Game Review: James Bond 007: The Duel

James Bond 007: The Duel

• Publisher: Domark / Tengen (NA) 
• Developer: Domark 
• Release: Sega Genesis/Game Gear, 1993 
• Genre: 2D Action 
• Players: 1 
• Save: None 

Previously on the SDP, I reviewed 007 Legends, which apparently performed so badly in retail that it killed off Activision's license to kill -- I mean, make James Bond video games. So my dreams of the second coming of GoldenEye were killed off -- until I brought up the Google Play store one day, and chanced upon the latest 007-licensed "game" called James Bond: World of Espionage (not worth linking), and my dreams of the second coming of GoldenEye were killed off once again. Glu Mobile, whomever they are, have turned this once-mighty brand into naught but a Clash of Clans clone. Let me guess, does it trade off actual gameplay in favour of micro-transactions? Well, pardon my French, but [verb] that [noun]! ...Oh sorry, I did that wrong.

But as bad as times may seem now, you know what time really sucked for James Bond fans? The early 1990s. The film series was in the midst of a record six-year hiatus, due to a legal battle which I touched upon in my Licence to Kill review. As for what we did get during that time period, well, it wasn't pretty. There was that awful cartoon show James Bond Jr., and the subject of today's article: the video game James Bond 007: The Duel for Sega Genesis. Released in 1993, The Duel is not tied into any one James Bond film or novel, despite the likeness of Timothy Dalton on the box art. Oh, but he does also show up in the title screen below, except...

Dear goodness, Timmy, what have they done to you!? ...Anyway, title screen abominations aside, Mr. Bond's in-game sprite lacks sufficient detail to specifically resemble Timothy Dalton or any of the other actors. For all you know... hold on, let me think of somebody random... got it! For all you know, you could be playing as Andrew Lloyd Webber in this game. But on the subject of graphics, I do appreciate the animations in this game. For example, you can make a little dance out of the animation of Bond passing his gun from one hand to the other (by tapping left or right on the D-pad). The music's kind of cool, too, in a Jan Hammer Miami Vice kind of way. The title screens and pre-game demo use a Genesis-friendly rendition of the James Bond theme, but thankfully it isn't recycled by the rest of the soundtrack, as is the case with GoldenEye, for example. The sound effects do not reach the same high notes, pardon the pun. The most annoying examples are the loud and hollow footfalls and Bond's grunting, which reminds me of the Frankenstein monster grunt Master P makes in his song "I Miss My Homies".

So graphics are one thing, but what is the gameplay like? Well, The Duel is a side-scrolling shooter/platformer. Mechanically, The Duel reminds me most of Rolling Thunder, an arcade side-scrolling shooter made by Namco in 1986. You walk, jump, shoot, and duck to avoid enemy shots. They even share a mechanic where you can hide in doorways, in the (vain) hope of letting an enemy forget about you and pass by. But while Rolling Thunder's control was far too stiff, The Duel goes a bit too far in the opposite direction. It's a little hard to describe, but there are lots of little things that feel off about the controls. Bond has only one jump height, and the horizontal distance is often either too short or too long for the precision platforming you need at the moment. As for walking speed, he's slow for about half a second when you press and hold a direction, but fairly zippy afterwards. And here I thought the Genesis's "blast processing" was just a meaningless marketing boast, but what do I know? Seriously, folks, if you're used to better physics engines like in Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog, you're going to have a bad time.

Gameplay revolves around rescuing hostages.

Your objective in The Duel is to explore each map searching for hostages to free, who all take the form of blonde ladies in little blue dresses. And feminism marches on... without them. Once you've found them all, you're not done yet. You have to find a time bomb, set it, and reach the exit before time runs out. Along the way, you are hounded by guards who will respawn if you take so much as a few steps away after killing them. With the high speed of the gameplay, it can get annoying to be walking along and keep taking damage from enemies you don't have the time to react to. In order to stay alive, you'll most likely take to firing blindly every few steps, which renders the flow of play as smooth as a rollercoaster on the fritz. While you do have limited ammunition, the game is very generous with it, at least. Enemies will always drop spare magazines until you're maxed out, and although there's no indicator of how many rounds you have left in your gun, each mag can last you quite a while.

As it turns out, there are only four levels to this game, not including the final boss arena: a ship, a jungle, a volcano, and a rocket launch site. In other words, the settings of a generic "spy" adventure. If I were feeling generous I would say they are rather sprawling levels for a 16-bit platformer, but either way it's still bloody short by any reasonable standards. And just as you're getting the hang of things on your journey across the island of Dr. No-One In Particular, the third level presents you with a wall of difficulty. For starters, getting around much of the place revolves around waiting for elevator platforms, side-to-side moving platforms, and side-to-side moving platforms that you hang from, which all take so long to get from one end to the other that you may very well assume you've reached a dead end at some point. Some of these platforms add irregularly-timed flame jets which are virtually impossible to avoid, and you have to go through at least one of these gauntlets in order to find all the hostages! And of course, this being a volcano-themed level, most of those scrolling platforms hover over magma pools, which of course results in instant death upon contact by 00 agents. But the third level aside, this game is still unforgiving. You get five lives and five hit points per life, but only one continue. And even those life points can leave you quickly due to the aforementioned steady stream of soldiers. Enemy shots can knock you quite far back, and there's falling damage to deal with, too; even a couple of stories down results in, you guessed it, an instant death. Also, mercy invincibility apparently was one luxury which slipped the programmer's mind. The lack thereof ruined Milon's Secret Castle before, and it ruins The Duel in turn.

