Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2 (NES)

Sometimes some games go slipping through the cracks. I kicked off August with a look at DuckTales 2, Capcom’s 1993 follow-up to their 1989 NES smash hit that failed to make much of a splash in a post-SNES world. As it turns out, they also pulled the exact same stunt around that time with the largely forgotten Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers 2. I consider it doubly tragic in this case, since unlike DuckTales 2, which paled ever-so-slightly next to the first in my eyes, I actually prefer the crime fighting rodents’ second 8-bit outing.

On the surface, Rescue Rangers 2 is yet another extremely similar sequel in the vein of the aforementioned DuckTales 2 or my subject last week, Bonk 3. The core action of running and jumping through a series of whimsical locations as either of the eponymous chipmunks (or both, in the two-player simultaneous mode) is familiar indeed. Attacking is once again accomplished by picking up objects, usually boxes, and chucking them at the opposition. The plot echoes the last game as well, with returning arch-villain Fat Cat breaking out of jail and promptly resuming his criminal antics.

In other words, veterans of the previous title will be able to dive right in and get going without a hitch. The few obvious changes don’t seem especially substantial at first. Progression is now fully linear, with players no longer having a say in the stage order or the ability to bypass certain ones. This is less impactful than you might think, though, as both games are short and the option to skip portions of the first was never particularly appealing anyway. Additionally, new between-level cut scenes feature the whole Ranger gang commenting on each twist and turn in the hunt for Fat Cat. So although the story may not be any deeper per se, it’s indisputably better told and bears a stronger resemblance to its animated inspiration. It’s nice to see Gadget, Monterey Jack, and Zipper contributing to the adventure in some way, even if they’re not playable.

Where Rescue Rangers 2 truly manages to excel, however, is in its revamped boss fights. Dealing with stage bosses in the previous installment was both trivial and repetitive. Pick up the red ball, toss it at the big target, repeat. Someone at Capcom clearly took that criticism to heart, because the foes here are constantly finding fresh and interesting ways to test your mastery of the basic throw mechanic. Often this means finding a way to dodge the enemy’s projectile attacks and then lobbing whatever they sent your way back at them, but sometimes the battle arena itself comes into play. You might have to struggle against the current of a waterfall throughout the fight or continually leap up to new platforms as the background auto-scrolls vertically and your present footing drops off-screen. In several instances, I got more enjoyment out of one of these encounters than I did the platforming level leading up to it, something that didn’t come close to happening in the original.

Other than that, there’s not much to say about this one. While not a massive step up by any means, it does look, play, and reflect its source material just a little bit better than its predecessor. The only element that doesn’t quite measure up is the soundtrack. Competent in their own right, Minae Fujii’s tunes don’t approach the richness of Hurumi Fujita’s. Certainly nothing here matches the brilliance of Fujita’s iconic Zone J theme. That singular caveat aside, Rescue Rangers 2 makes for an easy recommendation. This is choice Disney-Capcom goodness, pure pick-up-and-play fun that’s never too difficult for beginners or too dull for experts. It sadly came out far too late to make its mark with the masses, but you modern NES heads are in for a treat.

Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme: Screwed by late release.

Bonk 3: Bonk’s Big Adventure (TurboGrafx-16)

By 1993, publisher Hudson Soft’s effort to engineer a Mario-esque platforming star for their PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 console had proven reasonably successful. Adorable cartoon caveman Bonk, or PC Genjin as he’s known in Japan, already had two best sellers to his name, Bonk’s Adventure and Bonk’s Revenge, not to mention a spin-off shooter in Air Zonk. Enter Bonk 3: Bonk’s Big Adventure, the closing chapter in the original trilogy.

This installment has the odd distinction of being a multi-format title, first debuting on HuCard in 1993 and then later on CD-ROM. With the exception of their soundtracks, the two versions are functionally identical. That said, Bonk 3 represents more than just the character’s final outing on the platform of his “birth.” It also serves as a playable epitaph for the TurboGrafx-16 itself, seeing as how its CD iteration was the last official release for the ill-fated system here in North America in December of 1994. That seems fitting, given the high degree of affection the megacephalic mascot had garnered by that time.

Development duty on Bonk 3 was farmed out to A.I, as opposed to Red Company, who had handled both previous installments. A.I ended up sticking quite close to Red’s established formula. Perhaps too close, as Bonk 3 verges on being a carbon copy of Bonk’s Revenge at times, albeit with a single underdeveloped gimmick and ever-so-slightly less polish overall.

