Nightshade (NES)

If you’ve heard of late release NES curio Nightshade, it’s probably by that name and not its full title, Nightshade Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh. Australian studio Beam Software clearly had big plans for this aggressively quirky point-and-click adventure/fighting game hybrid. They even managed to get industry giant Konami to take on publishing duty via their Ultra Games label. Sadly, the sequels promised by that snazzy subtitle were not to be. I don’t blame Beam or Konami for this, necessarily, as few 8-bit games were selling all that well circa 1992, especially downright weird ones. In any case, Nightshade’s one and only game appearance endures as a singular experience within the massive NES library.

When Sutekh, Metro City’s reigning crime lord, manages to kill off veteran superhero Vortex, nothing stands between him and total domination. Nothing, that is, except for Nightshade, trenchcoated crime fighting alter-ego of mild-mannered encyclopedia researcher Mark Gray. Too bad old Nightshade isn’t off to the greatest of starts. As the game opens, Sutekh’s tied him to a chair next to a lit bomb. If he doesn’t think fast, his adventure could be over before it’s began.

With its moody film noir-inspired opening music and cut scene, you might expect Nightshade to be quite the grim, gritty affair. Well, joke’s on you, because literally everything that follows is simply bananas; a full-blown pulp/comic hero parody in the vein of The Tick or The Venture Bros. A pretty good one, too, with plenty of sarcastic item descriptions, pop culture references, and recurring gags like various citizens of Metro City constantly mangling poor Nightshade’s name, dubbing him Lampshade among other things.

This slapstick sense of humor extends to the game mechanics proper. Each time Nightshade runs out of health, Sutekh show up to stick him in another overly elaborate death trap akin to the one from the opening scene. If Nightshade can manage to escape using a combination of quick thinking and accurate timing, he’s free to continue his mission. Otherwise, it’s game over and all progress is lost. The game also ends if he should reach the fifth and final trap, from which there is no escape. In other words, figuring out how to foil the traps gives you access to four extra lives.

Most of your play time as Nightshade is spent wandering the city streets in a point-and-click adventure mode, summoning a cursor as needed to examine, pick up, and use various objects, speak to NPCs, and so on. Interfaces like this were rare on the NES, although not entirely unheard-of. See Maniac Mansion or Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. What sets Nightshade apart is its combat, which uses a side-view beat-’em-up style. Although the contrast between the slow-paced, methodical exploration and the frantic brawls is theoretically exciting, I found the battles to be the game’s weakest aspect. Nightshade is slow on foot and has a high, floaty jump. Enemies tend to both be faster and enjoy greater hit priority on their attacks. True, most have exploitable weaknesses that can be mastered eventually, but the learning process is a painful one due to the sharply limited lives and healing resources. Needing to restart the game from scratch multiple times, redoing the early point-and-click segments over and over almost soured me on the game as a whole.

Almost. In the end, I’m glad I persevered through Nightshade’s mediocre fights and resulting early frustration. I was rewarded with a wild, witty escapade that absolutely merited more success than it found. On the plus side, some of its DNA did carry over to lead designer Paul Kidd’s 1993 follow-up project, Shadowrun for the Super Nintendo.

God Panic: Shijō Saikyō Gunden (PC Engine)

The 1992 PC Engine Super CD-ROM shooter God Panic: Shijō Saikyō Gunden (“God Panic: Supreme Strongest Army”) is a genuine oddity. One barely documented on the English language Internet, to the extent that I had to rely on a somewhat dodgy machine translation of the Japanese manual to have any idea what it was even supposed to be about. We know it was sold by Teichiku, a nearly century-old record company that had a brief, largely unremarkable fling with video game publishing in the ’90s. The developers behind it seem to have been Sting, an outfit founded in 1989 by some ex-Compile employees. Compile? As in my favorite shootgame studio of all-time? Yup! I’m sad to say, however, that fans of such legendary Compile titles as Blazing Lazers and Musha really shouldn’t get their hopes up for this one.

One look at any given screen of God Panic will place it firmly in the wacky cute-’em-up subgenre, à la the better known TwinBee and Parodius franchises. Each of its stages has a silly, seemingly arbitrary theme like music, baseball, or Japanese mythology. Your “ship” is a little anthropomorphic ninja rodent fellow named Mouse Boy who gets contacted by none other than God himself and asked to fly off and save the day when an attempt to create a new universe goes awry and results in a hoard of kooky monsters appearing to wreak havoc.

Story-wise, that’s all you should need to underpin a quality shooting experience. Pity the gameplay isn’t there to support it. God Panic is such a bare-bones, perfunctory feeling product that there honestly isn’t much in the way of design or mechanics to comment on. Mouse Boy has a single linear weapon upgrade path that first sees his standard straight shot get augmented by a pair of small option satellites. These satellites then upgrade to three increasingly powerful shot types (lasers, lighting, homing) as more power-up icons are collected. A limited stock of up to five bombs allows for clearing away enemy shots in a pinch while also dishing out heavy damage across most of the screen. Other than that, there are collectable speed-up icons as well as ones that will either restore one pip on Mouse Boy’s health bar or expand said bar from its starting capacity of three up to a maximum of six.

