feels like a more relaxing Portopia. A worthwhile way to spend an afternoon, and an intriguing look into the surprisingly tiny library of Master System games that never left Japan.

[pook99]

Have you heard of Revenge of Death Adder? It never got a port, but it's getting an Arcade 1UP cabinet.

Also if you like Openbor, check out Golden Axe Myth.

Yeah, I actually had a chance to play the Revenge of Death Adder arcade at a Barcade location in Manhattan about 2 years ago. Thought it was great, but I didn't get to play for long, only the first two or three levels. I'd like to go back with a friend and try to finish it. I kinda wish it had the original characters, but was still a fun game. Sega really should've ported it to the Saturn.

I'm not familiar with Openbor, thanks for the tip. Gonna look into it and Golden Axe Myth. I played Streets of Rage Remake (which I thought was awesome), if that's similar?

Openbor is absolutely awesome, there are some beat em ups on there that are exceptional and could easily go toe to toe with the greats of the genre, there is also a fair bit of duds so just be mindful of that. Some of my favorites:

1. Art of Fighting-beats of rage remix: Probably my overall favorite openbor game, it is a beat em up with a very robust move set that follows the storyline of the original art of fighting. You can unlock characters as you beat the game (including terry bogard) and the game has multiple endings, I am a huge fan of art of fighting but I think even if you don't love the source material the game stands on its own as an incredibly solid beat em up.

2. World Heroes Supreme Justice extra: see above but replace art of fighting with world heroes 2

3. double dragon zero: a beat em up that uses the sprites from the neo geo beat em up, very solid, very fun twist on double dragon

Those are 3 great ones to start but I have played literally dozens of openbor games so if you want more just ask

[Note]

REPO Man and pook -- thanks for the suggestions on the Openbor games. Watched some videos of gameplay for some of these games. The graphics on that He Man game look great.

I'm gonna look into trying some of these. Hopefully can check them out on a Mac, as that's all I have access to.

[pook99]

11. Felix the cat (game boy)
12. Asuras wrath(xbox 360)
13. Run Rectangle! Jump! Shoot! (xbox 360)
14. Dragonfire (atari 2600)
15. Spider-man 3 (gba)
16. The Ninja (master system)
17. Dusty: raging fist (switch)
18. Alawishus Pixel (xbox 360)
19. Trouserheart (switch)
20. Pac-man and ghostly adventures 2 (xbox 360)
21. Eat Lead: return of Matt hazard (xbox 360)
22. House of the dead 2 (wii)

I don't have time to write up any reviews for these so I just figured I would post the last batch of games I beat. The highlight of this batch for me was Asuras wrath and the low point was probably the ninja for master system (big surprise, I just really really hate master system and wont play it again until next year when I go for my obligatory one game per system rule). Asuras wrath was just a really different game that is heavy on cutscenes and qte but was very endearing anyway. I really enjoyed the story and found asura to be the most endearing angry protagonist I have ever played as.

I'm loving getting back into gen 7 stuff and I absolutely adored house of the dead 2, it is easily one of my top dreamcast games and it feels great with the wiimote, the voice acting is so god awful it just makes me smile every time someone cries out, "How could anyone do this"

[Ack]

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)(Adventure)
2. Final Fight [Japanese Version] (Switch)(Beat 'Em Up)
3. Ziggurat (PC)(FPS)
4. Magrunner: Dark Pulse (PC)(FPS)
5. The King of Dragons [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
6. Captain Commando [Japanese](Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)

Playing them together again in relatively close proximity, it's amazing to me how I hadn't noticed just how similar Captain Commando is to Final Fight. Not simply on a gameplay basis, though at its core, CC's changes feel more like an expansion instead of an evolution on FF. Sitting down and playing through it made me take notice of lots of little touches that hearken back, though between the two, I'd much rather play Captain Commando any day of the week.

What do I mean by this? Well, first off, you have the same limited controls and approach to the combat. All four characters in Captain Commando have a general hand-to-hand combo, special move, and jumping attack, though thankfully a dash move helps expand the arsenal. Of course, now you can cut people in half, melt them, incinerate them, and so on, but it's little more than a cosmetic change to beating up an opponent. Considering the comic book feel of the design, they really needed to add something to go beyond the B-grade '80s action film that is Final Fight, so the run move adds enough panache to not feel cookie cutter, and it is a nice little quality of life improvement.

The findable weapons also got upgrades, hence we now get missile launchers that shoot weird arcing explosives, firearms with limited ammo, mechs that feel slow to use, and if you're playing as one character, giant shuriken. There is also a surfboard level, which helps break up the continuous "walk right and fight" feeling, and occasionally there is a "walk slightly down" segment, though it's still mostly "walk right." The stages are shorter in CC than FF, but that means more big bosses that feel similar to FF bosses, and in one case is basically just a reskin and later repeated with duplicated reskins of a Final Fight boss. You even get a similar map showing your progress through the game in Captain Commando that you did in Final Fight, and a couple of the regular enemies are reminiscent of the enemies you see in FF, like the lean guys with knives, or the running fat guys, or the more acrobatic ladies...see, this is why I keep going back to the Final Fight comparison.

If you're wondering what are the major differences between the Japanese and American arcade release, it appears to be limited to names only. The heroes have different names, as does the final boss. That's pretty much it; much bigger differences occur in the arcade-to-console conversion, as is generally the case. The enemies sitting around and having a cigarette are still to be found in the US arcade release, and the tougher throw-happy characters still puke poison. That's it.

Oh, and I'm playing as the baby, because I like seeing a baby piloting a mech that is piloting a mech. That's right, double mech.

[marurun]

That's right, double mech.

Double Mech, Double Mech gum!

