It's time for me to post way too much text again!
1. Ys Book II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter
PSN Vita2. 3D Streets of Rage 2
3DS eShop3. 3D Gunstar Heroes
3DS eShop4. 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2
3DS eShop5. 3D OutRun
3DS eShop6. Mugen Senshi Valis II: The Fantasm Soldier
PCE CD7. Mugen Senshi Valis III: The Fantasm Soldier
PCE CD *NEW*
8. Bomberman
PCE CD *NEW*
9. Rocket Knight Adventures
Mega Drive *NEW*
10. Trax
Game Boy *NEW*
11. Panic Bomber
Virtual Boy *NEW*
Let's break up the wall of text with some screenshots this time!
Valis IIIValis III is the second of the Valis games released for the Turbografx CD, and also the second one I've beaten. Although it has similarities with it's predecessor, overall it plays quite differently. Instead of a focus on projectile weapons with collectable power ups, the game instead features 3 playable character with their own attributes who you can switch between at almost any time. Yuko has average speed and power, but the shortest weapon range when not fully charged (more on that later). Cham has the most power and a consistent weapon range, but the worst magic, and her weapon is harder to aim precisely in the air. Valna, who you get just before the half way point of the game, has the best weapon range and magic, but has the weakest attack power.
In addition, the controls and level design have both been greatly improved between games - Valis 3 controls very smoothly, compared to the awkward loose feeling of 2. That's good, because Valis 3 also requires some precision platforming and combat in it's level design - gone are the cheap feeling hits of Valis 2, and in it's place is a level design that is still challenging, but very fair. The only really issue I have with the stages in Valis 3 is the difficulty curve. Stage 5 (pictured above)is the very middle of the games 9 stages, but is far and away the hardest stage in the game - nothing before or after comes close. It would have been much better suited as the games last level. The worst section involves freezing enemies to use as platforms whilst crossing bottomless pits while archers shoot at you - the main concern being your magic running out before you finish, and you not being able to freeze enemies and continue.
Spaking of magic, he game has 3 elemental spells you can acquire and use as a subweapon using a magic meter, including the aforementioned ice spell. Each of the 3 elemental spells works differently for each character, but Valna's are generally the best and Cham's the worst. Yuko sometimes feels a bit redundant in the game - Valna and Cham are so much better on average that Yuko just won't be your character of choice very often. Some of her spells are useful against bosses however, so if you have the equipment she can be worth taking into a boss encounter, but Cham's power or Valna's range are generally preferable for most of the games stages.
The music of the game is enjoyable, with lots of cheesy early 90s CD game synth. It's got a good pace and beat though and works brilliantly for what it conveys. Cutscenes are improved from Valis 2 with more screen space utilised, but there is less of them. Not a big deal, especially for me as I couldn#t understand the Japanese scenes anyway. I watched the US scenes on YouTube afterwards and they're OK. The voice acting is bad, but for the era it's not terrible. The games visuals are clear and colourful, and look pretty nice. There are some large and impressive sprites, but the lack of scrolling backgrounds makes things feel flat sometimes.
Valis 3 is a drastic improvement on the good but slightly unremarkable Valis 2. It has a slight Castlevania feel to it, but with far more speed and much greater control over your character. The character switching is cool, and the stage design is generally excellent. Sometimes people claim the whole Valis series is over-rated, but based on what I've seen I have to disagree - Valis 2 was good. Valis 3 is awesome. One of my favourite titles of it's generation, and well worth anyones time.
BombermanBomberman for Turbografx is a pretty traditional and old-school Bomberman game. In the single player, you work your way through 8 worlds of 8 levels each killing all enemies and finding the exit to progress. The game is very minimalist - there aren't many powerups, theres only one power up per stage, and the game never mixes things up with new mechanics. In addition, a lot of the refinements from later episodes in the series are obviously not present, and the game frankly feels a bit tedious because of it.