Most bosses have a spot you can stand in where they won't hit you.

Every so often you'll come across a level boss plucked from one of James Bond's earlier adventures, like Jaws, Baron Samedi, Mayday, etc. because "Canon? What canon?". There are two problems with these bosses, however. One: they are optional, as it turns out. For example, you can easily skip Baron Samedi in the second level by going through the base instead of over it. And two: with one exception, each and every one of these bosses can be bested without breaking a sweat, by standing in a certain spot where they won't bother to reach you. For example, in the first level you fight Jaws, but if you stand on the left-side stairway in just the right spot, he'll just turn around as if you weren't there. Even the final boss (it's Jaws again) can be conquered in such a manner.

I should mention that there is a Game Gear port of The Duel out there as well, so I will. I don't feel it's worth devoting another full review to, however, so I'll describe it in brief. It's longer than the Genesis version, both in the sense that it has more levels (that's good), but also that the action runs incredibly slowly (that's bad). And for some reason, you can choose to have either music or sound effects play in-game but not both. What? I've played a bundle of Game Gear titles in my days and never once before has being able to play both music and sound effects been an issue! So yeah, don't bother with this version unless you consider yourself a man or woman of patience.

As for the Genesis version, you might need just as much patience to make it through this one. It's got that old-school difficulty schema where they instead of making more levels, they just made it harder to get through them. Still, it's the kind of difficulty where you can still conquer it once you've had practice, and you know where to find the hostages, and where to encounter enemies as they respawn ad nauseum. But still, four levels is still anemic for a 16-bit video game. And I did praise the animations and music a few paragraphs ago, but they do just about nothing to build up the context of being James Bond. As it stands, it's just another licenced hack-job of the side-scroller age, and one best left ignored.

Positives:
+ Fluid character animation.
+ Cool music.

Negatives:
- Generally unforgiving difficulty.
- Awkward motion physics.
- No story to speak of.
- Overly short length.

Control: 1 hostages out of 5

Design: 2 hostages out of 5

Graphics: 3 hostages out of 5

Audio: 4 hostages out of 5

Value: 1 hostage out of 5
The Call: 35% (F)

You might like instead: Rolling Thunder 2, Contra: Hard Corps, Vectorman

Game Review: Winter Olympic Games

Winter Olympic Games: Lillehammer '94

• Publisher: US Gold 
• Developer: Tiertex 
• Release: Super NES/Sega Genesis/Sega Game Gear, 1994 
• Genre: Sports 
• Players: 1-4 Alternating 
• Save: N/A 
• Rarity/Cost: 
• Super NES/Genesis: Common, US$5-10 
• Game Gear: Moderate, US $5-10 

The XVII Winter Olympic Games, held at Lillehammer, Norway in 1994, were a time of change for the festival's history. It was the first time that the Winter Olympics were staggered by 2 years to take place in between the Summer games, and the first time that the former Soviet republics competed as independent nations [1]. To date, Lillehammer was the northernmost site ever to hold a Winter Olympics, and these were the last Winter Olympics to date that were held in a "small town" of less than 50,000 people. Oh yeah, and Lillehammer will also host the 2016 Youth Winter Olympics, so look out for that. So what's the point of all that trivia? Because it also gave us the officially-licenced, multi-platform, aptly-titled video game Winter Olympic Games. Now, I've covered the Game Gear version of this multi-platform release before, in a Sticking Points special, and I've managed to take some of the other versions for a spin since. For the sake of officiality, this review will cover the versions for the Game Gear, Genesis, and Super NES. This review does not cover the version for the Sega Master System, but that wasn't sold outside of Europe, nor the Game Boy, whose events are substantially different to require a separate review.

Some of you readers, especially American readers, may remember the '94 Winter Olympics for the rivalry between American figure-skaters Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, where the former had the latter knee-capped only for the gold medal to go to Ukraine's Oksana Baiul. The video game doesn't give you a chance to re-create this little event, however; it boasts 10 events across 6 sports, none of them figure-skating. There are 4 skiing events (Downhill, Super-G, Giant Slalom, and Slalom), 2 sledding events (Luge and Bobsleigh), plus Freestyle Skiing, Ski Jump, Biathalon, and Short Track Speed Skating. They are presented in three different modes: Full Olympics, where all 10 events are played in a set order; Mini Olympics, where you select which event(s) you wish to play; and Training, where you can practice an event as often as you need.