Basic as that all is, it’s the level design here that truly let me down. God Panic’s five stages are short, often wrapping up just when I thought they were getting mildly exciting. Worse yet, the designers had the nerve to pull the rather cheap trick of making you play through them all twice via a second loop before you can fight the final boss and see the ending. The only concession to how tedious this obviously is is that second loop versions of levels are recolored and most (though not all) of the enemies are given new sprites. There’s a spooky Halloween angle to the redone art, such as giving the disrobing geisha enemies from stage three purple skin and bat wings. In my opinion, it’s not enough to compensate for the levels themselves being fundamentally unchanged.

On the plus side, God Panic’s soundtrack is interesting. Not spectacular, mind you, only strange and eclectic enough to stand out. You get obvious jokey homages to Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” sprinkled in amongst moody piano dirges and a ragtime end credits. It’s a proper trip and makes listening to God Panic arguably more fun than playing it. It’s also the sole justification I can spot for why the game needed to ship on a CD-ROM as opposed to a simple HuCard.

Between the refillable health bar and stock of three continues that allow you to keep on playing right on the spot you died with no break in the action, God Panic is notably easy by genre standards. I would cite that as a potential point in its favor, since I consider beginner-friendly shooters a very good thing in general. Alas, it just so happens that the PC Engine is already home to multiple great works in this vein, most notably Star Parodier, which presents much the same style of comedic vertical scrolling action with exponentially more depth and polish. Not to mention Air Zonk, Coryoon, Magical Chase, Seirei Senshi Spriggan…I could go on, but you get the idea. If you’re a PC Engine fanatic like me and bound to get around to the deepest of deep cuts like this eventually, you probably won’t hate it. It’s too trifling for that. That said, don’t expect to love it, either, as the minimal effort invested marks it as one of the least essential games of its kind on the platform.

Dragon Warrior Monsters (Game Boy)

Earlier this month, I undertook a pilgrimage to the little resort town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in order to attend the sixteenth annual Gary Con gaming convention, an event dedicated to celebrating the life and works of late Dungeons & Dragons co-creator E. Gary Gygax in the town he called home. It was a profoundly special occasion for me, being both my first Gary Con and the 50th anniversary of D&D’s initial publication. I even got to play a few games in Gary’s old house on Center Street, where the game I so love was written. I wrote down all the details in a day-by-day trip log over on my D&D blog, if you’re interested.

On a more somber note, this month also brought us the tragic news that another brilliant creator who brought joy to millions all over the world had passed away. I’m speaking, of course, about the great artist Akira Toriyama. Though I never took to his most famous work, the Dragonball series, I’ve been an admirer of his video game character designs ever since I laid eyes on my first grinning blue slime back in 1989. There are perhaps no clearer examples of the role great character design can play in a game’s success than Toriyama’s contributions to the likes of Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. The mind struggles to imagine either divorced from his signature style.

As a small personal tribute, I thought it fitting to take a look at Dragon Warrior Monsters. This 1998 Game Boy RPG launched its own spin-off franchise that’s still going strong today, and it’s tough to deny that said franchise owes much of its success to Toriyama’s iconic monster designs. Given its release date and general premise of capturing, breeding, and training various monsters to compete in tournament battles against rival monster masters, it would be easy to dismiss DWM as an obvious attempt to cash in on the worldwide popularity of Pokémon. But is that fair? On one hand, I’m doubtful that a title like DWM would have been produced at all if Pokémon hadn’t set the stage in 1996. On the other hand, publisher Enix held an at least somewhat defensible prior claim to the whole monster taming concept via 1992’s Dragon Quest V. Food for thought, I suppose.

Dragon Warrior Monsters places you in the shoes of a young boy, default name Terry, who witnesses his sister get abducted through a mystical portal by a monster one night. Following on their heels, he finds himself whisked away to the Kingdom of GreatTree, a land fittingly enough situated inside a gigantic tree. Terry’s sister is nowhere in sight, but the king proposes that Terry train himself as a monster master and compete in the upcoming Starry Night Tournament. The winner of the tournament is granted a wish that Terry could use to be reunited with his lost sister. With his mission spelled out, Terry is then cut loose to begin the long process of tending his ever increasing flock of critters. It’s not much of a setup, but credit to Enix and the contract developers at Tose for trying. It certainly beats going out to gather a bunch of weird monsters and make them fight just because it’s cool or whatever.

Terry’s adventure is structured in an unorthodox fashion. The town of GreatTree serves as a central hub where he can resupply, breed new monsters, change out members of his current three monster traveling party, and get hints from friendly NPCs. Throughout the town are also scattered magic gates that lead to the randomized dungeons where wild monsters live. At the bottom of each of these dungeons waits a boss monster that usually makes for a prime recruiting target. Every time Terry is able to clear a new tier of opponents at the battle arena in town, a new set of gates opens up that lead to longer, more difficult dungeons.

Although the basic idea of having all the dungeons be randomized anew for every visit sounded promising, its implementation proved to be the game’s biggest weakness in my view. The floor layouts themselves aren’t procedurally generated, so I quickly noticed that I was trudging through the same few dozen areas over and over. Their order switched up, as did the placement of items and exits, but the environments themselves grew quite stale. The issue becomes especially egregious in the late game, where 20+ floors per dungeon became the standard. Thank goodness it was easy enough to warp back to town when desired.