Power ups are limited to the following: An extra bomb, extra firepower, remote controlled bombs, speed skates, walk-through bombs, walk-through soft blocks and extra lives. As mentioned, only one power-up exists in each level, and in the first few worlds you'll get one of each of these per world. Aside from extra bombs and firepower, most power-ups disappear if you die too, meaning that getting them back can take ages. You also start the game weaker than most Bomberman titles, with only 1 bomb which has an explosion range of 1, meaning the first few levels are an exercise in tedium trying to catch the enemies in your tiny bomb range. The lack of more interesting and useful power-ups from later games such as line bombs, kick-bombs and louies means the game feels a bit lacking in options and variety.
The game suffers in later stages from the usual Bomberman issues - fast moving flying enemies who can cross over blocks killing you before you have the chance to dodge due to being trapped in the corner by blocks. I lost 2 continues to these gits. The bosses are a mixed bag - they're pretty fun, but one boss in particular consists of a dozen enemies who can teleport, meaning you can get unlucky and have one teleport to you when you're trying to dodge bombs. Also, whilst fun, 3 of the bosses repeat themselves later, only with 2 of them on the field instead of 1. Other than the teleporting guys, this isn't really any harder due to the massive field size, so it just feels unnecessaruly padded.
Actually, that's true of the whole game honestly. 64 levels is too many levels to maintain this game. Bomberman 94 is great and has about half of that. Saturn Bomberman also has less and keeps it's playtime just about interesting enough. This is too much for too long. The game has a save feature in the incarnation I played (included on the Gate of Thunder disc) which keeps your current power-ups recorded, which is nice. No idea if the password system does this, as later games start you with no power-ups when you use a password, rendering them pretty useless.
Bomberman is a solid enough game. It can be rather tedious due to being longer than it needs to be, but honestly it's biggest issue is being utterly surpassed by the far superior games that followed such as Bomberman 94 and Saturn Bomberman. It's not an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon, but you can do better too.
Rocket Knight AdventuresRocket Knight Adventures is a game I've been wanting to play for a while, and I finally bought it recently. It arrived on yesterday, and that's also when I finished it. It was absolutely worth the wait.
Rocket Knight is an action platformer game starring an Opossum with a jet pack and a sword who must stop the evil pig army and rescue the princess blah blah blah. All that;s really important is that it's a fun, well designed platformer which likes to mix things up on you at a moments notice, in a similar way to one of my favourite developers - Treasure. In fact, all of Konami's Mega Drive output feels like it's trying to compete with the ex-Konami guys at Treasure, as they all show off all sorts of tech tricks the Mega Drive really wasn't known for.
The joy of Rocket Knight is how often something new is offered up. Sometimes you'll be doing some basic platforming and defeated basic grunts (heh..) with your sword, but then you'll be flying in a shoot-em-up section, or riding a mine cart, or being chased by a robot, or piloting your own robot, or using reflections in rising and falling lava to see platforms hidden by the foreground. It's creative and fun and means the game always feels like it's offering you something fresh. I don't think it has quite the originality of Treasure's output, but it has a damn sight more than your typical Mega Drive mascot platformer.
It's not all perfect. Sometimes the game feels a little unfair with its suprises, with enemies rushing you from offscreen without warning causing damage that you couldnt have avoided without knowing it would happen. Some of the mechanics are cool in concept, but unwieldy in practice too - mainly the giant mecha fight, which feels clumsy and awkward. The game is also a bit too short in my eyes - you have 5 regular stages, a shmup stage which is quite short, and then the final stage which is basically a couple of boss fights. It feels a little shorter than it needed to be to be honest.
That said, the game loves to bring a smile to your face, with crazy happenings, funny character animations and strangely enough, several tributes to the original Gradius - one boss is basically the infamous stage 1 boss of gradius, and the opening of the space shmup stage mimics gradius' opening segments too. The game looks great, with lots of detail and colour, and it has some decent music, although I didn't find it especially memorable.
Rocket Knight is a fantastic game, and a must-own for the Mega Drive in my eyes. It's short but sweet, and offers a lot of fun in a short space of time. Definitely worth picking up.
TraxTrax is a quirky shooter for the original Game Boy made by HAL Labs, or Kirby fame. It actually shares a few things in common with Kirby's Dream Land too. It's a perfect fit for a Game Boy screen, it's incredibly short and it's pretty damn easy as well.