The way the skiing events are designed, it's too hard to react to the gates in time,
and the penalty is too steep if you miss one. (Genesis version shown.) [2]

It's unfortunate that there are so many skiing events, because they're a major headache. The trouble is the isometric perspective in which these events are displayed, which give you precious little time to react to upcoming gates. Holding a button to tuck for speed only gives you less reaction time, but unfortunately you have to do this to finish fast enough for a medal. The only guideline you have to go by are the contours of the snow, but these lines show up faintly against the snow itself, and don't indicate if a gate is centred or aligned to one side. If you miss even one gate, you'll be disqualified from the event, and yet you still get to keep going. Pray tell, game, if you're going to invalidate my results in medias res, what incentive do I have to waste time finishing the course? I might as well just crash into one of the many tree banks and end my run then and there. Oddly, I had an easier time of it on the Game Gear than on either of the console ports. Maybe it's just me, but your skiier and the flags are smaller in proportion to the screen size on the Game Gear unit, so you have more room to look ahead, but still, that's not much room for error.

The Moguls event is equally punishing in that it requires the most precise timing to land your jumps safely, but at least the round ends immediately if you do crash. It wouldn't be so bad, except there's very little indication of what will constitute a successful jump until it's too late. That's the same problem I had with the Ski Jump; of the many actions you must take in order to perform a high-scoring jump, there's little to no indication of what commands you have to input and when you have to do them. But not all the events are downers. My personal favourite might be the Biathalon, possibly because you're actually given a timing meter for you to gauge your strokes against. Plus you get to shoot targets! Okay, so they throw off your aim by simulating muscle fatigue, but at least the penalty for missing a target is relatively light -- just an extra 10 seconds added to your time. Now why couldn't they have just done something like that for the skiing!? The Luge and Bobsleigh events are also considerably more playable, since there's no opportunity to crash, but the track is so narrow and the turning controls so slippery that scraping along the walls and haemmoraghing speed is an inevitability at some point. And finally, there's Short-Track Speed Skating, which boils down to a functional but tiring button-mashing contest.

As with that other Olympic-like game I reviewed a long time ago, Winter Olympic Games is unforgiving in its difficulty. But it's not hard in all the same ways; there are no qualifying barriers you have to pass before you can continue. On the contrary: even if you do get disqualified from an event, the game just moves you on to the next event. Well, what if I want to try it again? Granted, that's how it works in the real-life Olympics; if you don't win, you just move on with the program and your life. But maybe I'm feeling a little ashamed of my performance and would like to save face. Why won't you give me that little quantum of solace, game?

For some reason, the Game Gear version (shown) is easier. [2]

I'll admit, once you get the hang of playing the events, there is more than just a quantum of fun to be had. Up to four players can take turns competing in the Full or Mini Olympics modes -- yes, even on the Game Gear; no additional controllers or consoles needed. But if you insist, the console versions also let you play some of the events head-to-head, but unfortunately it's limited to the dull stuff like Moguls and Speed Skating. You get to name your athletes as well as choose their nations, each with their own uniform colour scheme -- again, only in Full and Mini Olympics. The soundtrack is pretty rockin' too -- although the Game Gear's music is more tuneful than on the other games. And it supports eight languages for the in-game text -- I reckon that was unheard of for the time. But I'm pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point in my efforts to justify this game's existence. If you desperately want to play Winter Olympic Games, be sure to A) stick to the Game Gear version, and B) ask yourself if you're a big enough Olympics nut for this game to be of any value to you.

Control: 2 medals out of 5
Design: 3 medals out of 5
Graphics: 3 medals out of 5
Audio: 3 medals out of 5 (SNES/Gen) / 5 medals out of 5 (GG)
The Call: 55% (D+) (SNES/Gen) / 60% (C-) (GG)

---

[1] The Soviet Union dissolved before the Winter (Albertville) and Summer Olympics (Barcelona) of 1992, but as the Soviet republics had already been training together, they competed as the Unified Team.

[2] "Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94 (1994) screenshots". MobyGames. http://www.mobygames.com/game/winter-olympics-lillehammer-94/screenshots.

Game Review: Rocket Knight Adventures

Rocket Knight Adventures

• Publisher: Konami
• Developer: Konami
• Release: Sega Genesis, 1993
• Genre: 2D Action
• Players: 1
• Rarity/Cost: Moderate, US$10-15

It's been a long time since I based a review around an entry from TVTropes, so let's give it another shot.  Today, I will be discussing the "Mascot With Attitude" trope, a character type which came into being with Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991.  Many examples of this do their best to ignore what made the first Sonic games good, in favour of following at least three of these "marketable" traits: 

1. Is a Funny Animal, usually with a Species Surname. (i.e., Sonic the Hedgehog, Spyro the Dragon)
2. Comes from a Platform Game.
3. Is Totally Radical. This can be as mild as using totally bogus outdated slang, or as egregious as giving the character a love of "extreme" sports, fast food, or anything else with supposed "youth appeal."
4. Is quippy, snarky, and prone to making lots of really bad jokes. Bonus points if one of them is a Take That against Sonic the Hedgehog.
5. Is competent and violent, but not to child-unfriendly levels. He's also not allowed to swear, but will do his best to anyway.
6. A supporting cast which reinforces his status as coolest character in the universe. Look out for an older uncool antagonist, a sidekick with a case of hero-worship, a helplessly devoted and/or snarky love interest, or a rival that's almost (but not quite) as cool as the mascot.
7. Advertisements for his games put a lot of emphasis on said game's "intensity," especially twitch-action and "speed".¹

There is a right way and a wrong way to create mascot characters.  First, the wrong way:

I don't know what the [noun] Awesome Possum is doing,
and quite frankly I don't care.