Said gimmick is alluded to in the subtitle. Bonk 3 introduces magical candies that alter our prehistoric hero’s size, shrinking him down to ankle height or blowing him up into a true giant. Lewis Carroll would approve. These effects last until Bonk either takes a hit or touches a candy of the opposite type. Although the idea certainly had promise, the gameplay rarely capitalizes on it. Tiny Bonk gains the ability to fit into a handful of narrow passages that usually lead to 1-Ups, bonus stages, and other nice but nonessential goodies. Big Bonk’s sole purpose seems to be spectacle; the sheer novelty of controlling a sprite that’s half the height of the screen. He’s not nearly as devastating to his puny opposition as you’d think, though. Quite the opposite, really, since he’s a massive target that can be deflated with a single touch. Ultimately, the best thing to come out of the size changing mechanic is one excellent boss battle where it’s actually used against Bonk.

Aside from the candy shenanigans, Bonk 3 is pure retread: Six more rounds of side-scrolling hop-and-bop action where you smash baddies with Bonk’s oversized cranium, collect meat and smiley faces, and gradually make your way to series archvillain King Drool, who’s up to his same old trick of stealing a portion of the moon to convert into his home base. I don’t mean to come across as overly dismissive with that summary, mind you. Sure, none of this content will seem remotely fresh to someone playing through these games in release order. That’s not to say that there’s anything strictly wrong with it, however. The classic Bonk blueprint works! My own subjective impression is that the art, music, and level design were all a tad stronger in Bonk’s Revenge, but it’s not as if Bonk 3 took a major hit in these departments. Any decline is slight indeed.

Should you play Bonk 3? Absolutely! It’s a quality platformer blessed with the tight control, colorful graphics, bouncy music, and profoundly strange enemy design that put the franchise on the map. Relaxed difficulty and unlimited continues keep it broadly accessible, too. While it’s no innovator, it does its lineage proud. In fact, the biggest strike against it, the insane secondary market price for physical copies, has nothing at all to do with the game proper and is entirely an artifact of its late release. No wonder Bonk himself would survive the sad death of the TurboGrafx, moving on to the comparatively greener pastures of the Super Nintendo and Game Boy.

Shadowrun (Genesis)

Double feature time! Hope you’re ready for more techno-magic intrigue on the seedy streets of 2050s Seattle, because just a year after Beam Software brought their quirky point-and-click spin on the tabletop classic Shadowrun to the Super Nintendo, it was BlueSky Software’s turn to give Genesis owners their own cyberpunk RPG fix. California-based BlueSky was no stranger to Sega’s 16-bit machine, having previous worked on such diverse licensed releases as Ariel the Little Mermaid, Jurassic Park, and NFL Sports Talk Football ’93. Similar to Beam, however, Shadowrun marked their first foray into this particular genre. Not that you’d know that from the end result, an extensive open world experience unlike any other console RPG available at the time.

I must say, reviewing these competing takes on the property back-to-back has been enlightening. Both studios started from identical inspiration and went on to create games that share a genre, a setting, and an emphasis on piecing together clues to a mysterious conspiracy. Yet despite all that common ground, the two are radically different in most every respect.

Genesis Shadowrun follows Joshua, a rookie ‘runner looking to hunt down the party responsible for the recent murder of his brother, Michael. He arrives in Seattle flat broke with only a single lead in the form of Michael’s last known address at a sleazy motel. Unfortunately, the innkeeper refuses to part with Michael’s personal effects until the outstanding bill is paid. If this were any other contemporary RPG, the solution would be to go out and fight some random enemies. While these are present to a limited extent, the real means of acquiring cash and experience is to go out there and get yourself a job.

You’re thus immediately introduced to the game’s defining feature: The random mission system. Talk to specific NPCs in bars and they’ll assign you a task. They might want you to escort a client from one location to another, to download, upload, or delete a file on some computer system or other, to go kill some rampaging ghouls, and so on. If you’re familiar with the “radiant quest” system popularized by Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series, this is essentially the exact same concept circa 1994. Whereas SNES Shadowrun was concise, arguably to a fault, with no side quests or optional objectives on offer, the Genesis entry is practically all side quest. None of these tasks have any bearing on the fate of Joshua’s poor brother, except that they’re mandatory to build your gear and stats up enough to stand a chance of surviving the relatively few proper story missions.

It’s a divisive approach to be sure. Impressive as it is to see a true open-ended RPG running on such limited hardware and immersive as it can be to feel like a real freelance shadowrunner with theoretically unlimited employment opportunities, making a mountain of randomized content not have the empty, repetitive feel of, well, a mountain of randomized content is a problem game designers still grapple with nearly thirty years on now. Should that fragile sense of immersion ever fail, you’ll find yourself realizing that walking faceless drone X between building Y and building Z for the twentieth time is merely performing menial tasks at the behest of an algorithm to make numbers go up. It doesn’t really mean anything. How you feel about that is up to you.