[pook99]

@Ack: interesting perspective on Captain Commando, its weird because I don't like that game at all but Final Fight is one of my all time favorites, I will probably chalk that up to nostalgia since I grew up on Final Fight and didnt discover captain commando until I was in my 20's

[BoneSnapDeez]

Nice review BoneSnapDeez, been meaning to check that one out for a while.

Thanks! I'm gonna keep rolling with this genre.

1. ACA NeoGeo: Cyber-Lip (Switch eShop)
2. Pengo (Atari 2600)
3. Kirby's Epic Yarn (Wii)
4. Knights of Xentar (PC)
5. Hoshi o Sagashite... (Mark III)
6. Dead Zone (Famicom Disk System)

Dead Zone is a Japanese adventure game, released by SunSoft in 1986 for the Famicom Disk System. I believe this is only the second game of this genre to hit consoles, with Portopia arriving on the Famicom a year prior. Dead Zone was fan-translated in 2019, and is now playable in English. There's also something noteworthy about the original Japanese script: it's written entirely in katakana.

Most of the game's backstory is detailed in the manual. The protagonist is a young man named Kirk, who lives in a space colony. He's engaged to a young woman named Mary, who also lives in outer space. One day, Kirk (along with his robot friend "Carry") decide to visit Mary's ship but she's nowhere to be found. Suddenly, Kirk is knocked unconscious. The game begins as Kirk awakes. He's trapped inside of a large trash compactor (reminiscent of some movie about space...), with a damaged Carry and the remnants of other busted robots. Kirk must find his way out, and explore the ship in search of his love.

Dead Zone is first-person and entirely text/menu driven, without any use of an item-grabbing cursor. There are many actions available, to assist with navigating through the ship and manipulating objects. Too many to list, and too many to fit inside one window as well, as a press of the B button is used to scroll through additional available actions. Most are fairly self-explanatory, and there's an additional save to disk option for those who want to tackle this tale in multiple sittings. Navigation feels a bit disorienting. This is partly due to the design of the spaceship, but also because the player has to decipher whether to "look" or "move" -- both lead to a change of scenery but in drastically different ways. "Look" is essentially a "zoom-in" function while "move" causes Kirk and Carry to proceed walking in a given direction. Reaching the end of the ship requires one decode all sorts of puzzles. Some seem logical enough, like flooding a hallway to electrocute a robotic sentry. Other are much more obtuse. At one point the player must direct Kirk to smash a capsule in a specific spot. The capsule apparently contains a seed, which instantaneously grows into a tree, which can then be climbed to an exit.

The game's audiovisual presentation leaves something to be desired. The main issue is the total lack of NPCs. Carry is a (mostly) unseen playable character, as he tags along with Kirk the entire journey, which leaves only Mary (seen at the end of the game) and the occasional hostile robotic devices. This is a barren game, a labyrinth of metallic corridors, cables, and ducts. The artwork is nice enough, and there's something of a creepy atmosphere, but an occasional break from the monotony would have been appreciated. There's also virtually no music, save for a couple of brief looping pieces that play in specific spots, so the player is simply left with the clang-clang typewriter sounds of advancing text.

Strangely, there's a random minigame inserted right into the middle of Dead Zone, for no coherent reason whatsoever. It even sports a "title screen" similar to those of the old SunSoft (or Sun Electronics) arcade games. The minigame has the player controlling Carry, who moves horizontally and must catch a complete series of rice balls tossed by an old man. It's shoddily programmed, and every rice ball must be obtained before the game allows the player to advance. I really feel like I'm missing something here.

Overall, Dead Zone has quite a bit in common with Square's Suishou no Dragon (which arrived a scant three weeks later, also on the FDS). Both are spartan trawls through space. Fascinating historical relics of the olden days of gaming, but perhaps little more.

[Note]

1. Streets of Rage 2 (Sega Genesis Mini)
2. The Ninja Warriors (Super Nintendo) [3x]
3. TMNT IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo)
4. Golden Axe (Sega Genesis Mini)



5. Beyond Oasis (Sega Genesis Mini)

I originally played this game through emulation in the summer of 2007, and was really impressed by it. I remember getting a few hours into it that summer, but unfortunately I got distracted by other things and never got back around to finishing the game. Now that I had access to play it again on the Genesis Mini, I wanted to sit down and play through the game.

I really like the graphics in this game, I think it's one of the best looking games on the Genesis. I also enjoy the combat a lot, since it leans more towards a beat 'em up style, with a variety of button commands for different attacks, as opposed to just one attack in a lot of action RPGs. The other unique feature that sets it aside from other action RPGs is the use of elemental magic, and the integration of elemental magic in some of the puzzles. The difficulty of the main game is on the easier side, and I think most people familiar with this genre will find it a breeze to get through. The puzzles in the dungeons are usually simple as well, and even a few of the boss battles are easier than expected.

The more difficult sections are in the side quests. For example, the 100 level dungeon, the secret waterfall, and the secret cliffs with platforms. I found the platforming to be a pain, it took me a while to get it down. Also, I could not complete the secret cliffs side quest. I was able to get through the first few portions of it, but I was totally outmatched by the platforming obstacles in this section. I was getting too frustrated with the platforming here, and pivoted back to the main story. My total playtime for the game was just about eight hours. But to be fair, I attempted to beat some of the side quests multiple times, which I think is probably an additional five hours of game time.

I thought the soundtrack and sound effects were good as well. I found the soundtrack to be atmospheric, and thought it went well with the setting. For something that Yuzo Koshiro produced, I don't think it lives up to the other works he is known for, however, the music is still enjoyable IMO.

Overall, I think this was a great effort by Sega and Ancient. I'd also like to try the sequel Legend of Oasis on the Saturn down the line. I highly recommend this one!