This furry little fellow is Awesome Possum, and he starred in his self-titled Sega Genesis game, created by Tengen in 1993.  His schtick is that he's an environmental warrior trying to stop a certain Dr. Machino, whose crime is apparently wide-scale pollution without reason.  In doing so, Awesome Possum will take every opportunity to remind the player that he is extreme to the max, and all that [noun].  I call this the Mike Posner Paradox: if you have to keep reminding other people that you're cool, then you're not cool.  In-your-face attitude and in-your-face environmentalism...²  If you threw in some bad Euro-pop, you'd have the most embarrassing parts of the 90s rolled into one bundle.  Also his game sucks, and I might do a proper review on it later on down the road, but for now, I present to you the right way to make a mascot character.

The European box art of Rocket Knight Adventures.

In the same year that Awesome Possum was unleashed upon the world, Konami treated us with Rocket Knight Adventures, also for the Genesis.  It starred Sparkster who, ironically enough, is also an opossum.  But thankfully, the two couldn't be more different in practice.  Sparkster doesn't do any talking of his own, through text or voice clips, but he lets his actions do the talking.  Specifically, he takes it upon himself to ward off an invasion from a pig army, rescue the possum princess they kidnapped, and settle the score with his evil counterpart, Axel Gear.  As for his appearance, his design is more on the subdued and even cute side; I don't know about you, but his little suit of knight armour and jetpack just melts my heart.  Also it helps that he was created in Japan.  Nippon Ichi, mother[verb]ers.  Shame they had to change his face on the box art; compare the facial expressions Sparkster sports on the American box art at the top of this page, and the European box art directly below.  (And what do you know, there's another trope for that: "American Kirby Is Hardcore".)

Sparkster, blasting off from the left.

Oh right, the jetpack.  Unlike most of the wannabe mascot-led games out there, Rocket Knight Adventures and its main character are designed around a particular new mechanic, and a well-executed one at that.  Sparkster's weapon is a sword, which with each swing fires beams for a little extra range (think the early Legend of Zelda games).  But by holding the attack button, a meter on the top of the screen charges up.  Release the button when it's full, and he will use his jetpack in one of two ways.  If you're holding the directional pad, Sparkster will fly off in the target direction. In doing this, he can not only cross large gaps, but also ricochet off walls, a crucial tactic for climbing walls.  Or you can always release a charge without holding down a direction, making him spin around in place with sword outstretched, a nice defensive move.  Your impressive repertoire of attacks lends itself to strategy during boss fights.  The sword beams have a higher rate of fire and give you range, but do less damage.  The sword alone does loads of damage if you spam it, but you have to get close.  And a jet boost does more damage from afar than the beams, but you have to take the time to charge it up.  So, you'll have to experiment with the different moves, and hopefully find the methods that work best against each enemy you may face.

An homage to Gradius.

RKA already succeeds over its totally radical contemporaries through the presence and prevalence of these auxiliary mechanics, but the innovation doesn't stop there.  Some of the levels are flying shoot-em-ups where Sparkster zooms around in his jetpack and shoots the aforementioned sword beams.  One of these even features a mini-boss designed after one from Gradius.  But the game also innovates in more subtle ways.  A section at the beginning of Level 3 takes place in a crystal cave, with a sea of lava rising and falling at regular intervals (At least I think it's supposed to be lava; don't make me bust out any more tropes.), so you must reach higher platforms before the deadly flow crests.  Plus, there are rock formations in the foreground which obscure both you and the platforms, but whatever the lethal liquid is below, it's also reflective, so you'll have to follow a red-tinted mirror image of yourself in order to make these jumps.  It's tough to describe in words; all the more reason for you to check it out for yourself.  And while it's a brief passage, it's just one more example of how much the game throws at you.

Indeed, Rocket Knight Adventures has variety in spades.  The jetpack system and the many curves the game throws at you combine to provide a platforming experience like no other.  Maybe the physics are a little too slippery here and there, but that shouldn't detract you from witnessing this game and all it has to offer.  Both as a character and a video game franchise, Sparkster deserved better than he got, but what he did get was nothing short of sublime.

Control: 4 jetpacks out of 5
Design: 5 jetpacks out of 5
Graphics: 5 jetpacks out of 5
Audio: 5 jetpacks out of 5
The Call: 95% (A)

The Sparkster character was more successful than most of his peers, but he only received precious few sequels.  In 1994, there were two new games for the Genesis and Super Nintendo, both titled Sparkster.  Surprisingly, these are not ports of the same title; the SNES game lies in an alternate continuity.  (The one for Genesis was sold with the subtitle Rocket Knight Adventures 2 in Japan.)  Then the series lay dormant until 2010, when with the help of developer Climax Studios, Konami saw fit to release Rocket Knight, a download-only title for the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360.  All three of these games carry on the original's rocket-powered legacy with changes to the formula here and there, and are worth picking up.