On a positive note, I enjoyed the battle system here much more than I ever have Pokémon’s, since DWM allows you to command a party of up to three monsters at once rather than focusing almost exclusively on one-on-one scraps. I appreciated the resulting emphasis on traditional RPG team mechanics, such as the ability to have specific monsters assume the roles of physical attacker, magical attacker, healer, buffer/debuffer, and so on. Individual monsters have greater flexibility as well. They’re able to learn up to eight special abilities each and the breeding system makes it possible to impart any ability to any monster.

When it comes to the breeding process as a whole, I found it a bit of a mixed bag. As cool as all that freedom is, it’s virtually required that you combine and recombine your monsters regularly in order to maintain a strong enough party to progress. This equates to hours of experience grinding, as every newly-hatched beastie naturally starts out at level one. In fact, you can expect building succeeding generations back up to a usable level to occupy the large majority of your playthrough. Take this element out and there’s really not much to Terry’s quest. If you’re the sort that gets a sort of Zen satisfaction out of endless random battles in samey dungeons, you’ll be in heaven. If not, it may start to wear on you. It sure doesn’t help that the more powerful the monster, the more experience it tends to take to level it up.

The sheer intricacy of the breeding system can prove an obstacle as well. Some of the strongest monsters don’t appear in the wild and can require dozens of highly specific breeding steps to bring into existence, none of which are spelled out within the game itself. Consulting an outside guide to plan out your breeding chains ahead of time is practically mandatory if you aspire to get your hands on the top-tier options.

In spite of the repetitive dungeons, heavy grind factor, and needlessly opaque breeding rules, I genuinely enjoyed Dragon Warrior Monsters. More so than any Pokémon entry I’ve tried. Chalk that up to the immense charm of Toriyama’s character designs combined with the strategy involved in having a team of monsters active all at once and the freedom to mix and match special abilities at will. It’s arguably a deeper game, whereas Pokémon owes its enduring runaway success to serving as the ideal introductory RPG for generations of young gamers. I’m not about to say that makes DWM the better game, however, only the better game for me. It packs that ineffable Dragon Quest mojo I just can’t resist, helped along by some gorgeous Super Game Boy exclusive border graphics and a soundtrack made up largely of classic tunes from the mainline saga. Above all, it’s an unabashed celebration of Akira Toriyama’s foremost contribution to the medium. May he rest in peace with the knowledge that his legacy in gaming is secure.

Super Mario Bros. Special – 35th Anniversary Edition (NES)

It’s March 10th! You know what that means! Well, maybe you do. According to Nintendo circa 2016, the contrivance of “MAR10” is sufficient to dub today Mario Day and celebrate all things relating to the video game industry’s arch-mascot. Just this once, I figured I’d relinquish my usual stubborn urge to spurn all viral marketing and indulge in one of the plucky plumber’s perennially popular peregrinations. Incidentally, did you also know that excessive alliteration is generally considered indicative of poor writing? I’m full of fun facts today!

Having recently covered the monumental Super Mario Bros., I thought it might be a fine change of pace to present something comparatively obscure. Easier said than done, of course, as worthwhile games starring the most famous character in the medium don’t exactly grow on trees. Except on mid-’80s Japanese home computers, it seems, where Hudson Soft developed and published a total of nine licensed Nintendo titles for PC-8801 and Sharp X1 series machines between 1984 and 1986. The majority of these are straightforward conversions of well-known Famicom/NES releases like Golf and Ice Climber. A few, however, are effectively brand new works based only loosely on their source material. 1986’s Super Mario Bros. Special is firmly in the latter camp. While obviously patterned on Nintendo’s 1985 platforming masterpiece, it contains 32 original levels on top of new power-up items and enemies imported from Donkey Kong and the arcade Mario Bros.

Sounds amazing, right? Alas, the elephant in the room here is that both versions of SMB Special are rather terrible. Right up front, you can say goodbye to the console game’s scrolling. Instead, you’re presented with a single screen at a time. Reaching the edge results in either an abrupt blackout transition to the next on PC-8801 or a Legend of Zelda style flip-screen one on X1. Either way, the basic inability to see what sort of hazards await before you leap headlong into them is enough on its own to prevent Special from being a classically great Super Mario experience. Add poor performance, clumsy controls, broken hit detection, and garish graphics to the mix, and it’s abundantly clear why neither Hudson nor Nintendo has seen fit to re-release this in any form.

Yet despite all its technical incompetence, there were still those who saw untapped potential in Special’s unique level layouts and features. Two such individuals were the skilled ROM hackers frantik and Levi “Karatorian” Aho, who joined forces in 2021 to create Super Mario Bros. Special – 35th Anniversary Edition. By taking all of Special’s signature design elements and faithfully porting them into the buttery smooth NES SMB “engine,” the world at large was finally able to appreciate Hudson’s game free from the frustration stemming from its botched ’80s implementations.

So how is it? No bad at all, although it still doesn’t quite live up to Nintendo’s own in-house work. Stages are fairly well-balanced for the most part, with just enough tweaks to the formula to stand apart. You’ll encounter the rotating fire bar hazards outside castle areas, for example, and transitioning between surface, underground, and water zones within the same level is more common. That said, there’s a significant difficulty spike that brings the last leg of the adventure closer in line with Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka The Lost Levels) than the first SMB. I found it doable, but the tone of my playthrough definitely shifted from casual romp to intense teeth-gritting focus around world seven.