Another way this take on Shadowrun differentiates itself is by faithfully replicating the nitty-gritty rules of the pen-and-paper iteration whenever possible. That means more attributes and skills, more guns and spells, and greater complexity in general. You start out by picking one of three archetypes for Joshua: Samurai, decker, and shaman. In theory, this fosters replay value by forcing you to tackle the adventure as a beefy killing machine, cunning hacker, or master of mysticism. In practice, the shaman is the clear top choice. A samurai can easily acquire the implant needed to become a decker. A decker can end up just as as jacked and deadly in a firefight as any samurai. Neither of them will ever be able to cast spells, however. That’s exclusively the domain of the shaman. Not so all that computer and gun stuff, which the shaman also has full access to. True, you can’t go utterly hog wild with cybernetic implants as a shaman, since that will have a negative impact on your spellcasting skill, but this apparent weakness is offset by the existence of enchanted talismans with almost identical effects. In other words, the balance here is rather lacking, a theme sadly echoed elsewhere. For example, you can acquire the overall best weapon, the Ares Predator pistol, in the opening area for less than a thousand bucks. These hiccups aside, I do appreciate BlueSky’s attention to capturing the fine details of the source material.

Nowhere is that attention more apparent than in the presentation of the Matrix, the virtual reality computer realm where the megacorps keep their juiciest secrets locked away behind deadly IC (intrusion countermeasure, “ice”) programs. The Matrix in the Super Nintendo Shadowrun was an afterthought; a joke, even. On the Genesis, it’s a game unto itself! It’s far and away the best looking portion of an otherwise drab landscape, with a charming retro sci-fi look straight out of the likes of Tron or The Lawnmower Man and some lovely scaling effects as your gleaming chrome avatar glides up to distant network nodes. What’s more, the mechanics of it are deep. You’re able to customize and upgrade innumerable facets of your cyberdeck’s software and hardware, meaning that the device is essentially its own character with its own independent suite of stats and equipment. Various programs are used to attack, defend, evade detection, heal damage to your virtual persona, and so on. Honestly, it often feels as if more passion and development time was devoted to this digital world within a digital world than to the “real” Seattle depicted outside of it. This is backed up by the fact that Matrix runs are consistently the most lucrative. On the downside, I imagine it can be a lot for a new player to take in. I have the good fortune to have played a decker character extensively in the tabletop version, so getting to grips with all these IC types, node functions, and so on was second nature to me. For anyone else jumping into this one for the first time, you’ll want to keep that instruction manual handy.

Coming up with any kind of final verdict on BlueSky’s Shadowrun is tricky. It’s a uniquely ambitious effort that bites off a lot and actually manages to chew it pretty thoroughly for the most part. You have loads of authentic options for building your main character, filling out a party with hired runners (if you wish, I went solo), and taking on all manner of dangerous tasks on your own terms and schedule. On top of that, the central story is fairly compelling for the 20% or so of the total runtime you’ll realistically be working on it. The music’s decent, too, appropriately grim and atmospheric, if lacking the catchy beats that put the SNES soundtrack over the top. Conversely, though, it suffers from significant balancing issues and the dark, nondescript graphics outside the Matrix don’t give you much to look it. Above all, I found that the deluge of samey runs grew stale quite quickly and I had to actively force myself to grind my way to the finish line. Both Shadowrun games I’ve covered this month do the franchise proud in different ways. Neither is perfect, but which is superior ultimately comes down to the question of scope versus focus. Unlike the shaman, we simply can’t have it all.

Shadowrun (Super Nintendo)

Jake Armitage is having a rough day. His latest run was interrupted by a hit squad that gunned him down and left him for dead. Now he’s regained consciousness on a slab in the city morgue, stricken with amnesia by the ordeal and still a marked man. His only hope is to scour the mean streets of 2050 Seattle, reassembling the shattered pieces of his past before it’s too late.

1993’s Shadowrun is a game near and dear to my heart. It’s one of the handful of SNES cartridges I owned as a teen, so the nostalgia factor is strong. Beyond that, it possesses a number of qualities that collectively make it unique among RPGs on the platform. For starters, it merges traditional console action RPG mechanics with a point-and-click user interface more commonly associated with PC adventure games of the time. Before you ask: No, it isn’t compatible with Super Nintendo mouse accessory, although a recent (March 2022) ROM hack by rainwarrior can add this functionality if you’re so inclined.