...Wait a minute.  The Sparkster series gets a new game even after 16 years and, as far as I'm concerned, a virtual disappearance from cultural relevance.  Meanwhile Mega Man Legends 3, which is a spin-off of a recogniseable pre-existing series and, as such, at least has brand recognition, gets cancelled!?  There's only one way to react to that discrepancy:

...Or I could quit being such as a spaz and just enjoy Rocket Knight.  That'll work, too.

---

¹ "Mascot with Attitude".  Television Tropes & Idioms.  Retrieved 27 September 2012.
² I do support the not-in-your-face type of environmentalism, however, and I suggest you do the same.

Sticking Points: Winter Olympic Games '94

The reason LordKaT started "Until We Win", his video series of walkthroughs for the most famously hard games of old, was to exorcise the demons of his childhood.  Now that he announced he was ending UWW (with a bang, if I say so myself: Comix Zone), my timing couldn't be better for launching my own series of text walkthroughs, dubbed "Sticking Points.  The first installment of Sticking Points is indeed something which gave me no end of trouble when I played it as a lad.  I'm talking about Winter Olympic Games: Lillehammer '94 for the Game Gear.  I have more to say about this game, like how I came across it in the first place, but that might be better suited for a traditional review.  Look for it soon.


It's odd that I'll have to start off with the first menu in the game, but there's no in-game indication as to what it does.  This is the language selection screen; the eight flags here represent eight possible languages you can set the menu text to.  By default, the cursor will hover on the United Kingdom flag; this refers to English.  Just press 1 or 2 and advance to the main menu.  From here you can select one of three modes, plus options.  Full Olympics takes you through all 10 of the game's events in a row, Mini Olympics lets you run a program of only the events you want, and Training is just that: practice an event as long as you wish.  Before starting either Olympics mode, you can set your name (press 1), gender (2), and nation (Left/Right).  Press Start once you're done making these changes.


This game has ten events across six different sports, which are listed below in the order they appear in Full Olympic mode:

1. Downhill (Alpine Skiing)
2. Luge (Sled)
3. Moguls (Freestyle Skiing)
4. Super-Giant Slalom (Alpine Skiing)
5. Ski Jump
6. Biathalon
7. Giant Slalom (Alpine Skiing)
8. Short Track (Speed Skating)
9. Bobsled (Sled)
10. Slalom (Alpine Skiing)

Since some of the events are so similar, I'll cover them grouped by sport instead of individual events.  The tips I present will cover all the events in a sport, but I will point out differences when they pop up.  While I'm at it, this game was ported to other consoles, including the Genesis and Super NES (hence my use of the Genesis box art at the top of this entry), but the content within all the ports are identical.  Button names refer to the Game Gear and (Europe-exclusive) Master System versions; I am not sure what their counterparts are on the other consoles.

Alpine Skiing
At the beginning of each skiing event, before starting down the slope you get to choose from one of three steering control setups.  The first two turn your skier clockwise or counterclockwise when you hold Left/Right, and the third aims him in whatever direction you press the D-Pad.  I prefer the first option, but try them all out for yourself, preferably in Training, until you find one you can get used to.  Holding the 1 Button makes your skier crouch for more speed, but you may have to let go if you can't react fast enough.  The 2 Button makes your skier hop, which is useful if you need to continue from an emergency stop and nothing else.  Regarding the actual skiing, the top-down, isometric perspective doesn't give you much time to react to the next gate you must pass through.  As a general rule, follow the contours of the snow, and don't be afraid to turn to a near-horizontal angle even if it will cut your speed.  Hitting a gate counts, but if you miss one gate, you'll be disqualified once you finish the run.  Should this happen, save yourself some time by crashing into a bank of trees and ending the run prematurely.


Out of the four events in alpine skiing, Downhill is the longest yet easiest, with the gates farthest apart compared to the Super G, Giant Slalom, and Slalom.  Regardless of your skills in the other courses, it would be worth slowing down part of the way in the Slalom (release the crouch button, or do a sharp turn) - the track is that tough.  In addition, the Giant Slalom and Slalom courses have to be raced twice in a row; skiers are based on the sum of their two run times.  Failing either run, whether by missing a gate or crashing, ends the event prematurely.  I'm not a fan of this setup, but we'll get into it more in the review.  Note that the Luge, Moguls, Ski Jump, and Bobsled also follow this setup.