The added power-ups and enemies are a mixed bag. Special includes the wing, which allows Mario to “fly” using the same controls as swimming and a hammer straight out of Donkey Kong that Mario automatically swings up and down to pulverize any foes that draw near. Both are neat gimmicks, though they suffer from the triple defects of being rare (each appears exactly twice), hidden in out-of-the way invisible blocks, and of very short temporary duration. As such, they’re closer to cute Easter eggs than meaningful additions to the core gameplay. There are a few other hidden items, such as the famous Hudson Bee, but these are one-time score or timer bonuses that hardly impact play at all.

Our cast of baddies fares better, since the bulk of them deliver fresh challenges. Sidestepper crabs are functionally identical to Spinies, a basic ground enemy that can’t be stomped. Fighter Flies also can’t be stomped and, worse, continually hop toward Mario and thus require strict jump timing to bypass in the absence of a Fire Flower. Icicles resembling the ones from Mario Bros. fall from the ceiling as Mario passes underneath. Finally, the rolling barrels and animated fireballs from Donkey Kong both represent grounded hazards that move inexorably forward and can only be defeated if you have a hammer handy.

On the flip side, these additions are offset by some noteworthy cuts. Contrary to its title, SMB Special is strictly a one-player affair. Get bent, Luigi! The iconic warp zones that provide shortcuts to the later worlds are likewise nowhere to be seen. Regardless, I think the pros of this take on Special more than outweigh the cons and succeed at transforming a misbegotten regional oddity into a quality platformer worth a look from Mario lovers everywhere. As a lifelong fan, beating down the sewer pests from Mario Bros. with the hammer from Donkey Kong in the 8-bit Mushroom Kingdom is simultaneously a trip and a delight. Kudos to frantik and Karatorian for polishing this roughest of gems to a near mirror sheen and merry Mario Day to one and all!

Arcana (Super Nintendo)

Having previously covered all of the big name Super Nintendo RPGs, your Chrono Triggers and EarthBounds and Final Fantasy VIs, I may as well dip back into some more obscure titles. Such a one is Arcana, HAL Laboratory’s largely forgotten 1992 stab at a Wizardry style first-person dungeon crawl with an intriguing visual aesthetic, a brilliant soundtrack, and…not much else.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Arcana follows Rooks, a young warrior tasked with saving the mystical land of Elemen from a wizard who’s overthrown the rightful king and now plots to revive an ancient evil deity in order to attain ultimate power. Yeah, you’ve almost certainly heard this exact setup before, and I wish I could say HAL put a clever spin on it, or at least tossed in a respectable plot twist or two. Alas, no. Instead, it’s fantasy world saving business as usual, with Rooks and his rotating cast of generic companions charting their way through various mazes on the hunt for magic MacGuffins.

We may not get a very interesting story, but we are treated to Arcana’s unique artistic choice to depict every character and monster in Elemen (except the shopkeepers) as a stylized playing card. I’m 99% sure this is meant to be a metaphorical creative flourish for the player’s enjoyment, and that none of these beings are really intended to be walking, talking cards. It is quite striking, however, and even serves a gameplay function, as the color of a monster’s card border indicates its affiliation with the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. There’s a rock-paper-scissors dynamic between the four elements that should be familiar to any Pokémon fan. Against a fire monster, for example, it behooves you to break out the water attacks and exploit its innate defensive weakness to that element.

This elemental angle also ties into Rooks’ ability to call on four spirit companions to fill out the party roster. He starts out with access to Sylph, the air spirit, and unlocks the remaining three at preset points in the story. Only one spirit can be active at time, though Rooks can freely toggle between any of the available ones at will. Generally speaking, spirits have weak defense and physical attacks due to their inability to equip weapons and armor. They compensate for this with their broad range of potent spells. That, and the fact that they automatically regenerate health and magic power with each step, unlike human characters.

The moment-to-moment experience of exploring mazes and engaging in random turn-based battles with the monsters therein works well enough, I guess, with the caveat that it’s all extremely basic. There are no traps, secret doors, or memorable landmarks in any of these dungeons, only open corridors dotted with the occasional treasure chest. It’s actually a step below the first Phantasy Star in this respect, if you can believe that. On the plus side, Arcana does include a handy auto-map feature, which is more than I can say for many games in this sub-genre.

Taken purely as a simple, repetitive dungeon crawler with some cool art and an excellent score by veteran Kirby composers Jun Ishikawa and Hirokazu Ando, Arcana might well merit a tepid recommendation. Unfortunately, its poor localization and serious design flaws need to be accounted for, too, and together they prevent it from rising to the level of mediocre.

How bad is this translation? Let’s just say that there are numerous points where you’ll find yourself staring at a string of text and wondering what the speaker is even attempting to convey. At one point, a villain burst in and seized one of my party members, proclaiming “Wait, don’t move. The Princess is dying. I wonder, Rooks!” He then ran off with said princess in tow. Eventually, I pieced together that he was meant to be saying something along the lines of “Don’t move or the Princess dies.” I still have no clue what he was wondering about. This isn’t an exception, either. The majority of the dialog reads like people nursing major head injuries yelling past each other. It’s a mess, and rarely in the funny Zero Wing sort of way that might redeem it a tad.