In Trax you must steer your spherical tank around 4 stages, fighting of the enemy army's forces, most of whom are tanks just like yours. You can take a few hits, which can be replenished by finding oil canisters around the stage. Your tank can move in any of 8 directions, and can also shoot in 8 directions - but to do so you must use the A button to rotate your turret clockwise to the position you want to fire at, meaning awareness of where you need to aim and some skill at dodging whilst you prepare are essential.
Your tank can be enhanced with one of 4 different shot types, some of which make aiming easier, and some which offer more power. The 3 way shot shoots forward and both diagonals around it, for a wider spread, but is slower to shoot than normal. The double shot shoots straight ahead and behind, meaning it's much quicker to aim a gun where it needs to be. The missile pierces through weak enemies and hits harder than normal, and the bomb fire a slow but powerful and wide blast across the screen, in a similar fashion to the bomb item in Kirby's Dream Land.
Each stage has a mid-boss and a final boss, but these are generally pretty easy. They are quirky and fun though, with enemies such as a massive tank, a jack in the box clown and a gaint mech which tries to fall on you. You'll have to fight all of them twice, as the game features a boss run atthe end. It's still very easy though.
The music of is fun and jaunty, if forgettable and the graphics are clean and bright, if lacking in detail. Trax' main weakness is that it's all over too quickly, and despite being quirky, fun and well crafted, it's lacking that something special and memorable that Kirby had, meaning it's been mostly forgotten over the years, relegated to a cameo appearance in Kirby Superstar as the 'Shotzo' tank enemy.
Still, I had fun with Trax. Its not a big time sink, and it's pretty cheap to purchase too. It's worth taking a shot!
Panic BomberPanic Bomber is a 'match 3' puzzle game based on the Bomberman franchise. It's available for a few different platforms, but the version I played was the Virtual Boy version. Frankly, it's also probably the best known version mainly due to the small size of the Virtual Boy library.
Panic Bomber is a puzzler of the head-to-head variety, popularised by Puyo Puyo, and has a very interesting risk and reward system of play. Blocks come down in sets of 3 in an L shape, and lining 3 identical blocks vertically, horizontally or diagonally will make them disappear. Doign so will make bombs appear at the bottom of your screen, pushing your pile closer to the death line. Bigger combos will add more bombs to your own screen, meaning that a successful combo can leave you pretty close to defeat. However, sometimes a lit bomb will drop from the top of the screen, and if you use that to set off a reaction of other bombs, it will create garbage blocks on your opponents screen. This means that to hamper your opponent the most, you need to pile up your own screen first.
When your opponents puts lots of garbage of your screen, it can be cleared the same way - Bombs explode vertically and horizontally, just like Bomberman, and will destroy any garbage blocks the explosion hits. On occasion, giant bombs can also fall - these will destory a ton of blocks on your screen whereever they hit - bombs, garbage and puzzle blocks alike. They're a good get our of jail card, but you should be careful not to destroy a big bomb pile and screw yourself out of a big chain explosion.
Panic Bomber is fun, but not perfect. The L shaped blocks can make it tricky to get blocks where you want, so you'll often have piles of useless junk hanging about whilst you clear a few sets you've lined up. The AI difficulty veers to the easy side too - I beat the game on Normal with little difficulty on my first try, and that's the second hardest of the 4 difficulties, which range from Very Easy to Hard. Despite these flaws though, the game is compelling and fun to play.
The music in Panic Bomber is solid for a Virtual Boy game, but the Virtual Boy's lacking sound capabilities let it down somewhat - why the Virtual Boy has such bad sound is beyond me, they could have easily done better. Visually, I think this is one of the best looking games on the system. The 3D effect is very well done, even on the fairly flat puzzle screens - the character you're fighting is beautifully animated with multiple layers. Cutscenes in the game have some beautiful, albeit very red sprite work and the game has a very clean and neat look about it. It's not going to blow anyones mind, but it has a very distinct and very well built aesthetic that it pulls off well.
Panic Bomber isn't an essential for the Virtual Boy by any means - not too many games are. However, the Virtual Boy's library, whilst small, is pretty good overall, and this is up there with the better games for the system. Worth a purchase!