Sledding
The two sledding events, Luge and Bobsled, use the same track.  The biggest difference lies in how fast they go.  To start up in both events, you have to mash buttons 1 and 2 until gravity starts pulling your craft.  Strangely, I couldn't get past this simple step in the Luge event - the second event in the Full Olympics.   Sounds like a silly thing to mess up, right?  Not if you're like me and didn't have the instructions.  See, whereas the Bobsled gets started with just one push of either button, the Luge does not.  So I would press the button once and get nowhere fast, thus rendering this event and the Full Olympics mode unplayable.  ...Yeah, I got better.  Once you get started, your only controls are Left and Right which steer your craft.  Keeping your speed up is everything in these events; in order to do that, you have to stay in the center of the track as long as possible.  In turns, this means hovering over the border of light and shadow whenever possible.

Moguls
This is a freestyle skiing event where you zigzag down a series of small hills, the titular "moguls".  During the run you are expected to not only make it to the bottom as quickly as possible, but jump off the bumps and perform tricks.  You ski down automatically, but have to press Left and Right in time with each turn point to move faster.  To jump, press 1 or 2 with any direction on the D-Pad whenever you're above any of the right-hand moguls.  You have to be exact with this timing, because if you're too late or early, your skier will take a smaller jump, crash, and be disqualified.  The contestant with the best total of speed, turn, and air points wins, so for best results, take a jump at every fifth or sixth jump point.  Playing this event in Training mode adds beeps whenever you hit a jump point so you can practice your timing.

Ski Jump
This is a complicated event, and I had to do a whole mess of experimenting in Training mode to find the winning formula.  First, you have to push yourself down the ramp manually (press 1 or 2).  The torch on-screen indicates wind speed, but since there's no direction indicator, start when the flame is at its shortest.  Second, press 1 or 2 again just before you take off from the ramp; and I do mean as late as possible before going airborne.  Third, while you're airborne, your skier will lose balance and shift left or right.  Press Left/Right to correct this and stay as balanced as possible.  This will build up your style points.  Fourth, about a second before landing, press 1 or 2 one more time to land safely.  Fail to do so and you'll crash; it's not an instant disqualification like in the other events, but you'll take a severe cut to your style points.

Biathalon
If you don't know, the Biathalon combines cross-country skiing and target shooting events.  In this game's interpretation of the sport, there are five skiing and four shooting segments, with the types alternating between the two.  In the skiing sections, you'll see a bar on-screen with a slider moving back and forth between both ends.  To make your skier go faster, you have to manipulate the slider with Left/Right or 1/2.  If you can, get the slider to stop in the colored edges of the bar without hitting the end for best results.  In the shooting segments, you simply move the cursor with the D-Pad and press 1 to fire.  You have to hit all five targets, and you have only five shots to do so, but missing a target only adds one second onto your time.  The challenge lies in how the cursor moves slightly on its own, as if to simulate muscle fatigue.  It may seem unfair, but honestly without it, the shooting parts would be way too easy.  Note that in the final skiing segment, you have to mash 1/2 in order to move instead of using the other control scheme.

Speed Skating
The final sport, and second-to-final event, puts you on an ice rink against three other skaters with the goal of completing four and a half laps before everyone else.  Mashing 1/2 moves you forward , and since you'll spend a good 45 seconds straight doing this, find the best way to hold your Game Gear or controller and prepare for a little fatigue.  While turning corners, you'll drift to the outside, so you need to steer with Left/Right.  The trick is to avoid hitting other skaters and the inside wall, which will slow you down considerably.  It might even be worth letting yourself drift outside to avoid getting boxed in by other skaters.


And that's it for the events.  See you in four years!

Game Review: Taz-Mania

Taz-Mania

• Publisher: Sega
• Developer: Recreational Brainware
• Platform/Release: Genesis, 24 December 1992
• Genre: Action, Platformer
• Players: 1
• Rarity/Cost: Common (US$3-10)

Back when I declared that Rollerblade Racer on the NES was the worst video game I ever played, I was referring mostly to how little thought had been put into it.  Although it's certainly a broken game, it's not quite as unplayable as other titles out there.  As such,  I don't hate Rollerblade Racer quite as much as those as other more frustrating games, even if they don't make as many pointless decisions like having ways to clear levels unscathed.  However, one game on the Sega Genesis has a rap sheet of other mistakes as long as my arm... depending on how big the font is.    Brace yourself, because I'm talking about Taz-Mania.

As the name suggests, Taz-Mania stars the Tasmanian Devil of Looney Tunes fame.  The first thing you are treated to when starting the game is a one-screen cutscene in which some old relative of Taz explains the plot.  He regales you with a legend of giant prehistoric seabirds who used to rule the island of Tasmania and laid eggs big enough to feed a family of Taz's ancestors for a year.  Apparently, they must still be around, because Taz sets off on a quest to find one of these eggs.  The environments you'll go through aren't that special; a desert, jungle, mines, and an ACME factory.  The problem lies within these biomes.

Taz hates bombs.  So will you.