In addition to a mutilated script, Arcana incorporates several distinctly player-hostile design choices. Oddly enough, one of them was shared by the last RPG I reviewed, Tengai Makyō: Ziria. That is, any time one of your human allies is defeated in combat, you’re hit with an instant game over. It’s worse here than it was in Ziria, in fact, since you don’t just get sent back to town and docked a bit of gold when it happens. You have no choice but to load your last save, potentially losing significant progress. Two RPGs in a row pulling this exact nonsense on me! What are the odds?

Similarly rude is Arcana’s tendency to have new characters join your party deep inside dungeons without a shred of gear on their persons. Of course, they’re practically useless in this state, forcing you to choose between warping back to town for a trip to the weapon shop or pressing on and hoping you can survive the remainder of the challenges ahead with one of your allies effectively naked. You could theoretically prepare for this and bring a few spare items along with you, yet how would you know when to do so and what to bring on an initial playthrough without consulting a guide? The cynic in me suspects the designers knew you’d be caught off guard by this and feel compelled to backtrack, thereby lengthening the total play time.

Arcana makes a strong first impression with its singular presentation. Sadly, the creative visual theming and sweet music ultimately weren’t enough to salvage the whole production for me. This is a surprisingly poor effort from the typically reliable HAL. If they’d opted for a less obnoxious approach to character death, given new recruits some no-frills starting equipment, and put in the extra effort to polish up the English text, it still wouldn’t be an exceptional example of the form, merely a tolerable one. Oh, well. I suppose every pack has its joker.

Battle Mania: Daiginjō (Mega Drive)

Prepare for trouble! And make it double!

I could swear it was only last year that I made the acquaintance of Vic Tokai’s unjustly obscure Genesis action romp, Trouble Shooter (aka Battle Mania in Japan). Turns out it was all the way back in 2021! It’s sobering just how fungible memory can be. In any case, this fast-paced, quirky, and accessible gem of a shooter instantly became one of my favorite games of its kind for the system.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that it had a Japanese-exclusive Mega Drive sequel released in 1993 called Battle Mania: Daiginjō. The term daiginjō is used to denote the finest quality rice wine. In other words, the developers are promising a more refined, top-shelf take on the original’s formula. Sign me up for that!

Daiginjō resumes the comic exploits of two teenage girl mercenaries with big guns and jetpacks named Mania and Maria, or Madison and Crystal in the English localization. This legally-distinct Dirty Pair (Soiled Duo?) is once again tasked with saving the world from a random bunch of weirdo baddies while hopefully also bringing in enough cash for junk food and car repairs. The tone is consistently zany, complete with heroes and villains alike regularly breaking the fourth wall to acknowledge that they’re in a silly video game. It’s well worth checking out the English fan translation by Jon Najar for this reason alone.

Gameplay-wise, this is an all-around bigger, better Trouble Shooter. There are nine stages to blast through instead of six, representing a satisfying mix of horizontal and vertical scrolling segments. The control options now include eight-way shooting rather than limiting you to firing straight left and right. Oddly, you will need to go into the options menu and manually enable eight-way shooting, as the old method remains the default. Why you wouldn’t want to is frankly beyond me, though. The added offensive flexibility elevates Daiginjō tremendously and most enemy and boss patterns seem tailored to work in harmony with it.

The rest of the mechanics should be quite familiar to Trouble Shooter veterans. While you technically control both girls simultaneously, Mania/Madison is the only one who can take damage. This takes a little getting used to when it comes to dodging enemy attacks. Eventually, though, you’ll learn to keep your eyes focused on Mania. Your standard rapid-fire shot is complimented by your choice of several limited use sub-weapons that do things like sweep the screen with lightning or cause Mania to sprout giant chainsaw blades for a short time. Sub-weapon activation is dependent on a charge meter that empties with each use and slowly refills thereafter. A life bar system is in effect and running out of health results in a game over. Extra hit points and continues naturally accrue at a brisk pace, however, so there’s ample resources available to see you through to the end credits. Funnily enough, every hit taken is punctuated by a voice clip of Mania yelling “Shit!” I have to assume that would have been omitted in a hypothetical international release.

On the audiovisual side, Daiginjō has also received a serious shot in the arm. The graphics pack much greater detail and the soundtrack is downright intense. Certainly more intense than I expected for such a goofy premise. Kudos to composers Shigenori Masuko, Yoko Suzuki, and Fumito Tamayama because some of this stuff rocks almost as hard M.U.S.H.A. or Thunder Force IV! This is easily one of the best looking and sounding Mega Drive releases overall, something I couldn’t imagine anyone saying of Trouble Shooter.

In short, Battle Mania: Daiginjō delivers on its subtitle’s promise and then some. Trouble Shooter was a modest, if charming little game. Its sequel is big, bold, and polished to a mirror sheen, all without sacrificing an ounce of that offbeat charm. Something this superlative coming courtesy of an otherwise mid-tier studio like Vic Tokai has to rate as a minor miracle. Such a shame that it’s never been released outside its native territory and that Mania and Maria disappeared from the gaming landscape altogether following their brief cameo in another Japan-only title, 2001’s Segagaga for the Dreamcast. They’ll always be two of my favorite protagonists to come out of the 16-bit era. I’m glad they were at least treated to one hell of a swan song.