Second, it wasn’t made it Japan. Rather, it’s the work of Australian studio Beam Software. The now defunct Beam’s output was uneven at best. Their oeuvre encompasses straight garbage like the infamous NES Back to the Future adaptations, the seminal computer fighting game The Way of the Exploding Fist, and everything in-between. One thing they weren’t known for, however, was RPGs. Shadowrun is their lone contribution to the genre proper, though it clearly takes cues from the previous year’s Nightshade Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh for the NES. Both share a lead designer, future full-time fantasy novelist Paul Kidd, and combine a gritty noir-inspired urban setting with a point-and-click control scheme. Some consider the two to be companion pieces of a sort, despite not sharing any story elements.

Finally, Shadowrun is a rare example of a licensed video game based on a pen-and-paper RPG that isn’t perennial industry leader Dungeons & Dragons. FASA Corporation’s original 1989 Shadowrun was one of the quintessential tabletop hits of the era. Mashing up the slick cyberpunk stylings of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner with the elves, orcs, and wizards of D&D could well have turned out so absurd as to repel sci-fi and fantasy fans alike. Instead, it was the biggest thing since chocolate and peanut butter. Inspiring me to get into the analog version is yet another reason I remain fond of Beam’s take on the franchise.

Enough with the backstory! Should you, a presumed 16-bit RPG enthusiast, actually give Beam’s Shadowrun a look? I think so, with the major up-front caveat that its brutal development cycle (it was rushed out the door in a little under six months!) led to unfortunate compromises in the final product. Before I get to those, let’s take a look at what Shadowrun got right.

Above all, the atmosphere here is top-notch. The streets and alleyways of dystopian Seattle are simultaneously sinister and alluring, an impression only heightened by the permanent nighttime gloom shrouding them. Better still is Marshall Parker’s moody, criminally underrated score. Alternately brooding and funky, it neatly encapsulates the Shadowrun property as a whole and is arguably one of the best overall soundtracks for the system. It’s no wonder he was brought back to work on several Shadowrun PC titles in the 2010s.

As an aside, this is my first time revisiting the game since I moved here to Seattle almost twenty years ago now. My newfound familiarity with the area has the side-effect of rendering some of the game’s dialog deeply strange and quite hilarious. Talk of killer mermaids harassing ferry traffic to Bremerton, for example, had me in stitches. I’m definitely counting this as a bonus.

Additionally, SNES Shadowrun benefits from putting the standout aspects of its license to good use. Protagonist Jake embodies the “magic meets technology” theme by being both a decker (cybernetics-enhanced virtual reality computer hacker) and a spellcasting shaman. There’s also no shortage of other shadowrunners (freelance mercenary troubleshooters) available who’ll happily join Jake on his quest…for a price. These include not just humans of all stripes, but the orcs, elves, and dwarves that call the setting home. The fourth major race, the hulking trolls, appear exclusively as NPCs. Whereas Jake’s inherent versatility makes it entirely possible (and not particularly difficult) to finish the game solo, this large pool of potential allies is one of the precious few things that can add replay value to the otherwise short and linear experience.

That very dearth of content is easily Shadowrun’s greatest stumbling block. The foundation for an extensive adventure was laid out admirably, but the Beam team (hey, that rhymes!) obviously didn’t have the time to capitalize on it. Once you get the hang of how it plays, there’s no reason you can’t power your way through this one in a single afternoon or evening. There isn’t even a proper final boss. You climb to the top of the last “dungeon,” a completely nondescript office building, and the game abruptly ends. Another area where time seems to have simply run out is the Matrix. That’s the aforementioned virtual reality computer world you need to visit in search of clues and bank accounts to rob. Alas, its implementation is pretty awful. It’s basically glorified Minesweeper, if you can believe that, with graphics that would have been more at home on the NES. Such a concept should have been a visual tour-de-force with in-depth mechanics to back it up. Such a pity. The standard gun and spell combat, which consists of planting Jake in one spot like a turret and clicking away on threats until either they drop or he does, is nothing to write home about, but at least it isn’t ugly Minesweeper.

All that unfulfilled potential aside, if you’re down for a short, unconventional RPG with a cool premise and some wicked atmosphere, Shadowrun absolutely delivers. All the more so if you’re craving an RPG fix and lack the wherewithal to commit to a Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy-scale outing. While I may wish that Kidd and company had been given another six months or so to polish it up, the cult classic they created stands on its own and remains a personal favorite.

Until next week, stay frosty, chummers. We’re not out of the shadows yet….

DuckTales 2 (NES)

D-d-d-danger! Watch behind you! There’s a stranger out to find you! What to do? Just grab on to some DuckTales…2!