Taz-Mania has some of the worst level design I have ever seen in a video game, so I'll focus on that for now.  In the first level alone, you'll be forced to cross pits of quicksand, jump over indescructible rock monsters, and ride up waterspouts or else suffer the spikes below.  Aren't first levels supposed to ease you into the game's mechanics, not throw challenging gimmicks at you right off the bat?  As if all that weren't enough, the play control seems designed to get in your way at every step you take.  Holding the B button (controls can be customized from the options screen) sends Taz into a whirlwind spin he can attack enemies with, and pressing Left or Right while doing so keeps him moving at high speed in that direction until you change direction or let go of the spin button.  Unfortunately, you can also knock helpful items, like life-giving food, fire-breath chili peppers, extra lives and continues, off the screen while spinning.  And yet there are also bombs which will take off half your lifebar if you eat them unless you spin into them or scramble with the action and/or spin buttons to let them go.  Both things can happen frequently if you spin just to move along faster, and the limited space you have to see in front of you often renders you unable to react to what you need to.  You know how a lot of the good 2D platformer games out there, the Marios and Sonics of the world, let the camera hang back so you can see more of what's in front of you?  Yeah, that would have been nice.  Occasionally, enemies stand nearby items, rendering your spin attacks worthless if you care about nabbing the goodies, and although it is possible to take them down by jumping on top of them, Mario-style, you have to be exact in order to pull this off.  The floaty, imprecise jumping mechanics don't help matters in the least.


The levels, of which there are 17 in all, show their true colors mid-way through the game, and you will curse it for them.  In the first jungle level, you must make many blind leaps over bottomless pits, where you can't see the other ledge until you are already in the air.  In order to gain more distance, you can spin while in mid-air, but doing so could send you off the other edge of the platform to your death.  In this level, there's a 1-Up next to a checkpoint; the funny thing is when you die and respawn in this game, all the items you picked up reappear, so if you keep getting the 1-Up after restarting at this checkpoint, you'll essentially have infinite lives for the following segment.  Normally I would complain about this bout of thoughtlessness, but given the frustrating nature of spinning off all those platforms, I suppose I shouldn't look the gift horse in the mouth.  Shame we won't be getting any similar TLC from here on.

The two mine stages.  Be afraid.

After two more relatively easy stages in the jungle, you've got a mine cart ride ahead of you.  You can speed up, slow down, and raise the cart to avoid obstacles, but like the rest of the game, it's way hard to react to it all.  I'll be honest, I haven't cleared this level without using the slow function on my controller.  But just because the next level is done on foot doesn't mean you'll get a break; very much the opposite, in fact, it will present you with yet another wall of difficulty.  It's also set in the mines, but with elevators you manually control, some which move on their own, and others which bounce up and down like those drums from Sonic 3.  The hardest part comes when you have to jump across a couple of quickly-moving platforms over an instant-kill floor which only barely looks like it's covered with spikes.  It's hard enough finding the first one, since it's off-screen once you first get up to the spot where you have to board it, but the very next platform presents the hardest jump in this game, as well as a whole bunch of other games.  The problem is that this second platform moves insanely fast in the opposite direction as the first, so if you wait until the first platform is at its farthest right before jumping, the second platform will fly out of your reach and cost you a life.  Can this be pulled off with practice?  Sure, but it's not worth the aggravation!!


The level after this marks the end of the hump in terms of difficulty, but it's still a doozy.  Back in the jungle area, there was a level where you traveled along a river by jumping between logs and islands.  The catch is that the logs traveled along several horizontal rows, so you'd have to hold Up or Down to move in this pseudo-3D space.  This mechanic will seem broken at first, but you'll get the hang of it after practice.  A lot of practice.  Well, the two mine levels are followed up by another one of these rivers, without the benefit of islands to give you terra firma; you'll have to memorize the patterns of logs and rocks.  Falling in the water deals damage and bounces you back up until you can make it to some sort of platform or you're drained completely.  Oh, and should you be foolhardy enough to try playing on Hard mode, one dip means an instant loss of a life.  Having to deal with all that while wrestling with a barely-functioning mechanic?  What were they thinking!?  The good news is that upon clearing this level, everything else is straightforward and, dare I say it, easy.


I do have to give a wag of the finger at one of the later levels, which is an almost exact repeat of one from two stages before, except that the goal is in a different place.  Yeah, this is the level of creativity we're dealing with here.  For one, the graphics aren't terribly exciting; the backgrounds are undetailed, using only a handful of colors.  The worst example of this is the cave levels; apart from some blue rock patterns, the background is completely black!  On the other hand, the sound direction is... interesting.  Most levels don't have any music, or at least it's very minimal and quiet.  Nearly every action in the game, be it you jumping or an enemy walking on-screen or whatever, plays some sort of sound effect.  This was done to evoke the Looney Tunes cartoons, and I can appreciate that, but in many cases it's just annoying, especially the woodpecker-like ticks of mouse enemies which take an eternal-seeming minute to get out of my head.


They really had no excuse to make Taz-Mania so terrible.  There were good games out on the market before its release in late 1992: two Sonic the Hedgehog games, four Super Mario games, heck, even the (early) Pitfall! series succeeds where Taz-Mania fails.  While all those other series I listed present a worthy challenge, Taz-Mania frustrating for all the wrong reasons, namely barely-functioning control mechanics and some of the worst level designs you or I will ever see.  Oh, wait... it's based on a cartoon property.  That's a fine enough excuse.  But it still doesn't save this game from my wrath; I hereby declare it as my new worst video game I have ever played.