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

Seven years ago today, I took on the task (the challenge, really) of finishing and reviewing at least one 8 or 16-bit game each week. 365 weeks and 430 games later, I think it’s fair to say I’ve had it well in hand. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than to reconnect with the release that put my favorite console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, on the map: 1985’s immortal Super Mario Bros. To call this one a system seller would be a ludicrous understatement. It reigned as the best-selling video game of all time for an unbelievable 21 consecutive years and still maintains a respectable position at the number seven spot on the chart as of this writing. Hmm. There’s that lucky seven again. Auspicious!

Given how it fueled Nintendo’s meteoric rise, revolutionized the platforming genre, and cemented Mario and his supporting cast’s position as the gaming galaxy’s brightest cluster of stars, it wouldn’t be difficult to make a case for this being the single most important game ever made. Of course, that degree of hyperbole rarely stands up to sustained scrutiny. Super Mario Bros. was born into a burgeoning industry built on over a decade of major hits, including Atari’s Pong (1972), Taito’s Space Invaders (1978), Namco’s Pac-Man (1980), and Mario’s own debut outing, Donkey Kong (1981), among many others. Trying to heap all the laurels on any one head is clearly a fool’s errand.

What Super Mario Bros. does deserve unqualified credit for, however, is its magnificent game feel. Its pinpoint accurate momentum-based running and jumping action is nothing less than astounding when contrasted with the clunky likes of Jump Bug (1981) and Pac-Land (1984). In terms of play control, what the tiny team led by designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka accomplished here is virtually a miracle; akin to advancing straight from Neolithic cave paintings to the Sistine Chapel frescoes in one almighty leap. After a short acclimation period, Mario might as well be an extension of the player’s own body. The greatest testament of all to this degree of seamless handling is probably just how often we’re able to take it for granted today.

The sheer infectious thrill of this movement would have been enough on its own to qualify Super Mario Bros. as a design landmark. Factor in Miyamoto and Tezuka’s stellar character designs (Bowser, the Princess, Toad, Koopas, Goombas, et al.), composer Koji Kondo’s unforgettable melodies, and a vast 32-stage Mushroom Kingdom packed to the rafters with hidden power-ups, treasure rooms, and warp zones, and you have a genuine cultural landmark on your hands. All crammed into a stock 40 kilobyte cartridge with none of the specialized memory handling chips that came bundled into most later NES games, too. A few level layouts do get recycled with minor tweaks, sure, but it’s still an epic accomplishment any way you slice it.

In terms of actual criticism, Super Mario Bros. is as close as any work in the medium gets to existing beyond reproach. On the cusp of its fourth decade, it remains exhilarating, charming, and approachable in equal measure. A joyous, defiantly ageless paragon of all that’s truest and best in this sometimes troubled hobby of ours. If you haven’t fired it up in a while, you ought to see to that soon.

As for me, I sense a change in the air. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. Gaming’s in my blood and I’ve been at it just as long as our boy Mario. Lately, though, I’ve been finding myself longing for a bit more time to pursue my other interests. D&D, movies, reading, travel, antiquing…There’s a lot to do and a game a week, minimum, is a big commitment. Bottom line: You can expect the pace of my reviews to drop from an average of five a month to “only” two or three going forward. After seven intense years, I think I’ve earned that. I do hope you’ll remain on board for this somewhat less hectic next phase of the journey. From the very bottom of my heart, I thank you all for reading.

Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (Master System)

Time once again to kick back and savor a game showcasing my very own character that I definitely possess the legal rights to, Mickey Mouse! Yes, just in case you’ve been living under the proverbial rock, the latest craze taking the world by storm is gloating over the fact that this year marks the 96th anniversary of the first Mickey cartoons, meaning that this most iconic of all mascots has finally entered the public domain and is no longer the exclusive intellectual property of the Walt Disney Company. Since the literal first minutes of the month, the Internet has been flooded with all manner of mocking parody works. Frankly, the sheer number of everyday people taking this opportunity to gleefully hoist a middle finger in celebration over the slightest public setback to their normally unflappable corporate overlords is downright heartwarming.

Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse is another of Sega’s successful collaborations with Disney. Debuting on the Master System console and Game Gear handheld in 1993, it’s a follow-up to their Castle of Illusion and continues that game’s theme of sending Mickey on a colorful platforming odyssey through a whimsical fairy tale setting. This time, the framing device borrows a page from The Wizard of Oz. Mickey falls asleep reading from a storybook and finds himself transported to an enchanted kingdom populated by characters who bear a striking resemblance to Donald, Goofy, and certain other of his friends. Is it all a dream? The only way to find out is to undertake a fourteen stage quest to defeat the wicked Phantom plaguing this fantasy land with his evil magic.