Yes, almost four years after 1989’s DuckTales became superstar publisher Capcom’s best-selling NES title, they returned to the Disney Afternoon well for this far less successful 1993 sequel. That’s not a knock on DuckTales 2’s quality, mind you, just a statement of fact. The NES was enjoying peak popularity circa 1989, but a DuckTales follow-up on the same aging hardware naturally struggled to be seen in an era when the Super Nintendo and Genesis were dominating the gaming press. Not to mention that production on the eponymous cartoon had ceased all the way back in 1990. Considering these factors, it should come as no surprise that DuckTales 2 is borderline obscure. An authentic copy will set you back a minimum of a couple hundred dollars at the time of this writing. Bad news if you don’t happen to be in old Scrooge McDuck’s tax bracket.

What do you get if you dip into your Money Bin for this one? The glib answer would be “more DuckTales.” On the surface, this is a pure redux. Moneyed mallard Scrooge is once again off on a globetrotting adventure, using his trusty cane to pogo platform through such exotic locales as the Bermuda Triangle and the lost continent of Mu in search of ancient treasures. He’s joined by his usual supporting cast, including grand-nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, bumbling pilot Launchpad McQuack, and jealous archrival Flintheart Glomgold. Inventor Gyro Gearloose shows up periodically to dispense cane upgrades useful for revealing paths to still more loot. As before, a Mega Man style stage select screen gives you full access to the five main levels from the get-go. You can even revisit completed locations to farm cash or 1-Ups if you wish, further mitigating the already modest difficulty.

That’s the typical DuckTales 2 summary, anyway. More of the same, albeit less popular due to its late release. Dig a little deeper, however, and substantial tweaks to the formula become apparent. A new between-stage shop means that Scrooge’s bank balance is no longer a glorified score. The extra lives, health-restoring cakes, and other goodies sold here are vital for smooth progression. Take the continue orb, for example, which does away with the first game’s harshest penalty by allowing you to, well, continue when you run out of lives, obviously. Overall, a great addition.

DuckTales 2 also attempts to outdo its predecessor by adding a secondary objective in the form of map pieces concealed in various out-of-the-way spots. Gather all seven and you’re rewarded with a trip to a hidden sixth level where you can win a unique treasure necessary to achieve the ideal ending. Although I appreciate the gesture, the implementation is lacking. While quite playable, this bonus area is built entirely out of reused assets from a main one. Considering the exploration time needed to assemble the full map without a guide, I was expecting something visually distinct at the very least.

Then there’s the small things that collectively make for an improved gameplay experience. Scrooge’s cane can now be used to hang from hooks (a mechanic seemingly lifted from Capcom’s own 8-bit Darkwing Duck adaptation) and to pull on certain blocks and switches. To heighten the adventure vibe, a handful of Indiana Jones-inspired puzzles call for switches to be pressed or objects pulled in specific ways in order to reveal secrets. Perhaps best of all, the boss battles have been given a much-needed shot in the arm. My favorite, the Mu golem, needs to be stunned by cane-propelled chunks of rubble to render it vulnerable to pogo jumps. Actual thought went into these fights for a change!

With its expanded quest, shop system, and other welcome enhancements, I could certainly understand some players favoring the deeper DuckTales 2 over the original. Personally, I wouldn’t go that far. As someone with no nostalgic ties to either, I found the presentation of the first to be superior in most respects. The bulk of DuckTales 2’s environments struck me as drab compared to what came before. The lone standout in my eyes was Egypt, and it still pales slightly next to the likes of Transylvania or the Moon from DuckTales. The remainder didn’t impress me at all on a visual level. They were essentially DuckTale’s sole forgettable setting, African Mines, writ large. Blah. Unfortunate as that is, the downgraded soundtrack is arguably worse. I can’t recall a single melody from the majority of these tunes, a stark contrast to the parade of earworms packed into the prior outing. It’s not all doom and gloom on the aural front, thankfully. Both Bermuda Triangle themes are glorious.

Taken as a total package, DuckTales 2 is an excellent little platformer with all the polish audiences had come to expect out of a Capcom-Disney collaboration. It makes for an easy general recommendation and is one I’ll surely revisit. Its only real sin, if you can call it that, is its relative lack of the intangible charm that propelled DuckTales ’89 to iconic status. The art and sound design simply aren’t on that same rarefied plane. Is this assessment petty on my part? Unfair, even? Maybe. This is my review, though, and I’ve got to call them as I see them. Otherwise, the whole exercise is as pointless as giving Scrooge McDuck another 11,342,000 bucks.