Graphics: 2 cartoon bombs out of 5
Sound: 1 cartoon bomb out of 5
Control: 1 cartoon bomb out of 5
Design: 1 cartoon bomb out of 5
The Call: 15% (F)

Game Review: Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

Note: Box and cartridge art may vary.

Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers

• Publisher: Sega 
• Developer: Banpresto 
• Platform/Release: Genesis, 1994 
• Genre: Fighting 
• Rarity/Cost: Common (US$2-10) 

There's nothing else like the Power Rangers franchise. Each series of this kids' action show is a partial adaptation of another series, Japan's Super Sentai. Rather than a direct dub, they used fight scene footage from the Super Sentai shows, while more or less rebuilding the plots by shooting new footage. The first and most memorable incarnation of the former, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, aired from 1993 to 1995 and was based on the 16th season of the latter, 1992's Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. While the heroic team of Zyuranger consisted of five tribal members from the time of dinosaurs, the Rangers from Mighty Morphin' were random teenagers skilled in martial arts and involved in community service.

With a property as hot in its day as Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, there were obviously a whole mess of video games made based on the show. As a matter of fact, given the glut of consoles and handhelds at the time, there were five different titles bearing the exact name Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Some were good, like the versus-fighter for Game Gear. Some were bad, like the interactive movie stylings of the Sega CD title. But what about ones for the more popular consoles, like Sega Genesis?

This version, like the one for Game Gear, is a versus-fighter. In the one-player story, you play as any one of the five (six after you unlock the Green Ranger) Power Rangers, who face off against the monsters created by villainess Rita Repulsa and her crew. There are five stages (the enclosed instruction book incorrectly states that there are seven instead, which is true of the Game Gear port), each except the last consisting of one on-foot battle and one giant robot, or Zord battle. Unlike in other fighting games, these fights aren't best-of-three: if you drain the enemy's life once, you move on. And if you lose, you have unlimited continues, but doing so from a Zord fight takes you back to its corresponding regular fight.

Contrary to more popular fighting game series like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, this game only uses two buttons; one for light attacks and one for heavy attacks. Given that the Genesis controllers have 3 or 6 action buttons, this feels like a huge waste of potential. It makes me think that the Game Gear version was the original game, and the Genesis version was the port. Having only two options for basic attacks means you'll use them a lot less than the Rangers' and Zords' special attacks, and as a matter of fact, the CPU opponents seem to think the same way and tend to spam their specials.

A meter below each player's life bar builds up when the character takes damage; the higher up this meter is, the more damage specials do, but in practice it's not much of a difference. Then again, some special attacks are far, far more effective than others. For example, the Black Ranger's Spinning Axe attack will frequently land three hits in a row with no window between hits to block. (SFII's Chun-Li and her thunder kicks would like to say hi.) Even the Zord/monster fights are cheap: a good way to win is to play as the Megazord and land a string of heavy sword attacks, each knocking the opponent down. If you can keep your timing perfect, it's possible to do this the entire length of the match for a flawless victory.

Special moves (and not much else) set the Rangers apart.

The special attacks for each ranger are built around the weapons they use occasionally in the show; i.e. the Red Ranger's sword, Black Ranger's axe, and Pink Ranger's bow. All of them also have a weak laser gun attack, conveniently mapped to the same command (↓,↘,→,A or B) as the world famous Hadoken of Street Fighter fame. It's a good thing their fighting styles are so different, because colors aside, it would otherwise be way hard for players who don't watch the show to tell them apart. The sprites of all the Rangers are palette-swaps of each other, except the Pink Ranger's, since her costume is the only one with a skirt built in. No, seriously, they all have the Red Ranger's helmet and everything!

The presentation tries,
but doesn't leave an impression.

Don't expect to be floored by the rest of the presentation, either. In between bouts are cutscenes starring animated cutouts of the characters, which are honestly well-rendered, ignoring the washed-out colours. The music is the typical bass-heavy fare which represents 95% of all the music from every Genesis game ever. Yes, they did include Ron Wasserman's famous theme song, but being dragged through the Genesis's sound processor strips it of all its cheesy charm. There are even occasional voice clips during the matches, but they sound nothing like the Rangers uttering them. The Yellow Ranger's "Tiger Crash!" is especially cringe-inducing.

It's funny that the Rangers are based on dinosaurs, because this game plays and feels like a dinosaur compared to its fighting-game genre peers. Despite having come out a couple of years after its competitors in the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat series, it fails to live up to not only those standards but the standards of any other fighting game worth its salt. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers on the Sega Genesis, while certainly playable, is a bland and unbalanced mess. If you own a Game Gear, on the other hand, you're much better off tracking down the version for that platform, because its big brother proves that what's acceptable on a handheld won't always fly for a full-fledged console.

Control: 3 morphers out of 5
Design: 1 morpher out of 5
Graphics: 2 morphers out of 5
Audio: 1 morpher out of 5
The Call: 40% (F)