Although superficially similar to Castle’s straightforward “hop and bop” style, the gameplay here is complicated by the addition of some basic environmental puzzle solving (mostly of the block and switch pushing variety) and a few key items that grant Micky new abilities. The magic potion, for instance, allows him to shrink down to half size in order to access narrow passages, while the rope lets him scale walls. These features are hardly sufficient to push Land into full-on action-adventure territory à la Metroid, though Sega was savvy enough to build some bona fide challenges around them, ensuring that they’re no mere shallow gimmicks thrown in to gate off a handful of arbitrary passages.

The core experience remains one of traversing hazardous (if cheery-looking) locales and dispatching enemies with a combination of Mickey’s aerial “butt bash” attack and picking up and hurling the various rocks and other small objects littering the landscape. Mickey begins with a two-hit health bar that can quickly be extended to a maximum of five by collecting red star icons. Health upgrades are permanent, so you may ironically find yourself dying more in the early game despite the more difficult layouts of later areas. Thankfully, the threat of death isn’t overly daunting due to the excellent controls, frequent checkpoints, and unlimited continues afforded the player.

As per usual for Disney-licensed games, the graphics and music in Land of Illusion are top-notch for the hardware. Mickey’s sprite art and animations for running, swimming, climbing, and even standing idle are about as good as it gets in an 8-bit title. The many enemy characters he encounters show a similar degree of care in their visual design, from the smallest bee or snake to the largest of boss monsters. The music by Sega sound team veterans Izuho Numata, Keisuke Tsukahara, and Tomonori Sawada is also far better than average by the standards of the Master System’s starkly limited sound chip.

On the whole, there’s little worth objecting to in Land of Illusion. Hardcore players might be disappointed by its general ease, but this aspect of its design is no doubt intentional and shared by numerous highly-regarded Disney games of the era, such as the NES’ DuckTales and Rescue Ranger duologies. Beyond that, Sega’s usual high degree of craftsmanship and impressive attention to detail make this one an easy recommendation for most any fan of the genre or subject matter. The subject matter that I own. Suck it, Walt.

Tengai Makyō: Ziria (PC Engine)

Long time, no see! Fear not, I’m still alive. I’ve just been plowing my way through another lengthy title. This time, it’s Tengai Makyō: Ziria, occasionally known by the bizarre moniker Far East of Eden. Bizarre because I can’t begin to fathom what connection this 1989 fantasy RPG by developer Red Company and publisher Hudson Soft has to do with American novelist John Steinbeck’s 1952 masterpiece, East of Eden. That head-scratcher aside, I’d been waiting what feels like forever to dig into this one. You see, Tengai Makyō: Ziria holds the distinction of being the first RPG produced for the then cutting-edge CD-ROM format. Despite the obvious historical interest this instilled in me, though, the game itself was doomed to remain largely inaccessible to anyone untrained in the Japanese language for nearly 35 years. Enter the fine folks at LIPEMCO! Translations, who released their magnificent English fan translation this past December. Finally, I was able to immerse myself in the world of Tengai Makyō: Ziria and discover…a fairly rote Dragon Quest clone with some superb cut scenes.

I know, I know, That may come across as rather glib and dismissive of me. Rest assured, however, that I hardly consider a strong resemblance to one of my favorite series to be a net negative. Similar to EarthBound, which I covered last month, tried-and-true mechanics that will be second nature to anyone who’s booted up an ’80s console RPG in the past are used by the designers as a canvas upon which to paint their own vision. In this case, it’s a vision of a whimsical Edo period Japan as imagined by misinformed outsiders. The instruction manual comes with an elaborate behind-the-scenes backstory explaining how the game’s plot is based on a spectacularly misinformed treatise on the nation of “Jipang” by nineteenth century American scholar Paul Hieronymus Chada. There never was such a man, of course, so what Red Company’s done here is to employ essentially the same comedic framing device William Goldman did in The Princess Bride, with its fictitious original author, S. Morgenstern. Cute.

The adventure centers on the titular Ziria of the Toad Clan, a hot-blooded young warrior very loosely-based on the Japanese folkloric hero Jiraiya. We follow him as he undertakes an epic journey to unite with the two other champions destined to defend Jipang against the machinations of the Daimon Cult, a sinister cabal of foreigners seeking to awaken the evil slumbering deity Masakado and lay waste to the country.

The general flow of the quest is episodic, not unlike any given season of a shōnen anime. Ziria and company arrive at a new province, hear tell of a Daimon Cult lieutenant with formidable powers oppressing the populace, and go on a short fetch quest or two before overthrowing that area’s freaky Big Bad and moving on to the next. After a dozen of these little episodes have played out, the group has become seasoned fighters ready to take down the Biggest Bad and save the day…until next season, er, game that is. I have to assume this structure is intentional, since the art style and tone of the cut scenes wouldn’t be out of place in any number of contemporary television productions.

Those cut scenes really are where Tengai Makyō: Ziria shines its brightest. They’re well drawn, professionally voiced, frequently amusing, and would have been jaw-dropping for the average gamer in 1989. I find them endearing enough today, and don’t intend highlighting them as the game’s best feature to be any sort of backhanded compliment.

Beyond that, I found the overall experience quite average. You know the drill: Explore from an overhead view, zoom in for a first-person view on the basic menu-based “fight, magic, item, run” combat, manage your HP and MP, level up, interrogate townsfolk for clues, buy new equipment periodically, and so forth. There’s only one major exception to the standard formula, and it’s unfortunately a doozy. In most RPGs cast from this mold, one of your party members running out of health would necessitate a trip back to town to have him or her revived by a friendly NPC. Or perhaps you’d cast a spell or use an expendable item to accomplish the same result. Not so here. If any one of your three main player characters falls, it’s an instant game over and you’re docked half your money and sent back to the last place you saved. You’re provided no opportunity to continue on without them or revive them yourself. It’s pretty brutal and resulted in significantly more failed dungeon runs and boss battle defeats than I’m used to seeing. At least money is relatively easy to come by and you can safeguard your stash by depositing it at the bank before you set off. Still, it’s a real frustration trigger when one late healing spell seals your whole group’s fate.

Tengai Makyō: Ziria is a solid old school RPG with a charming presentation and 30+ hours of gameplay to grind your way through. It’s also fascinating from a gaming history perspective as the genre’s first flirtation with visual media. That said, I wouldn’t call it one of the best works of its kind, whether today or back in 1989. In addition to the overly punitive character death issue I just described, the cyclical nature of the story beats grows repetitive. The majority of the music is oddly weak, too. While the three orchestrated tracks by the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto are predictably excellent, the remainder of the soundtrack consists of short, tinny chiptunes that loop incessantly. Regardless, it sold well and spawned numerous sequels. I can’t wait to see where the saga goes next after this promising start. Not that I have a choice. If I’m lucky, maybe Tengai Makyō II will get translated before I hit retirement age.

GG Aleste II (Game Gear)

When it comes to homegrown holiday traditions, few can rival Compilemas in my heart. For six years running now, I’ve given myself the gift of a brand new (to me) shooting game by the late, great studio Compile. This time, I’m continuing my exploration of the often overlooked Sega Game Gear library with GG Aleste II, confusingly re-titled Power Strike II in Europe despite being wholly distinct from the Master System release of the same name that also arrived there in 1993. I swear I’ll never understand the bizarre and convoluted naming conventions of this series. It’s almost as wonky as Adventure Island/Wonder Boy’s sometimes.

In the year 2070, five years after the events of GG Aleste, a powerful military satellite called Algo is created to defend earth from outside incursion, only to itself be turned against humanity by an alien parasite of unknown origin. Accomplished test pilot Alice Pfeiffer Waizen is chosen to strike back at the enemy in the new GG Aleste Model II ship, code name Lance Bird. Alice is the cousin of Ellinor “Terri” Waizen, heroine of Aleste 2, M.U.S.H.A., the first GG Aleste, and developer M2’s upcoming 2024 Aleste installment, Aleste Branch. Repelling alien invasions is the sort of thing that runs in families, apparently.

Compile was, above all, reliable, and GG Aleste 2 embodies this. If you’ve played and enjoyed any of their legendary vertical shooters before (The Guardian Legend, the aforementioned M.U.S.H.A., Space Megaforce, Blazing Lazers, et al.), you know exactly what you’re in for here. Nobody was better at delivering frantic, non-stop action that runs like a dream regardless of hardware limitations and still manages to remain fair and approachable, even for newcomers to the genre.  

The first GG Aleste was a worthy effort, albeit one that played a tad slower than fans may be used to. Perhaps Compile was still getting to grips with programming for the platform. I’m pleased to report that its sequel is noticeably zippier, with more enemies and bullets to dodge. It is slightly scaled back in other respects, however. There are only six main levels here, as opposed to eight, resulting in a total run time of just under half an hour. Acceptable for a handheld game, if relatively short for a Compile joint. Similarly, GG Aleste’s six upgradeable secondary weapons have been pared down to four: Neo Napalm Gun (self-explanatory), Hammer Hawk (homing missiles), Delta Form (defensive satellite drone), and Rising Masher (spread lasers). On the plus side, you’re now given a limited stock of super bombs to deploy, as well as a shield pickup that enables the Lance Bird to withstand two hits instead of one. Your primary straight shot is much the same as before, starting off small and weak until you collect enough of the falling “power chips” dispensed by tiny carrier ships to level it up into a serious threat.

A pair of bonus stages are also included. These play out from a pseudo-3D behind-the-ship view and involve manipulating a cursor to lock onto incoming enemies with your radar and then taking them out with a flurry of guided missiles. You’re scored based on the percentage of targets destroyed and how many shots you missed. It’s impossible to die during these interludes. They’re strictly a means of padding out your point total, thereby earning some extra lives.

The question of whether GG Aleste II’s fewer levels and weapon options are adequately offset by its greater speed and intensity is an interesting one. For my money, they are, although this obviously doesn’t amount to a clean win over its predecessor. One thing the two share in common is ease. The combination of short length, in-place respawns, unlimited continues, and your ship’s formidable weaponry makes for an uncommonly gentle ride by general shooter standards. But far be it from me to bemoan not getting my ass kicked hard enough on Christmas, eh? The bottom line is that this is yet another quality piece of work from true masters of the craft.

On that note, may you and yours enjoy this special time to the utmost, whatever reasoning and methods you adhere to. Just as some of us prefer to vanquish rampaging space aliens with napalm while others favor lasers or homing missiles, there’s no wrong way to have yourself a joyous holiday season. See you in 2024!